WABC (770 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a conservative talk format known as "Talkradio 77". Owned by John Catsimatidis' Red Apple Media, the station's studios are located in Red Apple Media headquarters on Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and its transmitter is in Lodi, New Jersey. Its 50,000-watt non-directional clear channel signal can be heard at night throughout much of the Eastern United States and Canada. It is the primary entry point for the Emergency Alert System in the New York metropolitan area and New Jersey. WABC simulcasts on WLIR-FM in Hampton Bays, New York, on eastern Long Island. Owned and operated by the American Broadcasting Company for much of its history, it is one of the country's oldest radio stations. WABC began broadcasting in early October 1921, originally as WJZ in Newark, New Jersey. From 1943 through 2007, the station served as the flagship for the original ABC Radio Network (and its direct predecessor, the Blue Network) and ABC's radio news service. While WABC has been a talk radio station since 1982, the station broadcast a Top 40 music format from 1960 to 1982. Starting in the 1960s to 1978, WABC was not only the dominant contemporary music station in New York City, but was also among the most-listened-to radio stations in North America, serving as a template for many other Top 40 stations around the country. History WJZ Newark (1921–1923) In November 1920 the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company had established its first broadcasting station, KDKA, located in its plant at East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in order to promote the sale of radio receivers. This initial station proved successful, so the next year the company developed plans to set up additional stations in major population centers, including, in addition to the New York City area, WBZ, originally in Springfield, Massachusetts, and KYW, originally in Chicago, Illinois. On September 30, 1921, Westinghouse was issued a broadcasting authorization for a station with the randomly assigned call letters WJZ, located at the company's meter factory at Orange and Plane streets in Newark, New Jersey, and transmitting on a wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz). WJZ's studio and transmitter were initially housed in a shack located on a factory roof that was only accessible by ladder. The station later expanded to a larger studio on the factory's ground floor. The station began test transmissions around