THE WJBC STORY

It was smack in the middle of the jazz age-the Roaring ‘20s-when WJBC first hit the airwaves, and who would have thought it would still be here more than 80 years later!

Well, Lee Stremlau would, for one.

Stremlau had just graduated from high school when he built a transmitter, convinced Wayne Hummer to apply for a license to broadcast from his furniture store, rounded up a few friends to provide the "entertainment" and launched WJBC one May weeknight in 1925.

Radio was a young medium in 1925, and people were flocking to Stremlau’s little shop to purchase the new technology. When Herbert Hoover (who was then the United States Secretary of Commerce) assigned the call letters WJBC, Stremlau determined to help listeners remember them by adopting as the slogan for his Radio Shop, "Where Jazz Becomes Classic."

All of this was happening in LaSalle, 50 miles to the North, where the inaugural broadcast elicited enough telephone calls to jam the city’s phone circuits all evening. Bloomington, and that tiny berg to its North, Normal, had seen some radio experimentation-some folks ran a non-licensed station from above the Gray Trimble Electric Store for a while-but it wouldn’t get its first licensed station until WJBC moved into town nine years later.

In 1925, you could hear WJBC in Bloomington/Normal-the airwaves weren’t very crowded. But actually getting there from LaSalle was another matter. You could buy a ticket on the Illinois Central Railroad and make it in under two hours. Or, you could drive one of those new Ford Model Ts on the very rutted and bumpy Meridian Highway, which later that summer was replaced by concrete and was eventually renamed Route 51. Work crews were also paving the Illini Boulevard at that time, which was soon to be known as Route 66 and later become I-55.

In 1928, WJBC had moved to studios "high atop the Kaskasia Hotel" in LaSalle and the station featured its own studio orchestra. But the Stock Market crash a year later changed everything. Lee Stremlau’s Radio Shop went belly-up. Wayne Hummer was selling few Davenports and even fewer commercials on WJBC. Times were tight indeed by 1934 when Hummer decided to move the station to Normal.

The tower went up near the University farm while studios were established at ISNU and at Illinois Wesleyan. WJBC was on the air only from 9:00 a.m. till 12:30p.m. and again from 3:00 to 7:30p.m. daily, featuring "news 8 times daily, weather forecasts twice daily, free announcements of farm sales and Western Union time every hour on the hour."

Arthur and Dorothy McGregor bought WJBC in 1936 and and instituted the "full service" attitude that continues to serve the McLean County community today. The owners were proud of their "new mobile remote transmitter, broadcasting important incidents direct from the scene." When President Franklin Roosevelt came to town seeking re-election that year and spoke to thousands from the rear platform of a train. WJBC broadcast his comments to thousands more.

WJBC was everywhere, broadcasting three times a day from a "Walkathon-Marathon Endurance Contest" at The Circus Club, a block south of the municipal golf course. And, long before telephone talk shows, "WJBC’s man on the street" regularly sampled local opinion from the sidewalk in front of Biasi Drugs, across from the courthouse.

The station was granted full time operation by the FCC in 1939, expanding its programming from 6a.m. till 11 p.m. daily. And, by 1941, WJBC was expanding again. This time the move was to new spacious studios on the third floor of the Castle Theatre building on East Washington. There were huge windows for viewing programs from the large hallway, air conditioning pump forcing filtered air into the studios and a new teletype machine connected to The Transradio Press located in a public viewing area. A gala open house featured on-air speeches and music by "The Chef’s Men" from a youthful State Farm Insurance Company.

In 1945, NBC’s "Blue Network" was spun off and became ABC. WJBC was a charter member, broadcasting programs like Terry & The Pirates, Walter Winchell and "My True Story", a soap opera that really did sell soap. The Pantagraph purchased WJBC in 1946 and began improving the facilities and service. When the current tower was erected along Route 66 in 1949, the 400-foot height was said to be a "county landmark, visible for miles". Looking to the future, the tower was built large enough to accommodate a future television station. Radio star Jim Ameche (" Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy") was guest for the inaugural broadcast.

WJBC faced a major challenge a few years later when the first Central Illinois television stations appeared in Bloomington, Decatur, Peoria, and Champaign all in 1953. Program Director Fred Muxfeld decided that airing telephone conversations would be a pretty good way to sound local and explained to the first day’s listeners to "Problems and Solutions" it was up to them to give him a call and keep the conversation going. Muxfeld carried a few 78 rpm records into the studio that day "just in case", but they weren’t needed. The program has continued in the 42 years since, to become America’s longest running show of its kind.

By the end of the 1950’s rock n’ roll had seeped into radio, but the "Top Forty" concept of fast paced music, singing commercials, station jingles, and the like hadn’t yet appeared. It took an innovation by WJBC engineers to change that. George Stephenson and Jack Jenkins experimented with the "endless loop tape cartridge", perfecting a way to encode an inaudible tone on the tape to mark the start of the message. WJBC showed the invention at the 1959 convention of the National Association of Broadcasters and it was an instant hit, allowing the pace of radio to change with push-button speed.

A station news anchor and play-by-play sportscaster took over WJBC’s morning show in the Spring of 1965. Twenty-three-year-old Don Munson began a 30-year project of waking up Central Illinois that gave Munson the distinction of having done more WJBC broadcasts than anybody in the station’s history.

By 1970 we were building our current studios around our standing transmitter building along Greenwood Avenue. When Christmas came, WJBC staffers decided to spruce up the tree in the lobby by wrapping some gifts to go under it, then delivering them just before the holiday to homes where they were needed. Somebody suggested we call our little project the WJBC Brotherhood Tree.

The mid-1970’s marked another major challenge for WJBC-the emergence of targeted radio formats, most of them on the FM band. Audiences of traditional full-service AM stations like WJBC were eroding quickly. But instead of cutting back on services, WJBC added them.

When Arbitron finished its survey of radio listening in 1974, WJBC’s share of audience was the nation’s largest, a distinction the station has won or competed strongly for each year since.

WJBC continued to program "against the grain" through the 1980’s and into the current decade. Sports coverage was increased to include ambitious schedules for Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan Universities’ men’s teams while still maintaining a strong presence in high school boys’ sports and adding significant coverage of girls’ basketball and volleyball programs. Former Farm Director Art Sechrest was voted America’s top Farm Broadcaster, Religion Editor Gene Lyle has earned the "Silver Angel" Award three times at annual Hollywood galas, and Don Munson was honored by fellow broadcasters in San Francisco with the Marconi Award as America’s Radio Personality of the Year.

The station’s news department had been winning Illinois and regional awards on a regular basis since the 1960’s, but gained national recognition in 1991 in Atlantic City when WJBC was presented the National Headliner Award as the nation’s best news department for "consistently outstanding reporting." To prove it wasn’t a fluke, WJBC won the award again the following year leaving second place to KCBS in San Francisco.

WJBC is continuing its heritage of excellence, winning the highly prestigious Crystal Radio Award from the National Association of Broadcasters in 2000 for its commitment to community service.  The WJBC newsroom was recognized in 2002 with a National Edward R. Murrow Award for best newscast based on market size. The newsroom has won regional Murrow Awards for Overall Excellence in 2003 and 2004. WJBC was one of five finalists in 2004 for the Marconi Award as the nation's best news/talk station, along with stations in Indianapolis, Chicago, Salt Lake City and Denver. And in 2005, the station was one of 10 nationwide to win the industry's highest honor for commitment to community service, the Crystal Radio Award.