Porch Notes
One of America's First Radio Stations Went on the Air in Detroit
History and culture
Long before podcasts and streaming, the very idea of flipping on a box to hear the news and music was brand new — and Detroit was right there at the dawn of it.
On August 20, 1920, the Detroit News put a radio station on the air from the second floor of its building. Its first call sign was 8MK; later it became WWJ, and it’s still broadcasting in Detroit today, more than a century later. It was the first radio station in the world owned by a newspaper. Those first broadcasts reached a few hundred local hobbyists with radio sets, playing music picked up by a phonograph horn aimed at the microphone. Eleven days later, on August 31, the station broadcast Michigan primary-election returns — often cited as the first radio news broadcast.
Was it America’s very first radio station? That’s a friendly, century-old argument. Back then the government hadn’t even defined what counted as a “broadcasting station,” and 8MK operated under an amateur license. Pittsburgh’s KDKA, which launched that November, is usually credited as the first licensed commercial station and calls itself the “Pioneer Broadcasting Station of the World.” Detroit’s station beat it on the air by a couple of months and has long claimed “where it all began.” Both can fairly say they were present at radio’s creation.
Either way, the next time you turn on the radio, know that the medium took some of its very first breaths in Detroit.
Where to see it
WWJ still broadcasts in Detroit (Newsradio 950 today). It began in the old Detroit News building downtown at Lafayette and Second; the station built its own Art Deco home across the street in 1936.