WBAA
WBAA and WBAA-FM are public radio stations licensed to West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, both serving the Lafayette metro area and the Indianapolis area with a news/talk format. The stations were founded by Purdue University, but in 2022, 100 years after WBAA's start, ownership was transferred to Metropolitan Indianapolis Public Media, Inc., which also owns WFYI radio and television in Indianapolis. Both stations originate from studios in the Edward C. Elliott Hall of Music on the Purdue campus and transmitter sites south of Lafayette, with the WBAA-FM transmitter site at the Throckmorton Purdue Agricultural Center.
WBAA, branded as "WBAA News", broadcasts a news-oriented format, with programming from National Public Radio. WBAA is the oldest operating radio station in Indiana, beginning in 1922 and with several antecedents on the Purdue campus. Originally a service noted for its limited agricultural extension and educational programming as well as Purdue sports broadcasts, it gradually improved its facilities and expanded its output over its first 20 years on air. The station was one of NPR's charter members in 1971. An FM adjunct, WBAA-FM, began broadcasting in 1993 and originally featured a mixture of NPR news and classical music; both stations will combine formats in early November 2025. WBAA-FM also transmits two HD Radio digital subchannels featuring classical and jazz, respectively; the classical subchannel is additionally relayed over low-power translator W290CM.
History
Pre-broadcast radio at Purdue
Experimentation in radio—then commonly known as "wireless telegraphy"—at Purdue University dated back to at least 1910, but initial attempts to construct a transmitter capable of communicating with other stations had limited success. A more ambitious effort in 1916, based at the Electrical laboratory, had to be suspended in early 1917, when, with the entry of the United States into World War I, most civilian stations were ordered to shut down. During the war, Purdue conducted radio instruction for students and military personnel.After the end of the war, civilian radio stations were again permitted. In 1919, the university was issued a temporary authorization, followed by a "Technical and Training School" license which was originally given the call sign of 9YA, which was changed the next year to 9YB. 9YB's primary transmitter was a 2-kilowatt spark set, which transmitted on wavelengths of 200 meters and 375 meters and could only send the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. It was employed to send and receive messages between Purdue and other stations around the Midwest. The Purdue Exponent newspaper used 9YB as part of a news service among Western Conference schools. For audio broadcasts, the station added a small transmitter that had been constructed as a thesis assignment by R. H. Vehling, class of 1921.
Early years of WBAA
Effective December 1, 1921, the United States Department of Commerce, which regulated radio at this time, adopted regulations requiring that stations broadcasting to the general public had to have a Limited Commercial license. Two wavelengths were designated for use by broadcasting stations: 360 meters for "entertainment" programs and 485 meters for "market and weather" reports. In order to conform with the new regulations, the university applied for a broadcasting station license, which was issued on April 5, 1922, with the call letters WBAA, for operation on the 360-meter "entertainment" wavelength. 9YB continued in use for experimental and amateur transmissions. Although not the first Indiana station to receive a broadcasting license, WBAA is the oldest surviving one.The WBAA call sign was randomly assigned from a sequential list of available call letters and was one of the first four-letter call signs issued to a broadcasting station, as most earlier stations had received three-letter assignments. The earliest reported broadcast as WBAA was made on April 21, 1922, of an Arbor Day message prepared by Secretary of Agriculture Henry C. Wallace, that was read over numerous stations across the United States.
Much of the output from WBAA in its early years consisted of talks from Purdue's agricultural extension and engineering departments. These included such discussions as "The Hot School Dinner", "Home Canning of Meats", "Bread from Indiana Flour", and "Elimination of Smoke, Dust, and Fumes in Industrial Processes". Also broadcast by the station were livestock reports from Chicago's market and broadcasts of Purdue sports, such as the dedication ceremony of Ross–Ade Stadium in 1924 and Purdue–Indiana basketball games.
After more transmitting frequencies became available, WBAA was reassigned to 1060 kHz in 1924, which was changed the next year to 1100 kHz. By 1926, the station's broadcasting schedule was 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with test transmissions as experimental station 9XY after midnight on Saturdays. Power was raised to 500 watts, by which time the station was airing the full slate of Purdue home basketball games.
