The year 1944 saw a number of significant happenings in radio broadcasting history. Events 11 January – Fireside chat by the President of the United States: State of the Union Message to Congress. 28 March – New York City radio station WQXR (now WFME) bans singing commercials from being broadcast on its station. 30 April – (Six days before) The American Broadcasting Station in Europe (ABSIE) is established, transmitting from the United Kingdom in English, German, French, Dutch, Danish, and Norwegian to resistance movements in mainland Europe. 5 June Fireside chat: On the Fall of Rome. One day before D-Day, the BBC transmits coded messages (including the second line of a poem by Paul Verlaine) from Britain to underground resistance fighters in France warning that the invasion of Europe is about to begin. 6 June – D-Day: United States Army Colonel R. Ernest Dupuy, news chief to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, officially announces today's Normandy landings on radio in a broadcast at 3:32 am Eastern War Time (12:32 am Pacific Time). BBC reports of the landings are carried by around 725 of the 914 broadcasting stations in the United States. 12 June – Fireside chat: Opening Fifth War Loan Drive (last fireside chat). 25 July – The New York Times acquires the Interstate Broadcasting Company, parent of WQXR (now WFME) and WQXQ-FM (later WQXR; frequency becomes home to WXNY-FM) from John V. L. Hogan for $1 million American dollars. The Times will program the AM station until December 1998, and own the FM station until October 2009. 26 October – With fascism defeated in most parts of Italy, the national broadcasting organization Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche (EIAR) is overhauled and renamed Radio Audizioni Italiane (RAI), the future Radiotelevisione Italiana. 10 December – Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini leads a concert performance of the first half of Beethoven's Fidelio (minus its spoken dialogue) in German on NBC Radio in the United States, starring Rose Bampton. He chooses this opera for its political message: a statement against tyranny and dictatorship, intending it as a tribute to the German people who are being oppressed by Hitler. The second half is broadcast a week later. The performance is later released on LP and CD, the first of 7 operas that Toscanini conducts on radio. Debuts (undated) – The Count of Monte Cristo debuts on the Don Lee Network. 5 January – The