Thursday, August 11, 2011

First Live Symphony Broadcast

August 12, 1922 First live broadcast of a concert by the New York Philharmonic on New York radio station WJZ. Broadcast from Lewisohn Stadium during the orchestra's summer series. Music by Dvorák, Saint-Saens, Mendelssohn, Rimksy-Korsakov, Brahms, and Gluck. Conducted by Willem van Hoogstraten, the orchestra's regular summer-event director. The WJZ callsign was first used on what is now WABC in New York City from 1921 to 1953. Also historically, CBS Corporation's predecessor, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, used to own WJZ in the New York metropolitan area from 1921 to 1923 when they had to sell control of the station to RCA; that station, in 1926, would be the flagship station for the NBC Blue Network which in turn would become the American Broadcasting Company in 1942. ABC later established WJZ-FM and WJZ-TV at the same time in 1948.
Four years after the WJZ call letters left the New York area, having their stations to become WABC-AM/FM/TV, Westinghouse Broadcasting acquired Baltimore television station WAAM in 1957 and changed its call letters to WJZ-TV, which remained an ABC affiliate until 1995 when the station switched to CBS.

WJZ, New York's first station

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