The Federal Radio Commission, formed in 1927, downgraded the nighttime power of a University of Illinois station, WRM, from 1,000 to 500 watts, and ordered it to share WBAA's frequency. On November 11, 1928, with the implementation of the FRC's General Order 40, WBAA was reassigned to 1400 kHz, sharing time with two other Indiana stations: Culver Military Academy's WCMA and WKBF, a commercial station in Indianapolis. WKBF got a power boost to 500 watts but now had to share air time with the other two stations, with WKBF allotted four-sevenths, two-sevenths assigned to WCMA, and the remaining seventh assigned to WBAA, primarily on Mondays and Fridays.
1929 fire, rebuild, and full-time operation
On the afternoon of March 14, 1929, a fire erupted that destroyed the facilities of WBAA; it was reported to have started when a spark ignited hydrogen gas that was leaking from batteries. The blaze also caused smoke damage to the Electrical Engineering Building in which WBAA was located; some students had to be rescued from windowsills, where they had fled the advancing fire. Purdue immediately began planning to rebuild WBAA as a 1,000-watt station, but the FRC would only allow it to continue as a 500-watt outlet. Operations of WBAA resumed at the end of January 1930 after more than 10 months of silence; the facility was prepared to broadcast with 1,000 watts if the opportunity ever presented itself. Purdue also successfully applied to begin broadcasts with 1,000 watts during daylight hours. WCMA ceased broadcasts in 1932, with its time going to WKBF, which also purchased its assets. WKBF was allowed to use the frequency on a full-time basis from late May to October, when Purdue was on summer break. The station was rebuilt in 1933; all of the equipment was built on the Purdue campus. The large water-cooled transmitter, on the top floor of the Electrical Engineering Building, was in a space so inadequately ventilated that engineer Ralph Townsley wondered why it never burned up.In 1934, the FRC granted full time to WKBF and moved WBAA to a new frequency, 890 kHz, which it would share with WILL, the former WRM in Illinois. Broadcasting on the new dial position began that August. That fall, it broadcast for four and a half hours a day, six days a week.
As early as 1937, Purdue filed to relocate the transmitter and increase daytime power to 5,000 watts. The first proposal involved relocating the transmitter to a more central location in the state and establishing a studio in Indianapolis, as well as converting WBAA into a partly commercial operation; this was vetoed by the Purdue board of trustees. The Federal Communications Commission approved in November 1940, setting up an eventful 1941 for the Purdue station. In February, the studios moved out of three rooms in the Electrical Engineering Building to the Elliott Hall of Music. The new transmitter site was not ready for several more months, but one last change was in store for the old one; on March 29, WBAA moved from 890 to 920 kHz, along with all stations on that frequency, as part of the frequency reorganization of NARBA. Broadcasting began from the new 5,000-watt transmitter south of Lafayette on September 27; the site included three towers to support the directional antenna pattern used at night.
WBAA's educational service was also increasing. In 1944, the station began to broadcast the "Purdue University School of the Air", radio school programming that by 1952 was being listened to by 275,000 schoolchildren in Indiana and neighboring states; this continued until 1968. There were adult education courses, coverage of Purdue and West Lafayette High School sporting events, and market reports, broadcast from a station with 16 staff and 35 student staffers. WBAA began to distribute tapes of its programming to other commercial and noncommercial broadcasters in the mid-1950s.
In 1959, Purdue filed for and received a construction permit to expand its service to FM on 99.1 MHz. The university wanted to improve its nighttime service, which due to the nature of the AM operation was directional and had poor reception going any direction other than north from Lafayette. However, work was delayed on the project because Purdue engineering resources were diverted to the Stratovision program of the Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction, which used flying TV transmitters to broadcast educational TV content over a wide area. Purdue ultimately forfeited the construction permit in 1962. The late 1960s also saw the station begin to do some of its own news reporting of demonstrations that were taking place on the campus; the times also inspired a series of new programs on race relations and birth control. However, its programming continued to focus on education and shows for the "mature, enriched adult", including classical music selections.
Several early WBAA alumni went on to other broadcast roles, locally and nationally. Durwood Kirby's lengthy broadcasting and media career got its start at WBAA in the early 1930s. Dick Shively, who was a sportscaster in the late 1930s, owned television stations in several Midwestern states, including WLFI-TV in Lafayette. Chris Schenkel went on to a career as a radio and television sportscaster. Lew Wood later was the news anchor on Today in 1975 and 1976, and actors George Peppard and Karen Black also worked at WBAA while at Purdue.