WSCR (670 AM) – branded as 670 The Score – is a commercial sports radio station licensed to serve Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago metropolitan area and much of surrounding Northern Illinois, Northwest Indiana and parts of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Owned by Audacy, Inc., WSCR is a clear-channel station with extended nighttime range in most of the Central United States and part of the Eastern United States. WSCR is the Chicago affiliate for the BetQL Audio Network, CBS Sports Radio, the Fighting Illini Sports Network and the NFL on Westwood One Sports; the flagship station for the Chicago Cubs and Chicago Bulls radio networks; and the home of radio personalities David Haugh and Matt Spiegel.
The WSCR studios are located at Two Prudential Plaza in the Chicago Loop, while the station transmitter is in suburban Bloomingdale, diplexed with co-owned WBBM. Besides its main analog transmission, WSCR transmits continuously over a single HD Radio channel utilizing the in-band on-channel standard, simulcasts over the second digital subchannel of WBMX, and streams online via Audacy.
Historically, this station carried the call letters WMAQ from October 1922 to August 2000. As the oldest surviving broadcast outlet in Chicago, it was co-founded and operated by the Chicago Daily News, and became a charter affiliate of the CBS Radio Network upon their 1927 launch. Purchased by the National Broadcasting Company in 1931, WMAQ was a key station in the NBC Radio Network for nearly six decades, and later started affiliates WMAQ-TV (channel 5) and WMAQ-FM (101.1 FM). A sale to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1988 resulted in WMAQ becoming an all-news radio station throughout the 1990s. Since 2000, the station has been the third in the Chicago market to use the WSCR call sign and "Score" branding, adopting a format that originated in 1992 on 820 AM, and was heard on 1160 AM from 1997 to 2000.
History
1920s
On April 12, 1922, the station first signed on as WGU. A joint venture between The Fair Department Store and the Chicago Daily News, WGU's first transmitter sat atop the department store. At the time, the station was broadcasting on 833 kilocycles with a transmitter power of about 100 watts.
Just weeks before its inaugural broadcast Walter A. Strong, then business manager of the Daily News, realized the station would need a manager. Strong knew a young woman with some ad agency experience named Judith C. Waller. He called her and said, "I've just bought a radio station; come down and run it." Waller protested that she did not know anything about running a station. Strong replied "neither do I, but come down and we'll find out." Waller was hired in February 1922. She went on to have a long and distinguished career in broadcasting.
There are questions as to whether anyone actually heard the station's initial half-hour broadcast, as technical problems forced WGU to shut down the following day. It remained off the air while a new transmitter was ordered. One of the problems with reception of the station was the interference of tall buildings in the area and that it had only about 100 watts of power.
The City of Chicago also operated its own radio station with similar call letters, WBU, sharing a frequency with Westinghouse's KYW, which began in Chicago the year before. In an attempt to avoid confusion with the city's station, WGU was assigned the new call letters WMAQ, and to improve reception, its power was increased to 500 watts and it was assigned the clear channel frequency of 750 kilocycles. WMAQ's call letters were first broadcast October 2, 1922, with the inaugural show featuring comedian Ed Wynn. The station's longtime motto "We Must Answer Questions", was derived from this call sign.
Early 1923 records show there were 20 radio stations on the air in Chicago alone. Most of these smaller radio stations faded out because of money issues. The Chicago stations that are or had been on the dial for many years usually had a store, newspaper or organization behind them which was willing and able to weather the early times when many radio stations did not make a profit. WMAQ had the financial backing of the Chicago Daily News and a very capable general manager in Judith Waller. Waller remained in charge of the station until it was purchased by NBC. At that point she became the director of public affairs programming for NBC's central division, holding that title until her retirement in 1957.