The Broadcasting Company of America (BCA) was a short-lived subsidiary of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T). It was formed in May 1926 in order to consolidate AT&T's radio station and network operations into a single organization. However, just two months later AT&T announced that the subsidiary was being sold to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). This sale took place on November 1, 1926, and RCA reorganized the BCA assets to form the core of National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) network operations, including its "Red Network".
Early AT&T radio development
AT&T had an early interest in radiotelephone development, although initially only as a method for establishing telephone links to locations where it was not possible to string wire lines. Lee de Forest's development of vacuum-tube amplification would prove invaluable for progress in a number of areas. In July 1913 the company spent $50,000 to purchase from the inventor the patent rights for telephone wire amplification, and in 1915 used this innovation to make the first transcontinental telephone calls. In October 1914, the company further purchased the commercial patent rights for radio signaling for $90,000, and in October 1915 conducted test radio transmissions from the Navy's station in Arlington, Virginia, NAA, that were heard as far away as Paris, France and Hawaii.
AT&T's main competitor in the radio field would be the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which was formed in 1919 as a subsidiary of the General Electric (GE). Because no single company held sufficient patents rights to operate radio systems without infringing on other company's patents, a series of cross-licensing agreements were concluded between a series of companies holding key patents, and on July 1, 1920, AT&T signed a comprehensive agreement with GE. These agreements in effect assigned dominance in specified areas of the radio industry to individual participating companies, which eventually would meet with anti-trust challenges. In addition, conflicting interpretations of some of the pact's clauses by the signatories would lead to numerous disputes, especially between AT&T and the other participants, known collectively as "the radio group".
Network operations and the "WEAF chain"
Organized radio broadcasting was introduced in late 1920 and 1921, and by the end of 1922 there were more than 500 stations throughout the United States. AT&T soon recognized that it had the technical expertise and patent rights needed to play an important, and possibly dominant, role in the industry. As early as December 1921, a memo prepared by two AT&T engineers proposed that the company construct a nationwide radio network, using the company's longlines to connect together individual stations. They also noted that "this service would enable the national and local advertisers, industrial institutions of all kinds, and even individuals if they desire, to send forth information and advertising matter audibly to thousands". AT&T moved quickly to start implementation of its bold plan, and on February 11, 1922, formally announced its intention to develop a "national chain of radio transmitting stations".
A key component of the plan was the construction by AT&T of a well equipped New York City station, WEAF, that was the originating point for the new network, which became known as the "WEAF chain". The first network program was transmitted on January 4, 1923, linking just one additional station, WNAC in Boston, Massachusetts, to WEAF. A more ambitious three-month link began operation on July 1, 1923, when Colonel Edward H. R. Green arranged for AT&T to provide WEAF's programming for rebroadcast by his station, WMAF in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts. The summer of 1923 also saw the opening of WCAP in Washington, D.C., licensed to the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, an AT&T subsidiary. The resulting New York-to-Washington link was extensively used to gain engineering knowledge in using telephone lines for radio network connections.