Looking Back at Frontier Radio

Today, it’s hard toescape the constant allure of media buzz24-hour news, e-mail, Twitter,Facebookavailable at our fingertips and formatted to suit our individualpreferences. But back in the late-’70s, it was a completely different era. Akid from Bay View would have been hard-pressed to find a Milwaukee radio station that played anythingother than the standard Top 40 hits, let alone the New York Dolls or MC5. Butone day it happened. In 1978 or ’79 Tom Crawford, today the station manager atWMSE, turned the dial on his radio and discovered that someone was illegallybroadcasting all kinds of music from the frequency at FM 91.7. Now completelylegit and broadcasting at 3,200 watts, 91.7 WMSE celebrated its 29th birthdayMarch 17.

WMSE’s history actuallybegins in 1922 when the School of Engineering of Milwaukee(now the Milwaukee School of Engineering, or MSOE) received a jointbroadcasting license with the WisconsinNews, a Hearst-owned daily evening newspaper. They were assigned the callletters WIAO and licensed to broadcast on a radio wavelength of 360 meters.Although the license called for unlimited time at a power of 500 watts, WIAOhad to share the 360-meter band with WCAY (Kesselman O’Driscol Music Co.), WHAD(Marquette University)and Milwaukee’sfirst radio station, WAAK, a 100-watt broadcast that began operating on April26, 1922, from Gimbels department store. Employing a student-built transmitterand 100 watts of power, WIAO went on the air from the school’s Marshall Streetbuilding on Oct. 23, 1922.

On Aug. 18, 1924, WIAOchanged its call letters to WSOE, following a shift to a new frequency of 246meters. Before the year was up, the Schoolof Engineering purchased a 500-watttransmitter and twin towers from one of the country’s first religious stations,WCBD in Zion, Ill. The WisconsinNews took over programming, while the school handled the technicaloperations. In 1927, the station was authorized to increase its power level to1,000 watts.

After Congress passedthe Radio Act of 1927, the newly created Federal Radio Commission beganreassigning radio frequencies, which ultimately affected nearly 600 of thenation’s 694 radio stations. On June 1, WSOE was shifted to a wavelength of 270meters and its power reduced to 500 watts. To compete with WTMJ, the Milwaukee Journal’s station, the Wisconsin News entered into a new leaseagreement with the School of Engineering andchanged the call letters of WSOE to WISN to reflect the new arrangement.

The WISN station wassold to the Wisconsin News inNovember 1930, but continued to operate from the School of Engineeringuntil 1932. That year, the school reorganized itself as a nonprofitcorporation, changed its name to the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and movedto the newly purchased German-English Academy on NorthBroadway. Hearst took over operational responsibility for WISN and moved thestation offices and studio to the MilwaukeeSentinel building on Michigan Avenue.

Thirty-seven yearslater, MSOE students signed on a carrier current (a type of low-power AMbroadcasting that doesn’t require a broadcast license in the United States)with the call letters WSOE. In July 1978, MSOE students applied for an FMconstruction permit for an educational station on 91.7 MHz; the permit wasgranted in December 1979. From 1978 to 1980, WSOE operated as a 5-wattunlicensed FM station. In 1980, it voluntarily shut down to make room forMSOE’s very own, very new 1,000-watt FM station: WMSE.