ABC Network - Seattle 1929-Founding

Seattle, Spokane, Portland and San Francisco

Adolph Linden

ABC Network in 1927

Seattle Times
July 19, 1927

In 1928 radio was still new and

the hottest thing around.

Linking stations for ‘chain’

broadcasts was also a recent

development. The National

Broadcasting Company (NBC) has been launched late in 1926 on the foundations of

two earlier fledgling radio networks linked by leased telephone lines. The

Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) had stared a year later with backing from the

Columbia Phonograph Company which quickly exited the scene leaving CBS to be

rescued, with vision and financial planning, by William Paley, a young tobacco

industry heir. But the number of radio stations linked to those networks was only

small percentage of the total number of U.S. radio stations which suggested the

opportunity for another network’s development.

A number of parties moved toward establishing one but

it was in Seattle that such an attempt was born and

Adolph Linden who took the most significant steps to do

so.

After growing up in Seattle Linden began a career in

banking, eventually becoming president of the Puget

Sound Savings and Loan Association. In 1925 he and a

fellow executive at Savings & Loan, Edmund Campbell,

formed the Camlin Investment Company, and borrowed

funds to launch the Camlin Hotel. The elegant hotel

opened in 1926 and was a major addition to the city’s

hostelries.

But Linden was also apparently

interested in radio and loaned

money to Seattle’s KJR which

was launched shortly after

World War 1 as amateur station 7XC by Vincent Kraft. When “professional” call

signs became available that station became KJR in March, 1922 while still

personally licensed to Kraft. Kraft changed KJR’s ownership from a personal to a

business one as the Northwest Radio Service Corporation (NRS) and apparently

began a business relationship with Linden shortly thereafter. Linden loaned either

Kraft or NRS $27,870 which apparently was used to help NRS acquire stock in

American Radio Telephone Corporation which allowed NRS to acquire ARTC’s

Seattle station KTCL. NRS also purchased three other stations, KFRW/Olympia WA,

KFUU/Oakland CA and KFOB/Burlingame CA. Kraft later explained that the

purchase those stations was “relocating those stations in whatever cities the

company saw fit”. Then, using the purchased stations as collateral, Linden floated

at $200,000 bond the funds from which were used to move KFRW to Portland as

KEX and to construct KGA/Spokane.

In December, 1926 Kraft’s NRS company signed on KEX, Portland, which it owned

through an NRS subsidiary, Western Broadcasting Company. In partnership with

San Francisco hotel owner Frederick Clift, NRS launched KYA/San Francisco (which

was owned by an NRS subsidiary, the Pacific Broadcasting Corporation) the same

month.

The details of Linen’s ownership interest in NRS before March, 1928 are unclear.

But that month Linden reported to Kraft that Washington State banking regulators

would likely seek to interview him and suggested that it was time for Kraft to

sever his ownership in NRS and his business relationship with Linden. Kraft was

only too happy to remove himself from what seemed what like be trouble and sold

his interest in NRS to Linden on March 13, 1928. Kraft had obviously envisioned a

moderate size regional network of stations in Seattle, Spokane, Portland and San

Francisco and, therefore, when Kraft acquired full control of NRS, he also acquired

both those stations as well as the envisioned network concept.

The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was less than

nine months old, and neither the Columbia Phonograph

Broadcasting Company nor its successor, the Columbia

Broadcasting System, had even been thought of, when

Kraft began “chain” broadcasting over NRS’s as early as

July, 1927. Linked by postal telegraph lines, KJR and KGA

first broadcast together under the auspices of the informal

network name American Broadcasting Company on July 19.

However, newspaper coverage clearly indicated the

intention of shortly forming a Pacific Coast network under

the same name.

Under Kraft, the ABC functioned more like a “mutual”

programing effort. While KJR, Seattle, was clearly the

flagship station of the

effort, the chain’s programs

often originated from KEX

and KYA (and to a somewhat

lesser degree from KGA).

Stemming from his original loan to NRS Linden had

obviously become more interested in radio.

While he also later claimed that he had concluded

that Kraft was less skilled as a businessman than

seemed desirable, which was prompted his

purchase of Kraft's NRS stock in March, 1928, Kraft's

report that it was to get Kraft out of the company

before bank regulators interviewed him seems

more credible.