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.