WEVD

WEVD was an American brokered programming radio station with some news-talk launched in August 1927 by the Socialist Party of America. Making use of the initials of recently deceased party leader Eugene Victor Debs in its call sign (it called itself the "Debs Memorial Station"), the station operated from Woodhaven in the New York City borough of Queens. The station was purchased with a $250,000 radio fund raised by the Socialist Party in its largest fundraising effort of the 1920s and was intended to spread progressive ideas to a mass audience. A number of national trade unions and other institutions aided the Socialists in obtaining the station. Originally broadcasting at 1220 kHz AM, later on 1300 kHz, for many years on 1330 kHz and finally on 1050 kHz, operation of the station was acquired by the publishing association responsible for producing the Yiddish-language social democratic daily newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward in 1932. An FM station using the same call sign was added during the 1950s. After briefly leaving AM broadcasting in 1979, The Forward swapped its FM frequency for another AM frequency and continued broadcasting as a small ethnic station until divesting itself late in the 1980s. Radio broadcasting emerged on a mass scale in the United States during the first half of the 1920s, with the number of stations in operation rising from 28 in 1921 to 571 in 1925. A new form of mass media had emerged. Congress passed federal legislation called the Radio Act of 1927 early in that year establishing a Federal Radio Commission (FRC), which was granted power to regulate the emerging industry, granting licenses and assigning broadcasting wavelengths to bring order to a chaotic market. Under this legislation, broadcasters would not own the right to broadcast at a certain frequency but would rather use what was deemed a public resource for a limited period of time, not to exceed three years. To earn continuation of the privilege of broadcasting over the public airwaves, stations would be forced to demonstrate service to the public interest under the new law.