Three New York offices, three generations of Gamblings and 90 years of American history distributed across the radio station of millions of listeners have kept WOR alive.
In a world where newspapers, television, the Internet, and mobile phones vie for the attention of consumers all over the world, Manhattan’s WOR has kept a simple winning formula. News Talk radio in New York pulls at the heart strings of listeners looking for a small-town family feeling.
It started on February 22, 1922, on the 6th floor of Bamberger’s Department Store in Newark, New Jersey. Louis Bamberger, original owner of the station, wanted it to be called WLB; instead it received a re-issued ship’s call, WOR.
The station initially shared air time with two other stations on 833 kHz, but within its first two years WOR began to grow. The station added a studio in Manhattan at Chivering Hall where New York’s first wake-up show – Morning Exercise Session – originated. The control operator at Chivering was an English-born engineer named John B. Gambling. When the then-host Bernarr MacFadden called out sick, Gambling stepped up. It was then that a dynasty of Gamblings would establish the ground work for the rest of the 20th century. Celebrities like Paul Whiteman, Harry Houdini and Charlie Chaplin came to WOR microphones.
In 1926, the station moved its New York studio at Chivering to 1440 Broadway, just two blocks from Time Square. WOR maintained that office and studio space for nearly 80 years to come. In 1927 the station made another long-lasting move, on the dial to 710AM.
WOR was one of the 16 stations that aired the first CBS network program in the fall of 1927, alternating with the Atlantic Broadcasting Company’s WABC as the New York outlet. Bamberger was willing to sell WOR to CBS’ William S. Paley, head of the struggling network who offered to buy either of the local affiliates as the New York flagship. However, WABC was cheaper, and WOR and CBS parted ways. In 1929, Bamberger’s was bought by R.H. Macy & Co. with WOR in the package.
During the 1930’s, WOR featured children’s programs, such as “Sky Pictures By Mr. Radiobug” and “Chandu, The Magician,” which had WOR’s biggest mail pull – 8,000 letters a week. The biggest children’s personality on WOR was “Uncle Don”. The wholesome and beloved figured had some people in shock when during one his broadcasts, thinking the microphone was off, he muttered something like, “That ought to hold the little bastards for another day.” Whether this incident really occurred has been a matter of dispute since the day it happened, or didn’t happen.
In 1949, WOR started a sister TV station, WOR-TV, on channel 9. The station later became WWOR-TV after it and WOR were sold to separate companies in 1987.
From 1930’s to the early 1980’s, WOR was a free flowing full-service station. Music was played but the station became known for its detailed, 15-minute drive time newscasts on the hour. In 1978, the station boasted about their plentiful resources in the news department: eight full-time news reporters on staff (as many as the all-news powerhouse WCBS), one of the very few bona fide libraries in the country (even amongst most stations that relied on the wires), a full-time resident weather expert, and two radio station traffic helicopters in the city.
The helicopters were led with station pilot reporters “Fearless” Fred Feldman and later George Meade. Other notable hosts included Arlene Francis, Bernard Meltzer, Jean Shepherd and Gene Klavan, all of whom kept the same local perspective on New York news. From 1945 to 1963, Dorothy Kilgallen and her husband Dick Kollmar co hosted a WOR morning show called “Breakfast with Dorothy and Dick”. The show lured in listeners as they went on-air from their “house on East 68th Street in little old New York.”
Print
