By Richard A. Seifert

One of international broadcasting’s most interesting stories involves a cooperative agreement between a receiver manufacturer, the R.L. Drake Company, and commercial shortwave station WRUL-WNYW, Radio New York Worldwide. This agreement led directly to the introduction of a new receiver in 1966, and is fairly unique in the annals of independent broad-caster/manufacturer cooperation and collaboration.

The story begins in 1931. It was during this year that a Young engineer named \Lemmon ‘saw his dream corne to fruition. Lemmon, a radio enthusiast and inventor who had served as a radio officer to President Wilson in Versailles in 1919, had a vision of an international broadcast station whose put-pose was to promote international goodwill. His invention and sale of a "single dial tuning control" to RCA in 1931 provided the funds to see his dream become a reality. Lemmon began experimental shortwave station W1XAL in Boston, shortly after the sale of his invention in 1931. Four years later, he founded the World Wide Broadcast-Walter S.ing Foundation and began transmitting lectures via W1XAL from noted professors from Harvard, Tufts, Boston University, and other nearby institutions. All programming was non-commercial, and educational or cultural in nature.

In 1939 the Federal Communications Commission assigned standard cal l letters to United States shortwave stations, removing them from "experimental" status. W1XAL was assigned the call letters WRUL, which stood for "World Radio University," with the "L" implying listeners. Radio courses in engineering, aviation, languages, and music were broadcast to Europe and South America. WRUL continued its broadcasts to Europe and South America in eight languages until 1942. The programs were also rebroadcast in the United States over an informal network of over 300 stations, including WNYC in New York City. Programs were picked up via short-wave by these stations, and then rebroadcast over their local facilities. During this period,the station expanded its transmitter installation in Scituate, Massachusetts, adding new antenna systems and transmitters. WRUL was turned over to the United States government in November of 1942, as were a l l United States shortwave stations, under a lease agreement. This lease stipulated that a l l programming would be supplied by the government, who would pay for the Stations time and operating expenses.

Post-War Programming After the war. Lemmon and WRUL fought for and won limited return of their station from the government. The fiscal appropriation act of 1947 allowed shortwave broadcasters to again program their stations, but only for 25 percent of the time. WRUL was the only US shortwave operation that took ad-vantage of this opportunity!,.

In 1954 the government lease with WRUL ended, and the station was allowed to resume one hundred percent independent programning. These efforts continued until 1960 when Lemmon, now in his 6O’s, sold the station to group media owner Metro Media. Metro Media continued to offer similar programming, but found little commercial success, and divested itself of WRUL in 1962. Enter the Intemationa1 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. a division of the LDS (Mormon) church. When the church purchased WRUL in June of 1962 from Metro Media (during the height of the cold war), its intent was to promote and exemplify the Arnerican free enterprise system as well as international good Will. Under the visionary leadership and direction of general manager Arch Madsen,

WRUL invested .heavily in promoting and developing the station. Madsen realized that the success of the operation hinged on cultivating a worldwide shortwave audience. Under Walter Lemmon’s World Wide Broadcasting Foundation, and later, under Metro Media, WRUL had established an excellent reputation for educational/cultural programming, but the audience was small and migrating to other media. The new owners of WRUL wanted to operate the station as a commercial enterprise. This meant that the established but dwindling audience needed to be expanded. Madsen opined that, while the interest in shortwave was there and the potential listenership was larger, the apparatus for easy general reception was not. That is to say, general coverage receivers were difficult to operate. For example, a Collins R-390A would make programming today’s VCRs child’s play for the technically challenged. Also, these receivers tended to be primarily in the domain of DXers, ham radio operators, or hobbyists. Further, with the popularity of AM radio throughout the 50’s and 6O’s, receiver manufacturers concentrated their efforts in this arena, a11 but abandoning shortwave. The days of the grand old AM/SW console radios of the 40’s and 50’s were gone. The challenge then for establishing a successful commercial shortwave station was three-fold:

1) provide programming that the general worldwide public would want to tune in for extended periods;

2) provide the means to easily receive it, and having done that;

3) advertise both the station and the receiver.

For the programming, WRUL adopted a format featuring popular American music of the time presented by air personalities, along with informational programs describing life in the United States. Listeners to the station heard such currently popular artists and groups as The Fifth Dimension, and Donovan. A program called Me1 in Manhattan provided snippets of American life. 15,440 kHz was becoming a popular frequency throughout North and South America and Europe. WRUL was receiving over 3,000 letters a month from listeners around the world. An audience base was beginning to build. The second step, an easy-to-use receiver, then became priority number one. WRUL’s general manager Arch Madsen, himself an electronics engineer, decided to define the parameters for a shortwave receiver that would be easy to use, as well as inexpensive. Further simplifying operation, Madsen came up with the idea of color coding. Al1 the listener would have to do is "match colors" to operate the receiver. The next step was finding someone to build it. The R.L. Drake company of Miamisburg, Ohio, had a well-established reputation as a leading manufacturer of amateur radio receiving and transmitting equipment. The 2-B and the R-4/T4X combination, among others, were highly valued in the amateur radio community. Madsen approached Bob Drake about producing this receiver re-quiring little technical knowledge to operate. It was to be a low-cost unit (at or around $200 US), AM mode only, capable of receiving all international broadcast bands, as well as medium and long wave. It would have an AGC circuit, adequate selectivity and sensitivity, and a minimum number of front panel "knobs" requiring user adjustment. Importantly, the receiver should also provide pleasant audio quality. In short, it was to be as simple to operate as possible. Drake considered the proposal and agreed to proceed, sensing a possible riew worldwide market opportunity.

