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WHYY, which stands for Wider Horizons for You and Yours, first signed on the air in 1957. That’s 12 years before the Public Broadcasting Service was established.
Today, WHYY Inc., a non-profit corporation chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, operates TV12 and 91FM radio, the public broadcasting stations serving southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware and South Jersey. Offices and studios are in Philadelphia and Wilmington.
"When I think about it, I just can’t get over the fact . . . public television, by all rights, should be arrested for loitering," broadcast pioneer Ed Cunningham, a WHYY host/producer, said of the broadcast system’s longevity.
WHYY’s 104,000 members contribute 56 percent of the station’s annual operating budget.
"It’s amazing how it’s one of the few alternatives in which you come right on the air, (and ask viewers) do you like the show? Just enough people (answer with pledges of suppport) that we’ve managed to stay in business all these years, especially coming at a time when the market is splintering. It’s always a challenge," Cunningham said.
His career has spanned more than three decades with Channel 12 and WHYY radio, 91-FM. In 1973, when the Philadelphia native first undertook fund-raising on 91-FM, the goal for the week was $5,000, he recalled.
The most recent fund-raising goal for WHYY television, he noted, was $600,000.
"That gives you an example of the enormous, huge growth in terms of membership. It’s just been amazing," Cunningham said.
WHYY’s growth also mirrors the growth of broadcasting as a whole. The station’s first radio transmitter was donated by Westinghouse in the 1950s, when there was controversy as to whether FM radio could ever be successful commercially. The station broadcast from the Architects Building at 17th and Sansom streets.
The television service operated on the UHF band as Channel 35 — remember those little circle antennas? — from the leased and renovated studios at 1622 Chestnut St., the former WCAU headquarters.
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Operated by the Metropolitan Philadelphia Educational Radio and Television Corporation, the station started in conjunction with the School District of Philadelphia, which helped put together a staff of teachers who went to the television studio and taught lessons transmitted on TVs in school classrooms.
Richardson Dilworth, then the city’s mayor, hailed the first broadcast as "an example of the spiritual awakening of the city," according to the WHYY Web site.
A "clearer" awakening presented itself when the VHF Channel 12 became available in 1963.
The station petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to approve a non-commercial license for the defunct commercial station based in Wilmington, Del. The channel’s previous owner couldn’t make a go of it and had returned its commercial license to the FCC.
With approval of the non-commercial license, the city of Wilmington donated a 100-year-old schoolhouse to the station, which converted it to a studio. The FCC license requires that the station broadcast from the city where it originates. WHYY’s daily news program still originates from Wilmington.
In 1963, the station moved its headquarters to the old WFIL studios at 46th and Market streets, and in 1979 moved to its current location on Independence Mall.
Bill Weber, WHYY’s chief technology officer, has been with the station since 1966. According to Weber, WHYY has always been an innovator in technology, including being the first public television station to broadcast in color during the mid-to-late 1960s.
"The idea of captioning was created by educational television in the mid-to-late 1970s. We use technology for public services not commercially viable but important," Weber said.
A similar example of progress is the descriptive video service, which offers a description of the action for the visually impaired.
"WHYY and PBS nationally were the first network in the world to move to an all-satellite-based distribution service, and several years later commercial networks followed," Weber said.
Other technological advancements include digital television. WHYY was the first station in the Philadelphia market to launch a non-commercial digital service, and the first to test a multi-channel service. WHYY has three channels, including high-definition programming.
WHYY was one of the first to provide programming over the Internet, and partnered with Comcast to develop content for video on demand.
"WHYY may be the only PBS station — and maybe the only broadcast station — to prepare content in the technical format to go directly to Comcast," Weber said. "We keep looking for ways to provide our services better."
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Serving the public, especially by offering educational and cultural programming that viewers aren’t likely to find anywhere else, has always been part of WHYY’s mission.
Early programming included Philadelphia Orchestra concerts and talk-show host David Susskind in New York — and then Big Bird was hatched. The beloved children’s show Sesame Street has won more Emmy awards than any other program in the competition’s history
"The success of Sesame Street predates PBS but eventually became part of its core programming," Weber said.
WHYY also broadcast Philadelphia school board meetings, which was where MOVE members first started to appear. The radical organization, whose members were known for their dreadlocks and adopting the surname Africa, formed in 1972 and advocated a back-to-nature lifestyle while preaching against technology.
WHYY received an FCC violation for expletives shouted by MOVE members during an outburst at a school board meeting. After the May 1985 bombing of the MOVE house in West Philadelphia, when a standoff with police led to a fiery end that made national headlines, the station carried the MOVE hearings live on the air, according to Weber.
"We’re part of the fabric of the entire region," he said.
Ed Cunningham has been responsible for many of the popular and award-winning WHYY programs, including South Philly Italian Style, Philadelphia’s Fabulous Sports Memories, and It’s a Mitzvah! Jewish Life in the Delaware Valley.
Some viewer favorites have included the nostalgic Things That Aren’t There Anymore, a look at long-gone Philly landmarks, Mobfather, and more recently Philly’s Favorite Kid Show Hosts, a tribute to the personalities behind the city’s kiddie-show heyday of the 1950s and ’60s.
"There’s always been talented producers, but you need funding," Cunningham said. "You can’t do it on a wing and a prayer. You need funding for buying programming as well as producing it."
PBS programming has broadened WHYY’s fabric to include the entire country, and even the world. Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns captured public TV’s largest audience ever with his groundbreaking series The Civil War.
"Ken Burns — what can you say? Talk about a brand. You just know you’re going to get great history," Cunningham said.
Burns’ much-anticipated World War II documentary, The War, premieres Sept. 23.
To complement the series, WHYY producers are visiting communities across the region to gather first-person stories and pictures about the war to be shown at community events, broadcast on WHYY-TV, and posted on WHYY’s Web site at www.whyy.org
WHYY also is gathering online regional stories about WWII as remembered by veterans who served on the battlefield, those who toiled on the home front, and those who remember the stories of their parents and grandparents. Submissions will be accepted through May 31. For more information, visit www.whyy.org/thewar ••
Reporter Diane Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dprokop@phillynews.com