On August 20, 1920, the Detroit News Radiophone—call sign 8MK—commenced the first regular, nightly scheduled radio programming in American history. Operating from a small room inside the newspaper building, the station transmitted live human speech and music to early radio enthusiasts across the city, paving the way for its historic broadcast of local primary election returns eleven days later.
Renamed WWJ in 1922, the station has broadcast continuously for more than a century. Its inaugural transmission transformed radio from a niche hobby into a mass‑communication medium capable of uniting entire communities in real time.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the US
