NBC Goes on the Air From the Waldorf

On the night of November 15, 1926, a thousand guests in evening clothes filled the ballroom of the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street to watch a new company called the National Broadcasting Company go on the air. RCA had just paid roughly a million dollars to buy WEAF from AT&T and folded it into NBC, owned jointly with General Electric and Westinghouse, then bet the whole venture on one four and a half hour variety show broadcast live from that ballroom. Twenty five stations in twenty one cities, reaching as far as Kansas City, carried the New York Symphony, the comedy duo Weber and Fields, and Will Rogers phoning in a monologue, while singer Mary Garden performed from Chicago. Something close to half the radio-equipped homes in America were said to be listening by the time it ended after midnight. It took a New York hotel ballroom and New York money to build the country's first permanent broadcast network.