Drake engineers, led by chief engineer Milt Sullivan, worked with Madsen in the development and creation of the receiver. It would be Drake’s first entry into the general coverage, non-ham market. The result was the SW-4, a tube receiver featuring a "push-pull" audio stage for pleasant audio, fitting the specifications prescribed by WRUL. Because the receiver was made to WRUL’s specifications and request, Drake agreed to include the station’s logo on the front panel. The agreement would be beneficial to both companies. R.L. Drake company and the SW-4 were to be promoted over the air by WRUL. WRUL, on the other hand, would have its logo on the receiver as a constant reminder to the shortwave audience, as well as the added bonus of having its call letters appear in Drake’s print advertising, thus exposing it to a whole new market of shortwave listeners who may not have been aware of the station.1966 was an important year in the SW-4/WRUL story. As the Drake company progressed with final assembly of the SW-4, WRUL was busy as well. The call letters WRUL had been in existence since 1939, and were inexorably tied to Walter Lemmon’s Worldwide Broadcasting Corporation. That Radio New York WorldWide (WNYW) loge as it area meant that listeners still associated the call letters with educational/cultural non-commercial programming.

To promote the new sound of the station, in conjunction with the debut of the SW-4, the WRUL cal1 was dropped in favor of WNYW, Radio New York Worldwide. The slogan "Radio New York Worldwide" had been used since 1962 when the station was purchased by the LDS church. Also, WNYW received a construction permit from the Federal Communications Commission to change its transmitter location from Scituate, Massachusetts, to Chatsworth, New Jersey. Included in the permit was authorization to install two 250 kW, one 100 kW, and two50 kW transmitters. The SW-4 hit the market in 1966. Each receiver was hand made at the Drake facility, every solder connection being done by hand. For this reason, a production of five to ten receivers a day was considered normal. Ap-proximately 600 SW-4’s’were built before the introduction of the "A" model. The primary difference between the "A" model and the SW-4 was the addition of a solid state audio section, replacing the "push pull" tube design.

Per agreement, WNYW began promoting the existence of this easy-to-use shortwave receiver over the air. It began to appear in print advertising, as well a s amateur radio outlets. The promotion touted the receiver’s coverage of the existing international short-wave bands as well as its simplicity of operation. Anyone could use this receiver, the spiel went: No need to be technically minded. Everything seemed to be falling into place. The receiver was now available. Programming was gaining acceptance, and transmitter facilities were about to be improved. How-ever, the goal of increasing listenership via an easily operated receiver was never realized.

The WNYW/Drake cooperative agreement continued for seven years, until1973. WNYW continued to operate as a commercial entertainment shortwave station, but found it increasingly difficult to attract sufficient sponsorship. WNYW learned what other shortwave broadcasters have discovered, both before the story concludes in 1973 with the sale of WNYW, Radio New York Worldwide, to Family Radio Inc., a group religious broadcaster. The WNYW call was changed to WYFR ("your family radio"). WYFR continues broadcasting today from their transmitter site in Florida and since: the difficulty of measuring the size of the listening audience. Therefore, even though the station was popular among D-Xers, hobbyists, and listeners worldwide, it wasn’t able to make a case for the size of its audience. Without this information, commercial sponsorship was difficult to obtain. The station also met with resistance from foreign commercial enterprises who complained that the station was taking advertising business away from them. In addition, WNYW encountered a "lack of understanding" among potential advertisers as to just what the station was trying to do with international shortwave radio. A fire at the transmitter facility in Massachusetts in 1972, followed by the expense of rebuilding the site, proved to be more than the station could handle. Receiver sales were encouraging, but did not fulfill the intended goal of increasing listenership, at least to the extent that would sway advertisers. WNYW had hoped to market them mainly in Europe and South America, but found that the greatest interest was largely in the United States. The WNYW Overseas target audience was largely missed. However, because of encouraging interest in the SW-4A, Drake went on to develop and introduce the SPR-4 general coverage receiver, featuring SSB capability and greater frequency coverage.

Postscript : Last year, I had an opportunity to tour the new facilities of National Public Radio here in Washington, D.C. Located in the District’s "Chinatown" neighborhood, NPR features state-of-the-art digital workstations, mixing facilities, and impressive studio layouts. As we walked through the several-story building, we eventually made our way to the technical area filled with satellite downlinks, digital switching matrixes, rows of neatly bundled table. Then, something caught my eye. There, located on a shelf which was rack-mounted about three feet off the floor, sat the glowing face of a familiar old friend. Tuned to WWV at 10 MHz, was an SW-4A.

Source : August 1996  -  M O N I T O R I N G       T I M E S    By Richard A. Seifert