Radio broadcasting stations, music format
Wbap News Talk 820 Am/99.5 FM
WBAP, News Talk 820, serves the Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas area with news, sports, traffic and weather. The radio station signed on the air in 1922 with 10 watts of power, which amounted to the 1920's version of electronic string and coffee-can communication. WBAP soon became a more powerful station, becoming one of the few 50,000 watt, clear-channel stations in the United States. Today, according to an independent study, WBAP has the greatest daytime coverage of any radio station in America and as much coverage at night as any other U.S. radio station. In early 1923 the station became the first ever to broadcast a rodeo, the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Other WBAP firsts include: the first radio station in the southwest to broadcast a baseball game and a football game, the first radio station in America with regularly scheduled newscasts, the first station to remote broadcasts by shortwave radio and the first individual station to send a war correspondent to Europe in the early days of World War II. Music was a major part of WBAP's programming from the beginning. Live, in-studio broadcasts were scheduled which featured musicians on WBAP such as The Light Crust Doughboys, The Sunshine Boys and Bewley's Chuck Wagon Gang. News has been a major WBAP commitment from the early years, and WBAP has been home to some of the best newsmen in America including regionally and nationally known journalists.
