Nan Prince, Assistant Director of Collections in the MDAH Museum Division, wrote this post about interesting artifacts in the collection.
On September 22, 1922, KFNG Radio began broadcasting out of the home of S.D. Wooten in Coldwater, Mississipppi. Started by his son, Hoyt B. Wooten, using a handmade 10-watt transmitter, KFNG was the first commercial broadcasting station in Mississippi. In 1925, the Wooten family opened Wooten’s Radio Electric Company in the lobby of the newly constructed Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis, where they sold radio equipment during the week, and broadcast from Coldwater on the weekends. A year later they moved KFNG to the Memphis suburb of Whitehaven, Tennessee, and changed the call letters to WREC after the name of their store. WREC continued to grow and expand and became an important part of mid-south communications through radio and later television.
Artifacts from the Museum Division collection that are not on exhibit are available for viewing by appointment. Please contact Nan Prince, Assistant Director of Collections, by email to schedule an appointment.
Source: Sign-On: The First 50 Years of WREC Radio (Memphis, TN: WREC Radio, September 22, 1972).