First African American radio station in Miami is ...

WFEC studio Christened at
the Lord Calvert Hotel,
Overtown, Miami  circa 1950
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Miami radio station WFEC (Florida East Coast Broadcasting Company) launched operations April 10, 1949. Located at that time at 350 NE 71 Street, it promoted itself as the “Whole Family Entertainment Center.”  The station, 1220 on the radio dial, featured news from the communities of Allapattah, Miami Shores, Miami Springs, Little River, 54^th Street, Edison Center, North Miami and Opa-locka. Part of its early schedule included news from the Jewish community.

A day-time operation only, it shifted to “all-Negro programming” by July 1952. By the end of that year the WFEC touted itself as “the only station in Florida featuring all-Negro programming.” One of its disc jockeys, Carlton King Coleman (1932-2010), became a popular Miami radio personality by the late 1950s when the station evolved into WMBM. Coleman later provided some of the vocals for the hit song (Do the) Mashed Potatoes recorded with James Brown’s Band. His career included his own radio shows in New York City and acting in a few films including Bad Boys II.

The station served as an early starting point in the illustrious career of Noble V. Blackwell (1934-1994), known as "HoneyBee" to listeners. He moved on to work as director of broadcasting at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia for more than two decades and as broadcaster for NBN New York City. In 1972 Noble was honored as "Man of the Year" by the National Association of Television and Radio Announcers. He also hosted the popular TV show, Night Train in 1964. His dream of owning a radio station was realized when he bought twin staions WCDL AM and FM in Pennsylvania. He successfully transitioned them into WLSP Hit Kickin' Country.

Another WMBM personality, Larry King (1933-2021) launched his interview show there in the late 1950s, early 1960s. He later moved to Miami’s WIOD* and syndicated the show nationwide before landing at CNN.

Through a series of license sales, owners, radio dial numbers, frequencies, and locations, WMBM now offers urban gospel programming serving Miami at 1490 on the dial.

Looking back, it could be said WFEC paved the way for ethnic programming with its rhythm and blues and gospel format for Miami’s African American community. The station helped place the city at the vanguard of radio broadcasting before a nationwide increase in station consolidation and decrease in local radio identity became the norm.

For more on WIOD, see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2013/07/miamis-radio-610-wiod-wonderful-isle-of.html

Sources:

Miami Herald, April 10, 1949

Miami Herald, Feb. 10, 1950

Miami News, Aug. 8, 1951

Miami Herald, July 21, 1952

Miami Herald, Jan. 15, 1953

Miami Times, Nov. 30, 1957

The Tennessean, Sept. 13, 1994

Wikipedia

NB Production Team/Tracye Blackwell Johnson

Tags: Miami radio history, African American history, Miami in the 1940s, Miami in the 1950s, Miami history, Noble V Blackwell,  Carlton King Coleman, Larry King

WFTL and RH Gore - Afloat in the Venice of America

By Jane Feehan

Radio station WFTL, the first in Fort Lauderdale and Broward County has had a series of owners closely associated with the founding and growth of the city. 

  

Fort Lauderdale pioneer Tom M. Bryan bought a radio station in 1937 and used the call letters WFTL. After he operated WFTL for a year and a half, Bryan sold the station to Ralph Horton, who, in turn, sold it to Miami investors. The station became known as WGBS.

Fort Lauderdale was without its own radio station throughout World War II and until 1946, when it went back on the air with new owners Martin E. Dwyer of Chicago and U.S Rep. Dwight L. Rogers of Fort Lauderdale.  They first operated the station across the street from the Governors Club Hotel. Then they moved it to a houseboat on SE 15th Street, along the New River, and advertised with the appropriate slogan, "Afloat in the Venice of America."

During the fall of 1948, R.H. Gore, owner of the Fort Lauderdale Daily News, The Governors Club Hotel, and Sea Ranch Cabana Club, bought the station. At that time he also launched its sister station, WGOR-FM. Gore’s mission for both radio properties was to place “community interest above all other considerations.” The station, then an NBC affiliate, operated at 100 E. Broward Boulevard, where news was read from a desk at the Fort Lauderdale Daily News.

Gore sold the station a few years after acquiring it to Joseph C. Amaturo under whom WFTL reached stability and success. Since then, WFTL has had a long, convoluted string of owners.

In 2013, 850 WFTL, "Florida's Talk Leader," was a 50,000-watt station owned by the James Crystal Radio Group, the largest (according to their website) locally owned and operated radio station group in South Florida. The James Crystal Radio Group also owned and operated WMEN-AM 640, WFLL-AM 1400, and KBXD in Dallas. It filed for bankruptcy in 2014.

Today the station is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting and licensed in West Palm Beach with a reach that includes Broward County. As mentioned, WFTL ownership has been a complicated tale.

Copyright © 2013, 2023. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Gore, Paul A., Past the Edge of Poverty.  Fort Lauderdale: R.H. Gore Company, 1990.

Fort Lauderdale News, Jan. 9, 1948.

850WFTL.com

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, radio in Fort Lauderdale, historical researcher, film researcher, RH Gore

Miami Beach sweeps TV land in 1955 with "Today," "Tonight" and ...

