Talk:John Shepard III

First commercial radio station
The article KDKA (AM) Pittsburg, PA states that it began broadcasting on 02 November 1920 as the first commercial radio station in the US, while the oldest non-commercial station is WWV (radio station) Fort Collins, CO which began operation in May 1920 (which in turn is corroborated by the latter article).


 * Latter? Later?? I'm new to this, so bear with me. I probably shouldn't have posted a partial article, but I wanted to get things started.  I assure you I have lots of newspaper and magazine articles, as soon as I figure out how to add links to them!  (As I told you, I am a newbie to this.)


 * (RYW) Er, Latter - I meant the second of the two articles I mentioned earlier in the sentence.

This is contradicted by the statements in this article that the first station to go on air with regular programming was probably 8MK (later WWJ (AM)) Detroit, MI in late August 1920 and also that a new station went on air in mid September 1921 -- as WBZ (AM) Springfield, MA which received the first commercial radio licence issued by the Department of Commerce.


 * Umm, Famous First Facts and other major resources say 8MK/WWJ was first. It's been pretty thoroughly documented, in fact.  Not trying to be rude, here-- I take my research very seriously and would not put unsubstantiated claims on a post.  I'd be happy to document anything I write-- and there was a LONG discussion among a number of media historians several years ago.  Would it be useful for me to provide a link? KDKA is NOT the first "commercial" station because there was no such thing.  Westinghouse wanted such a category to separate their corporate stations from the amateur stations, hence the "commercial license" which WBZ in Springfield got in September 1921 (I'm WBZ's historian, but long before I was, I had a copy of that license-- #224 from the Department of Commerce.)


 * (RYW) Apologies! On first reading it didn't come across like that. I read it as someone from Boston having a tantrum because some other radio station was trying to steal the limelight. Of course, now I've read more about it, I realise the subject is rather more complicated. Hence my suggestion below about a separate article describing the controversy between all stations. Link would be a great idea and also corroborates the argument. Also, I think the writing style didn't help - see coments below re chatty style.

for example, much broadcast history tends to be corporate propaganda (not that there's anything wrong with that). Westinghouse had a wonderful and impressive machine that pumped out the news of KDKA's achievements-- some were true, some were not. There was, for example, no such thing as a "commercia license" till September of

The article WBZ (AM) states that it is the oldest surviving radio station in New England having started broadcasting in 1921 (originally in Springfield, but relocated to Boston after swapping callsigns with its sister station WBZA). Matters are further complicated by the additional statement here that WGI Medford Hillsides (sic), MA began transmitting regular programming as early as 1919 as experimental station 1XE, but went out of business in 1925.


 * If that's my typo, shame on me. I should never type at 4 AM!  It's Medford Hillside, which is what the area around the Somerville/Medford MA line used to be called. And yes, 1XE/WGI did in fact go out of business in April 1925.  I have lots of scanned photos I can share of all of this, but as I said, I have no clue how to post this stuff-- I am such a Luddite!


 * (RYW) Typo is in the WBZ article. I thought it was my typo here until I went back and checked the article, after which I inserted the (sic).

Further, WWJ (AM) states that it first went on air on 20 August 1920 as 8MK, a callsign assigned by the Department of Commerce. The article then says that a limited commercial licence was granted with callsign WBL on 13 October 1921. Finally callsign WWJ was assigned on 03 March 1922.


 * True that. 8MK became WBL which became WWJ.  Since the WBL calls didn't last long, I don't mention them here, because I didn't want to be too arcane.  I find this stuff fascinating, but it didn't really pertain to Shepard, so I didn't add it.  By all means, contact me and tell me what the normal amount of info for such pieces is-- I just wanna honour the late great John Shepard III, and I have about 10 years worth of research on his life and his achievements.


 * (RYW) Agreed - detail in separate articles, I think, with appropriate cross-links between them (see below).

So where now? Actually none of all this has any direct relevance to John Shepard III and is also distinctly NOT NPOV. Might just be better to remove the contradictory information from this article and concentrate on Shepard himself. Arguments over who was first are not relevant here, simply that radio broadcasting was just breaking out in a big way, creating an interest (and a market) which Shepard could exploit.


 * Thanks for the editing advice. I'd be happy to rewrite that part-- I was just trying to provide context-- as I said, I'm new to this. May I continue and fix it?

--Romney yw (talk) 07:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Edited to correct typos in the original version--Romney yw (talk) 23:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

DevorahLeah (talk) 03:18, 26 January 2008 (UTC)DevorahLeah


 * Firstly, I'm pretty new here too, so don't take anything I've said too seriously . I think the best solution would be at least three separate articles - a detailed article about the Shepard & Co department store (a bit like Hahne's and some of the others already on Wikipedia perhaps) and a detailed article on WNAC and its sister stations - with links the Yankee Network (again like those for KDKA and some of the other stations) The article on Shepard himself should possibly be quite short, showing his position in the Shepard family (with links to the department store article) and the fact that he recognised and exploited the developing interest in broadcasting to sell radio equipment in the store and then went on to found the radio station (with links to the WNAC article).


 * I've noticed that there's a lot about the "first radio station" controversy in several different Wikipedia articles and elsewhere on the Internet. I wonder if it would be best if each different radio station article presented the claims made by that particular station only (the corporate propaganda as you say), but linked to another separate article about the controversy, which attempted to show the correct choronological sequence of events....?? I've noticed that each station has its own spin to justifiy its particular version of events, and this is something that could be clarified in the separate article, maybe?


 * I agree with you that it's a fascinating subject, but I didn't know anything about it at all until I stumbled upon your original article (so Thank You!!). I've started writing an article on WGI which I'm happy to hand over to someone with much more knowledge and access to better sources than I have. If you'd like to run with it, let me know and we'll invent some way of passing it over.... (that's a tip I picked up somewhere else on wikipedia: create yourself a sub-page User:DevorahLeah/Drafts or similar where you can develop your articles in private, and then move them to a more public location once they're close to completed. Feel free to look at my user page if that helps.)


 * I've removed the template and hand the article back to you. I'll keep an eye on it, but if you'd like any specific input from me, or just review comments etc., feel free to wake me up with a message on my talk page. You've probably noticed that I've edited the original article quite extensively, and I hope I've not upset you too much. May I say, as friendly as possible, that I think the original style was a bit too newspaper chatty and should really be toned down to an objective description of facts for an encylopedia. Again, I'm happy to discuss if you think it would be helpful. I've added a load of external links to the end of the article - they were just intended as place holders to other sites which I was going to read in more detail, and I didn't intend leaving them as external links once the appropriate information was incorporated into the article (though they would possibly appear as footnotes instead). Hope my comments are useful, good luck, let me know if I can help --Romney yw (talk) 02:31, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Guild of copy editors note
This article still has issues. I added an info box, and cleaned up the text as much as I could. The lead made unsubstantiated claims and did not cover all claims in the article. Those that were not covered in the article have been blanked out with the invisibility code. I cut and pasted a portion of a paragraph from Yankee Network into the article, so that this claim at least was mentioned. I also removed contradictory information from the article, and a considerable amount of material that was pov. This article needs major work. Auntieruth55 (talk) 21:55, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)