52 Nebraskaland • March 2023
news have spread until scarcely a village in Nebraska does not
have its group of radio outfi ts. Every night communications
from the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic and Pacifi c are caught by
enterprising radio experts."
After years of experimental broadcasting, Nebraska's fi rst
commercial radio stations went on the air in 1922. Who was
the fi rst?
The short-lived Omaha station WOU received its broadcast
license on Dec. 29, 1921, but had no regular broadcast
schedule. More signifi cant was WAAW, which signed on the
air April 19, 1922. Owned by the Omaha Grain Exchange, it
broadcasted ag market news and originally had a broadcast
radius of a thousand miles.
But Dr. John Jensen, a physics professor at Nebraska
Wesleyan University in Lincoln, claimed that Wesleyan's
WCAJ was the "oldest station in Nebraska." While it was not
the fi rst to receive a commercial license, Jensen argued that
WCAJ was on the air fi rst, broadcasting market and weather
reports under an experimental license as radio station 9 YD
starting in October 1921.
The point was arguable, but no one disputed that Jensen
was a genuine Nebraska radio pioneer. Before founding
WCAJ, he had demonstrated a radio transmitter in his classes
in 1905 and put together a radio exhibit for the 1906 Nebraska
John Jensen at the controls of Nebraska Wesleyan's WCAJ transmitter in 1921 or 1922. HISTORY NEBRASKA, RG2158-0-1626
The KCGH tower at the hospital in Wayne.
HISTORY NEBRASKA, RG3006.AM