Eden Roc today; Fontainebleau adjacent (south)

By Jane Feehan

Tourism was already a growth industry in Miami Beach before World War II. It continued to expand when some of the first post-war hotels constructed in the United States went up in Miami Beach. Building accelerated throughout the 1950s, making the beach side city the most glamorous vacation destination in the nation; it also became a favorite spot for Europe’s elite. The Fontainebleau, Bal Harbour, and Ankara hotels opened in 1954. Tourists flocked to the Eden Roc, Bal Moral and Lucerne when they were completed in 1955.

Hank Meyer, public relations director for the city during the 1950s, hoped to establish Miami Beach as the winter entertainment capitol of the U.S. His dream was well on its way to fruition when he announced 30 hours of broadcast network programs were to air from beach hotels to living rooms across the country. The week of Jan. 9, 1955 was to be the busiest television week in Florida history. 

Dave Garroway of Today and Steve Allen of Tonight (both shows produced by Mort Werner) plus 62 NBC staffers made the Sea Isle Hotel (opened in 1940) home for one week while they televised from its pool, cabana area, and beach. Steve Allen used some of the local night spots as background. The Colgate Comedy Hour, also an NBC property, beamed from the spectacular Fontainebleau; the network's Friday night boxing show took over the Miami Beach Auditorium. ABC also used the Fontainebleau for a program featuring Walter Winchell.

Arthur Godfrey (b. 1903 - d. 1980) paved the way for television aired from Miami Beach in the early 1950s when some of his winter shows were produced there.  In 1954, he and two others purchased the Kenilworth Hotel, the site for many of his winter programs. The Jackie Gleason Show, which ran from 1966 to 1970 from the Miami Beach Auditorium (later renamed the Jackie Gleason Theater), marked the end of the big-show television era of Miami Beach. The era ended but not before giving millions the idea of Florida as a place to live as well as visit. Copyright © 2013 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.
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Sources:

Kleinberg, Howard. Woggles and Cheese Holes. Miami Beach: The Greater Miami & Beaches Hotel Association (2005).

Kleinberg, Howard. Miami Beach, a History. Miami: Centennial Press (1996).
Miami News, Jan. 9, 1955

Tags: Miami Beach history, Miami television history, Miami broadcast history, Jane Feehan historial researcher for films

Look up in the sky! It's flashing, it's news. Fort Lauderdale 1948

Goodyear blimp, a common sight above
Fort Lauderdale beach today

By Jane Feehan

For three days in January and three in February 1948, residents of Fort Lauderdale, Dania and Hollywood could look up to the sky to read local, state, and national headlines. The Goodyear blimp* flashed news in five or six line bites each day from 6 to 9 p.m.

The blimpcasting event, a public relations initiative, was sponsored by Robert H. Gore’s Fort Lauderdale Daily News.  Most of us today probably have seen blimp messaging from one of the tire company’s airships but it was not a common sight in the 1940s. Many residents called the newspaper to express congratulations and to ask if the flashing news was the product of post-war technology. It was not; blimpcasting was first developed by Goodyear airship operations in 1930.

Incandescent signs were adapted for use on the curved sides of a blimp through the development of special light-weight equipment. Early signs, according to the Fort Lauderdale Daily News (Feb 8, 1948), were “boxed-in letters of tubing.” By 1948, eight by six feet frames “were a universal composite type of sign containing all the letters of the alphabet and numerals in one frame.” Equipment was simple: “a typewriter-style tape punch and a translator.”  (People then would be amazed by the simplicity of today’s digitized banners!**)

The Daily News phoned in headlines to the airship, the Mayflower based at Watson Island in Miami, where it was translated for broadcast. Ten letters  were posted in five or six lines at a time but there were no breaks while reading. It took between seven and eight minutes to go through the news that could be viewed 1,000 feet below and as far as a half mile away.

Robert H. Gore bought the newspaper in 1929 and sold it to the Tribune Company of Chicago in 1963. Once governor of Puerto Rico, Gore helped shape the political landscape of Fort Lauderdale for decades. 

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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*Rides on the Goodyear blimps are available at the invitation of the company only. Most of the lucky riders are Goodyear customers, winners of local charity auctions, local dignitaries, or members of the press.

** After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, a Goodyear Blimp flashed emergency messages to disaster survivors. It may be a viable way of communicating in the aftermath of another disaster when/if conventional methods of communication are unavailable. Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more on RH Gore, see index

Sources:

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 28, 1948

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Jan. 29, 1948

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Feb. 8, 1948

Gore, Paul A. Past the Edge of Poverty: A biography of Robert Hayes Gore, Sr. Fort Lauderdale: R.H. Gore Co. (1990)

Tags: Fort Lauderdale in the 1940s, R.H. Gore, Fort Lauderdale historian, Fort Lauderdale history, history of Fort Lauderdale

South Florida's Skipper Chuck: more than Popeye Playhouse

By  Jane Feehan

It was tough getting a kid in the audience for Popeye Playhouse, the popular children’s show hosted by “Skipper Chuck” Zink on WTVJ (CH 4).  At times there was a three-month wait to get a coveted seat. Children had to be five years old to get on the set; it was not uncommon for mothers to lie about the little one's ages.

