KDKA Radio
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| City | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Western Pennsylvania |
| Branding | Newsradio 1020 KDKA |
| Slogan | Pittsburgh's News, Weather and Traffic |
| Frequency | 1020 kHz (also on HD Radio via KDKA-FM-93.7 HD 2) |
| First air date | November 2, 1920 |
| Format | News/Talk |
| Language(s) | English |
| Power | 50,000 watts |
| Class | A |
| Facility ID | 25443 |
| Transmitter coordinates |
40°33′33″N 79°57′11″W / 40.55917°N 79.95306°W (main antenna) 40°33′39″N 79°57′20″W / 40.56083°N 79.95556°W (auxiliary antenna) |
| Callsign meaning | None (assigned from a sequential roster) |
| Affiliations |
CBS Radio News Westwood One News Pittsburgh Pirates Radio Network (Alternate) NFL on Westwood One (Alternate) |
| Owner |
CBS Radio (sale to Entercom pending) (CBS Radio East Inc.) |
| Sister stations | KDKA-FM, KDKA-TV, WBZZ, WDSY-FM, WPCW |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | pittsburgh |
KDKA (1020 kHz AM) is a Class A (clear channel) radio station, owned and operated by CBS Radio and licensed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its studios are located at the combined CBS Radio Pittsburgh facility in the Foster Plaza on Holiday Drive in Green Tree, and its transmitter site is at Allison Park. The station's programming is also carried over KDKA-FM's 93.7 HD2 digital subchannel.
KDKA features a News/Talk format. Operating with a transmitter power output of 50,000 watts, the station can be heard during daylight hours throughout central and western Pennsylvania, along with portions of the adjacent states of Ohio, West Virginia and New York, plus the Canadian province of Ontario. Its nighttime signal covers much of eastern North America.
KDKA has described itself as the "Pioneer Broadcasting Station of the World", and traces its beginning — initially using the temporarily assigned "special amateur" call sign of 8ZZ — to its broadcast of the 1920 Harding-Cox presidential election results on the evening of November 2, 1920.
Although KDKA's history has been extensively reviewed, there are some inconsistencies between accounts, leading one researcher to note: "While the KDKA story is often recounted, the details tend to vary slightly both in the secondary source material and in the published recollections of the participants, including differences in the chronology of events and the relative importance of the parties involved."
KDKA's establishment was an outgrowth of the post-World War I efforts of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to expand its commercial operations in the radio industry. During the war, Westinghouse received government contracts to develop radio transmitters and receivers for military use. They used recently developed vacuum tube equipment that was capable of audio communication. Previous spark gap transmitters could only be used to transmit the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. At the time of the entry of the United States into World War I in April 1917, the government ordered all civilian radio stations off the air. However, during the conflict Westinghouse received permission to operate research radio transmitters located at its East Pittsburgh plant and at the home of one of its lead engineers, Frank Conrad, in nearby Wilkinsburg.
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Wikipedia