Yankee Network
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The Yankee Network was an American radio network in the 1930s. The Yankee Network operated out of New York City with 1230 WNAC as their flagship station.
In 1932 CBS was streamlining their radio network by cutting middle men out of their network deals, and buying their own stations in major markets such as Boston. They managed to acquire enough new owned and operated affiliates to severely limit NBC's future affiliate options. When NBC did begin adding Red network affiliates in this newly limited pool, they turned to John Shepard's Yankee Network to fill in the holes.
Then with the help of Major E.H. Armstrong, the Yankee Network became the nations first FM network. They built a demonstration FM inter-city relay network linking WNAC by with WDRC and WGTR. This network grew spreading further north over the next few years.
But RCA was opposed to any growth in the FM market because this posed a threat to their established AM radio business. RCA, and David Sarnoff successfully pressured the FCC to move the FM radio spectrum from (42 to 49 MHz), to (88 to 108 MHz.) This required massive hardware retooling at all affiliates. Some affiliates dropped out, forcing them to lease phone lines from AT&T to fill in the holes between stations. The added costs drove Yankee out of business, and set back FM radio for a decade. Driven to despair over the FM debacle, Armstrong jumped to his death from the thirteenth floor window of his New York City apartment January 31st, 1954.
It was actually the Yankee Network that was on the receiving end of the FCC’s first large-scale act of censorship. In 1938 Yankee was airing editorials against President Franklin Roosevelt. The FCC requested that they provide details about these programs. Yankee got the drift and dropped the editorials. The FCC warned that, as part of a broadcasters public interest requirement, radio stations cannot be editorially devoted to the support of their own principles. In application, this meant that airing Roosevelt's fireside chat was considered nonpartisan, but broadcasting a critique of his proposed legislation would be unacceptably partisan.
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