WDZ
Clyde E. Wiley was hired as a telegraph operator to receive the reports, which were then individually telephoned to various local grain elevators that might be interested in selling their holding.
He proposed that the company establish a station to simultaneously distribute grain price information to all interested parties, and thus avoid the complexity and cost of individual telephone calls.
[9] A review by Clyde E. Wiley in The Grain Dealers Journal that appeared at the end of 1921 explained the new service as: "Mr. Bush, in furnishing the conditions to us, has in mind only the reduction of telephone tolls, labor and so forth.
In addition, the radio broadcasts were used by the Bush company to confirm executed sales for its clients, using a code number to insure confidentiality.
[10] After the service gained popularity, Western Union and Postal Telegraph tried to have James Bush expelled from the Chicago Board of Trade, on the grounds that he was infringing on what they claimed were their exclusive rights to distribute prices.
A September 10, 1921 letter from Clyde E. Wiley to an electrical supplier reported that "Twice each week we broadcast phonograph music, and in each case the big unit is run for one hour without stop.
[14] On April 5, 1922 a broadcasting station license with the randomly assigned call letters WDZ was issued to James L. Bush, for operation on 360 meters.
[2] In 1923 the number of available operating frequencies was greatly expanded, and WDZ was reassigned to broadcast on 1080 kHz,[15] although its power initially remained at 10 watts.
[17] In addition, they were informed that if they wanted to continue operating, they needed to file a formal license application by January 15, 1928, as the first step in determining whether they met the new "public interest, convenience, or necessity" standard.
[18] On May 25, 1928, the FRC issued General Order 32, which notified 164 stations, including WDZ, that "From an examination of your application for future license it does not find that public interest, convenience, or necessity would be served by granting it.
On November 11, 1928, the FRC made a major reallocation of transmitting frequencies under the provisions of its General Order 40, and WDZ was shifted to 1070 kHz, sharing this assignment with WCAZ in Carthage, Illinois.
In 1941 the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA) resulted in another major reallocation of transmitting frequencies, and WDZ was moved to 1050 kHz, where it has remained ever since.
American stations operating on Mexican clear channel frequencies were restricted to 1,000 watts, daytime-only, until the "Rio" treaty took effect in the late 1980s.
[23] On February 1, 2024, Neuhoff Media sold radio stations in Danville and Decatur IL to Champaign Multimedia Group for $2 million and has since closed in May 2024.
Smiley (real name Lester) got his nickname from a character in Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", which he was reading on the air.
Mommie and Uncle Jim, as Smiley and I call them, are like a second set of parents to us and we visit them whenever possible in Tuscola or in Florida in the winter or Wisconsin in the summer.
