WRR Radio: The First Broadcast Station in Texas (October 14, 2025)
by Scott Sosebee
Before the internet and podcasts, before the pervasiveness of television, radio was the most popular and most important form of media and entertainment. KDKA in Pittsburgh became the first broadcast station in the United States and by 1939—the peak year for such listenership—almost 80% of all U.S. households owned a radio. Through the 1940s, listening to radio broadcasts was the most popular form of entertainment in the nation, a statistic that remained intact until a decline began in the 1950s. I suppose that radio listenership is at one of its all-time lows in today’s diverse and varied forms of media, so it’s difficult to explain to many just how important radio programming was in the United States in the mid-twentieth century.
It may not surprise many that Texas, with its vast distances and growing metropolitan regions, had one of the earliest broadcasting stations in the United States. WRR began broadcasting out of Dallas in the fall of 1920—actually a little before KDKA signed on to the air—but did not become a licensed station until August, 1921, which makes it the second oldest such entity in the United States. WRR, which still exists and is managed under the umbrella of KERA Public Broadcasting, has a somewhat quirky history. WRR began because a fire consumed the vital telephone wires that served as the dispatch lines for the city’s police and fire departments. The lack of a way to communicate such services in a city the size of Dallas created a problem, and the solution became the origins of WRR.
When the fire destroyed the communication lines, the city tasked Henry “Dad” Garrett with figuring out a solution. Garrett, somewhat of a renaissance man who not only had been the city’s first car dealer but also was an electrical engineer who had installed the State Fair of Texas’ first electric lights. Garrett, using spare parts from some of the city’s amateur radio enthusiasts, bult a radio in the city’s central fire station that would allow it to dispatch calls to the city’s fire stations. There were very few radio receivers in those days, but anyone who had one could listen to fire dispatches. The fire dispatchers understood this, and so in time between calls—and there was a lot of time between calls—they began to talk with each other about various topics over the air and Garrett began to play some of his own classical music records. He once even had the fire fighters carry a piano into the radio room so that his daughter could give listeners a free concert. A radio station was thus born, and in August 1921—evened though it was owned by the City of Dallas—WRR began when it was granted a license.
The origin for the applied for call letters of WRR is unclear. “Dad” Garrett always insisted that it came from “White Rock Radio” since the city’s broadcast tower was at White Rock Lake. Others claim it came from the a slogan, “Where Radio Radiates.” Whatever the origins, it was Dallas’ only broadcast station until at least 1922 when WFAA radio began on a frequency it shared with WBAP in Fort Worth. The station quickly outgrew its cramped fire station studio and moved first to a studio in the Jefferson Hotel in 1923, then to the Aldophus Hotel in 1925. It eventually moved permanently to Fair Park in 1931, which was the same year that the fire department turned control and management of the station over to the City of Dallas. Its first years mirrored the formats of most early radio stations: informational programming consisting of public service announcements such as garbage collection, farmer’s market hours, and local events, to some original programming such as “hillbilly bands” and other musical acts who came to the studio to perform.
WRR was a “property” of the City of Dallas, which meant that its budget was quite often bare-bones. Still, it launched the careers of many notable hosts and performers, but because they could not afford to pay them large salaries as they became more popular almost all left WRR for better paying gigs on privately owned outlets. Jim Lowe, Jr., a pioneer of playing and introducing African American blues musicians such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters got his start at WRR. Bill Boys and His Cowboy Ramblers and Kay Starr were two others who debuted first on WRR before moving on to other station. WRR was also the first municipally-owned radio station in the United States, broadcast the very first purely news program in Texas, and was also the first to begin to offer traffic reports. WRR began an FM station in 1948, which was a purely musical outlet.
It was a pioneer in Dallas Sports broadcasting and launched the careers of a number of notable sports programming personalities, such as Frank Glieber, for years known as the “voice of the Dallas Cowboys,” and one of his successors—who still broadcasts today—Brad Sham. Sham conceived, produced, and hosted the first sports call-in show in Dallas in the mid-1970s. It was wildly popular and when WRR told him that they could not afford to pay him more, he took his talent to competitor KRLD.
Competition and ratings declined began to hit WRR in the late 1960s, and a deteriorating audience led the city of Dallas to sell the AM station in 1978. The city retained its FM station until 2022 when it could no longer justify the cost. It turned the station over to KERA in that year, who still operates it as a classical music station.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.