Media Excavations: WEBC

I’ve been excavating media magazines for references to Duluth. Some of them are adverts for WEBC 560 AM, which is presently branded at “Northland Fan” and broadcasts Duluth-area sports interspersed with statewide sports talk from KFAN in Minneapolis and national sports talk from FOX Sports Radio.

From Wikipedia:

WEBC is the oldest radio station in the Duluth-Superior market and was founded by Leslie Ross, who owned Ross Electric Shop in Superior, Wisconsin. Ross ran WEBC as a hobby; it was funded on a “shoe-string budget” by proceeds from Ross Electric Shop. WEBC was broadcast from a small top-floor room of the three-story Superior Evening Telegram newspaper building. Atop the building were two towers, one on each end of the building, with the transmitting antenna hung between them, as was the manner of broadcast stations of the day.

Ross’s tower engineer was Walter C. Bridges, who on June 1, 1924, helped WEBC sign on using 50 watts of power on AM 1240. For its first year, WEBC was operated out of Bridges’s home in the upstairs of the Evening Telegraph building. Duluth studios were established in 1926 on the second floor of the Spalding Hotel. The community of license was later changed to Duluth, though WEBC’s transmitter has always remained on the Wisconsin side of the bridge.

In the 1950s, Duluth and Superior were a national market, hard to believe — second largest in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, and sought by national advertisers.

Some of the advertisements in the database use stereotypical images of indigenous peoples. I’ve deleted them because history includes the stupid, but you can find them if you look.

 

 

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