WBEN (930 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Buffalo, New York, featuring a talk radio format. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves Western New York, the Niagara Falls region, and parts of Southern Ontario. WBEN's studios are located in Amherst, while the transmitter site is in Grand Island. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WBEN is relayed over WKSE's HD3 digital subchannel, and is available online via Audacy.
WBEN is an affiliate of ABC News Radio, and WKBW-TV provides weather forecasts. The station airs overflow sports programming from WGR, including the 'NFL on Westwood One and Buffalo Sabres hockey games that are played on the same day as Buffalo Bills football contests. WBEN features local talk hosts during the day; nighttime syndicated programming includes Armstrong & Getty, Our American Stories with Lee Habeeb, and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.
History
1920s
WBEN has traditionally traced its history to September 8, 1930, the date when it made its first broadcast using the WBEN call sign. However, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records list the station's first license date as September 22, 1922, tracing WBEN's origin to an earlier license, with the sequentially assigned call letters of WMAK, that was issued to Norton Laboratories in Lockport, New York. The station initially used the facility built by the Norton Laboratories organization from Boston as part of an experiment to send amplitude modulated voice transmissions between Niagara Falls, New York, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
WMAK was a charter member of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network, being one of the 16 stations that aired the first CBS network program on September 18, 1927. In 1928, WMAK joined with General Electric's WGY in Schenectady to demonstrate television technology. A mechanical scan system with only 30 lines of vertical resolution, it was crude compared to later electronic standards such as the 525-line NTSC analog system and subsequent 1080-line high definition digital television. But the effort was historic because GE's experimental facility was the first American television station with a regular broadcast schedule, as well as the forerunner of the current Capital District CBS-TV affiliate WRGB. The comedy duo of Stoopnagle and Budd began their careers at WMAK in 1930.
When WMAK was launched in 1922, it initially operated on the standard "entertainment" wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz). In mid-1924 the station was reassigned to 1100 kHz and at the end of the year was shifted again, to 1130 kHz. In late 1927 the transmitter site was changed to Tonawanda, followed a few months later to Shawnee Road in Martinsville. In mid-1927 the station moved to 550 kHz.
Effective November 11, 1928, WMAK was reassigned to 900 kHz, with 750 watts of power, now with a timeshare partner, WFBL in Syracuse, as a result of the Federal Radio Commission's (FRC) General Order 40, which implemented a major realignment of American AM radio. (At this time, WMAK's previous frequency of 550 kHz was assigned to WGR). WMAK was unhappy with this new assignment because the reduced hours limited its ability to carry CBS network programming. WFBL was also unhappy, even though it was also issued an unusual second authorization for unlimited use of 1490 kHz to test "synchronized" transmissions. In practice, WFBL preferred the 900 kHz assignment and only broadcast on 1490 kHz during times when, under the timesharing agreement, 900 kHz was in use by WMAK.
Eventually, a five-way legal battle broke out over control of the 900 kHz assignment. WMAK and WFBL filed applications for full-time use of the frequency, while two other existing stations, WEBR in Buffalo and WBNY in New York City, applied for half-time assignments. A fifth application, made with support from local businesses, came from the Buffalo Evening News, which filed a request to build a new full-time station. Although it had never operated a radio station, the News had extensive experience supplying a news service to local stations, beginning in November 1920 when it provided election returns for broadcast over an amateur station operated by Charles C. Klinck, Jr. The News also had a contract to supply news for use by the Buffalo Broadcasting Company stations, however, a dispute led to the station group canceling the contract in September 1929.