stanley e. hubbard

For more than 50 years, Stanley E. Hubbard was celebrated as a broadcasting innovator. Born on June 26, 1897, he was a flyer during World War I and operated an airline service before launching WAMD/Minneapolis in 1925. WAMD was the first station in the U.S. with a daily 15-minute news report as well as one of the first to rely entirely on advertising revenueto cover expenses.

In 1928 WAMD consolidated with KFOY/St. Paul to form KSTP/St. Paul, which eventually became a 50,000-watt powerhouse with one of the largest news departments in the country. At KSTP Hubbard arranged to broadcast performances from the local Orpheum Theatre, giving important on-air exposure to such vaudeville stars, not to mention future radio legends, as Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Eddie Cantor, and Groucho Marx.

Hubbard was especially revered for his technical innovations: in 1947 he introduced KSTP’s FM counterpart on the radio, and one year later KSTP-TV became Minnesota’s first commercial station (Hubbard had bought the first television camera sold by RCA a decade earlier).

By the ’60s Hubbard had acquired a number of radio and television stations, including KOB/Albuquerque and WGTO/Orlando. In 1962 he and his son Stanley S. Hubbard established Hubbard Broadcasting, which the elder Hubbard ran until his retirement in ’81.

Stanley E. Hubbard died on December 27, 1992.

He was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2014.