July 31, 1931 CE – WCBS Begins Television Broadcasting in New York City

*Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons The summer of 1931 was incredibly challenging throughout most of the United States. In the wake of the stock market crash in 1929, many were out of work with an economy slow to recover. The country’s bleak outlook, however, didn’t keep an American company from pioneering the first use of a five-year-old piece of technology: mechanical television. Launching an experimental station on July 31, 1931, W2XAB – the precursor to WCBS – began to broadcast seven days a week for 7 hours per day, setting in motion a revolution in news and entertainment that would change the world. Launching the station would be an attempt to capitalize on ideas that had existed since the late 19th century only to be perfected during the mid-1920s. When the company began transmission in 1931, estimates suggest only 1 in 75 American homes had a television. (Contrast that with nearly three per household in 2009.) The message relayed by New York Mayor Jimmy Walker and the music of Kate Smith and George Gershwin that opened the broadcast on July 31st reached just a few thousand people, but the impact of a dedicated programming schedule was far from being obvious despite some 25 stations across the nation taking to the airwaves by the end of the year. The young technology continued with variety shows and news programming for the next 16 months, modeling itself along the lines of the radio broadcasts which had been growing in popularity for decades. Election Day in 1932 gave viewers of W2XAB a live window into by-the-moment coverage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s massive victory over Herbert Hoover, a historical transmission with deep consequences on the political landscape going forward. After just 19 months on the air, W2XAB shut down in February 1933 amid issues with monochrome broadcasting standards constantly changing and the likelihood of electrical television signals looming in the near future. The stoppage would only be temporary, as the station returned to the air in September 1940 as the first to produce color programs. Nine months later, after receiving a construction and programming permit from the federal government, W2XAB would be reborn as WBCW Channel 2 – the station that would become New York’s famous WCBS in 1946.