WPM:
The Last of the Department Store Radio Stations

In the 1920s, department store-based radio stations began to appear. Retail sales giants, such as Hamburger's in downtown Los Angeles, began to realize they could take advantage of the radio boom to further publicize their goods.

In Boston, WNAC—better known as "The Shepard Station"—began broadcasting from the fourth floor of the Shepard Department Store in 1922. It was the first of its kind in the captial and was different from many stations of the time, as it had a wealthy founder: local businessman John Shepard III, whose family ran a number of department stores in both Boston and Providence. Because of the tremendous amount of financial backing, WNAC could afford not only high-quality guest talent, but even its own house band: The Shepard Colonial Orchestra.

After the Crash of October 1929, people were desperate for distraction. It was very shortly afterward that the owners of a popular-but-understated chain of department stores called Putnam-Moore implemented a bold plan to keep themselves afloat and give people something they were craving: a free entertainment experience, whether they could afford to shop all day or only came in to buy one essential thing.

Putnam-Moore was founded in 1918 by Albert Putnam, a native of Boston, and Harold Moore, a well-to-do businessman and recent arrival to the U.S. from Newfoundland. Mssrs. Putnam & Moore, thanks to sound investment tactics, had managed to come through the Crash relatively unscathed, but were well aware that many others had not. So, on the evening of April 19th, 1930, broadcasting at a frequency of 880 kilocycles from Putnam-Moore's main store, a ten storey brick and limestone edifice near the corner of Washington and Essex Streets in downtown Boston, WPM went on the air.

The facilities of the Putnam-Moore Broadcasting Company were on the eighth floor. News and other essentials were done in their small studio, but the big feature programs were performed live in the adjoining Rooftop Gardens Auditorium (nothing among the scant materials that exist regarding the station indicate why it was called this, since it clearly was neither on the rooftop nor likely to have been a garden). WPM's early live shows featured musical performances by some of Boston's finest musicians, as well as popular bands such as Marty Mason and his Orchestra, who performed both in the auditorium and in the Rose Room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Putnam-Moore paid for much of its programming itself, but in some cases they were able to convince local manufacturers, whose products Putnam-Moore carried, to sponsor some of their more popular shows. The most well-known of these seems to have been a comedy-variety show called The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, which was sponsored by Byfar Coffee Syrup, a product of the Beverly Beverage Company of Beverly, Mass.

Very little is known about The Byfar Hour, as no recordings are known to exist. All that historians have to go on are a section of broadcast log for the year 1938 and a small cache of scripts that were found when the vaudville theater that housed the Byfar Hour's offices was scheduled to be torn down in the early 2000's. The show was hosted by a local entertainer named Frank Cyrano. Also appearing were his real-life wife, Amelia Adams—a daughter of the Boston Adamses, Charley Kendall—the show's announcer and spokesman for the sponsor, Jenny Brennan—a young ingenue who sang with the show's band, The Minutemen, led by Lex Concord, and the Putnam Sisters, a trio who sang station IDs and product jingles.

Perhaps the most significant event in WPM's history occurred on the night of October 30th, 1938. When the second wave of rocket-cylinders of the Martian Invasion began to land near Boston, WPM announcers remained on the air, constantly updating the public on the advancing enemy, broadcasting National Guard alerts, military actions and, eventually, Mayor Tobin's order to evacuate the city. Field commentators reported at close range on battles and enemy movements. Some of them even lost their lives.

As best can be told, WPM went off the air in 1949. It is believed that Mr. Putnam's son, upon the death of his father—who outlived his partner, Mr. Moore, by only a short time—sold the downtown store to the city, which demolished the structure as part of the redevlopment of the area. It has been reported, but not confirmed, that the last program to air was the final episode of The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour.

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Special thanks to Donna Halper, Assistant Professor of Communication at Lesley University, for providing some much needed historical information regarding Boston's early department store radio stations.