HomeMy WebLinkAboutProject HOLD First Football BroadcastProject HOLD
WTAW Interview
Ben Downs | WTAW General Manager
Tom Turbiville | WTAW Radio Host
Laura Quezada | Transcriber
00:00:00 Dick Bolin (DB)
College Station, Texas, April 24th, 1947, Dick Bolin talking. Here's the latest news from the
Associated Press…
00:00:07 Associated Press (AP)
He got a touchdown! Oh, doctor!
00:00:10 Speaker 3
…News and Talk, WTAW.
-------------------------------
00:00:12 Tom Turbiville (TT)
This is WTAW, the First 100 Years on Tom Turbiville. If you were to Google “first live college
football radio broadcast”, don't, because you'll find conflicting history galore; not only with who
did it, but when it was done. WTAW rightly claims that they did it before it was even WTAW,
November the 24th, 1921, when the station was called 5XB, located on the A&M campus.
There's a big Texas Historical Commission marker right outside entrance 7 at Kyle Field that
even says so. And so does our general manager, Ben Downs.
00:00:54 Ben Downs (BD)
It's still listed in Chase's annual events as being 1919 . And when, uh, 2019 rolled around, I had
people asking why we weren't celebrating it, and I just told them that rather than get into all of it,
I just told them, “Well, when we were WTAW is when we are actually going to , uh, uh, celebrate
our 100th everything”. It's important to note that the campus amateur radio club, which I think is
W5AC now, actually continued on past 1922. It's almost like our history and their history split
apart at that point. So, one of us really gets to take credit for the first football play-by-play,
maybe not both of us, but we'll run with it until somebody tells us we can't.
00:01:45 (TT)
So, it did not happen in 1919. It almost happened in 1920, and it did happen in 1921 on 5XB, the
future WTAW, the First 100 Years.