After five years in radio and television in Pennsylvania (when he was second choice host to a show Merv Griffin landed), Zink came to WTVJ in 1957. He hosted Popeye Playhouse, a concept he developed around a syndicated cartoon package, weekdays at 5 p.m. In 1961 he expanded programming for children with a Saturday show at 8 a.m. It replaced the weekly Western movies he hosted.

By 1961, the two shows were all that was left of live television at WTVJ. Zink, proud of that distinction, was known as a stern taskmaster on set who let cameramen and production assistants have it when they flubbed a prop cue.

By that time, Zink, who did not have children of his own, had a trove of stories about kids on the playhouse. He recounted one tale in 1961 about a boy who called out “Chuck” during a commercial. When Zink asked what he wanted the kid said “hurry up so we can get out of here.” When a savings institution sponsored Popeye Playhouse, Zink coaxed 9,000 South Florida kids into saving about $750,000 in total. Also noteworthy, the show had the first integrated audience of children in South Florida. 

Popeye Playhouse ran until 1979 but by that time, Zink's resume included a number of titles and projects that elevated his popularity among all age levels. He hosted the Orange Bowl Parade a few times as well as the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants. In 1968 he played a bit part in the Miami-made movie Mission Mars. He served as national vice president of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and hosted the local productions aired during the Jerry Lewis telethons for the cause. Zink also hosted and produced a Ringling Brothers show and participated in about 50 documentaries.  

After his WTVJ days, Zink moved to Palm Beach County where he hosted a number of radio shows for seniors. Indiana-born Zink, a former U.S. Marine and Bronze Star Medal recipient who served in World War II, died in Boca Raton in 2006 at age 80 (or 81). He was survived by wife, Clarice Zink who died in 2011. Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Miami News, Oct. 29, 1961

Miami News, Nov. 27, 1980

Miami Herald, Jan. 6, 2006

Tags: Kids TV shows in Miami during the 1960s, Chuck Zink, WTVJ history, Skipper Chuck, broadcast history, historical researcher

Miami's radio 610, WIOD: Wonderful Isle of Dreams once home to Larry King and ...

WIOD towers 1926 Bicayne Bay
Florida State Archives/Fishbaugh

By Jane Feehan

WIOD launched its first radio broadcast Jan. 19, 1926. The station, tagged with call letters WIOD for “Wonderful Isle of Dreams” by Miami Beach developer Carl Fisher, was built atop one of his man-made islands near the Nautilus Hotel (4300 Alton Road). It operated in one of the first buildings in the U.S. designed primarily for radio broadcast use.

According to author Ann Armbruster (The Life and Times of Miami Beach, Alfred A. Knopf: 1995), Jesse Jay, son of Webb Jay, inventor of the auto vacuum tank, founded WIOD. It was the first 1,000-watt station in Florida.   During its early days WIOD offered about two hours of programming and most of it was orchestra music or church services. By 1928 the station was an NBC affiliate.

WIOD studios moved to downtown Miami in the early 1930s to the News Tower. It was purchased by Metropolis Publishing Company, owner of the Miami News in 1936 and advertised with the slogan, “Your free ticket to the finest radio is at 610 on your radio dial.”

By 1941*, WIOD was operating 18 ½ hours daily from the 79^th Street Causeway.  Programming included entertainers Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Eddie Cantor, other big names of the era and featured soap opera A Guiding Light five days a week. The station increased to 5,000 watts of power in February that year with great fanfare throughout South Florida; that ramp up in wattage made WIOD the most powerful radio station in the state. The station, deemed by management a “symbol of progress,”  broadcasted with the assistance of two 320-foot steel towers over the waters of Biscayne Bay (salt water is said to improve signal strength).

From 1959 to 1962, the call letters of 610 were changed to WCKR by then-owner Cox-Knight Broadcasting. TV station WSVN also owned 610 later during the 1960s and played rock music, an unsuccessful format in a fiercely competitive market. It transitioned back to call letters WIOD during the 70s and was the venue that helped launch TV personality Larry King’s national career. Other broadcast notables of the 70s and 80s included Big Wilson and Neil Rogers.

In 1981, WIOD’s power was increased with special temporary authority to 10,000 watts to overcome interference by a station in Cuba. Permission to broadcast at that power is renewed each year.

Today, iHeartMedia, Inc. owns WIOD. Its studio operates in Miramar and its transmitter tower lies near Biscayne Bay at North Bay Village. News Talk 610 operates 24/7, a big leap in scheduling from those short days of 1926. Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

*Some facts about radio in the 1940s: More than half the radios in the world were owned by Americans; 85 percent of Americans owned a radio; a nationally syndicated radio show would have as many as 10 million listeners.

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Other Sources:

Kleinberg, Howard. Miami Beach, a History. Miami: Centennial Press, 1995.

Miami News, Feb. 22, 1941.

Wikipedia

Tags: Miami Beach in the 1920s, WIOD, WCKR, Miami radio, historical researcher, film researcher