Left: A montage of some of WMAQ's earliest personalities. It includes include (starting at the top left and reading clockwise) the Whitney Trio; Ransom Sherman and Russell Pratt in 1927 with studio director Roy Hasenbalg; Georgene Faulkner ("The Story Lady") broadcasting in 1924; and Hal Totten in 1925 doing one of the earliest play-by-play broadcasts from Wrigley Field with engineer Lewis Rice.

WMAQ became, by default, Chicago's oldest radio station in 1934 when Westinghouse transferred the license of KYW to Philadelphia. (WGN remained---and still remains---the city's oldest station under its original ownership.) WMAQ celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1997.

WMAQ was originally licensed to the Chicago Daily News and the Fair Store (a Loop department store). The station was purchased by NBC in 1931 (the network's second Chicago acquisition) and remained a key NBC owned-and-operated station until General Electric (which purchased RCA, NBC's parent, in 1985) sold it to Group W on February 1st, 1988.

• Visit the WMAQ studios in the La Salle Hotel in the 1920's.
• Read a previously unpublished history of WMAQ covering the first seventeen years of the station's history.
• Learn about Judith Waller, Chicago's "First Lady of Radio". She was WMAQ's first manager and, after NBC's purchase of the station in 1931, became the director of public affairs programming for the network's Central Division. Ms. Waller's innovations made an indelible mark on the medium. You can read her recollections of WMAQ's earliest days and look at snapshots from her photo album.
• Meet Amos 'n' Andy (the alter egos of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll), the biggest stars of WMAQ's early days.
• Learn how NBC acquired WMAQ.
• Learn about W9XAP, WMAQ's experimental television station.
• Learn how WMAQ celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in 1947. This link will take you to an HTML version of anniversary material in the April, 1947 edition of The Chain Break, NBC-Chicago's in-house newsletter. Included are a brief station history, along with articles that recount WMAQ's numerous broadcasting innovations and list the famous performers who made their radio debuts on the station. You can get a preview of the WMAQ's gala twenty-fifth anniversary broadcast. And you can read telegrams from famous station alumni. (The celebration of WMAQ's golden anniverary was remarkable for its absence).
• Listen to an episode of "Uncle Ned's Squadron" from November 11, 1950. Quality youth programming featuring Ned Locke (later of WGN-TV's "Bozo's Circus") and his co-pilot, Hugh Downs.
• Meet Holmes "Daddy-O" Daylie, WMAQ's first African American disk jockey.
• Meet Jack Eigen, pioneer of the late-night radio talk show.
• Meet Johnny Erp, legendary sportscaster.
• Download video documenting the demise of WMAQ. (Infinity Broadcasting retired the WMAQ call letters on August 1, 2000 and moved WSCR, its sports-talk operation, to the 670 kHz channel.)