William S. Hedges, former vice-president of the National Broadcasting Company, was born in Elmwood, Illinois, on June 21, 1895. From 1900 to 1913 he lived in Colorado and attended schools in Grand Junction, Denver, and Colorado Springs. Following graduation from high school, he went to Chicago where he worked in the car shops of the Armour Car Lines, eventually becoming department foreman. He left Armour in the fall of 1914 to enter the University of Chicago. While a student Hedges served as campus correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, but he left school at the end of his junior year to join the Army Air Corps. Pending call to training, he served as the Daily News' military correspondent at Camp Grant near Rockford, Illinois.
Hedges returned to the Daily News as a reporter in December 1918. In 1922 he established the radio department of the Chicago Daily News and assisted in establishing WMAQ, the paper's radio station, which first broadcast in April 1922. When the station was later incorporated as a Daily News subsidiary, Hedges was made its president. The following year he was one of the founders of the National Association of Broadcasters, serving as president from 1928 to 1930 and subsequently as director and chairman of its executive committee. From 1928 to 1930 he was a director and secretary of Press Wireless, Inc. He also established W9XAP as an experimental television station and operated it in connection with WMAQ from 1929 to 1931.
When NBC purchased WMAQ in 1931, Hedges continued as manager, though he was soon transferred to similar duties with WENR, NBC's second Chicago station. In June 1933 he was made general manager of KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in April 1934 he moved to New York as manager of NBC's newly-established owned and operated stations division. In December 1936 he left NBC to become manager of WLW and WSAI, Cincinnati, Ohio, and vice-president of Crosley Radio Corporation. He returned to NBC, however, in November 1937 as vice-president in charge of station relations and traffic.
In May 1939 NBC created a stations department which embraced the station relations, traffic, national spot sales, and owned and operated stations divisions, and Hedges was appointed vice-president in charge. In subsequent years he moved rapidly through a succession of duties: vice-president in charge of planning and development, 1947-1949; vice-president in charge of integrated services, 1949-1959; and vice-president in charge of the network's political broadcasting unit, 1959-1961. Hedges retired in 1961, at which time he took charge of the Broadcast Pioneers' history project. He died on January 19, 1978.
In addition to membership in numerous service organizations, Hedges was active in many professional broadcasting associations. He was president of the Radio Executives Club, 1946 and 1947; president of Radio Pioneers,
1949 and 1950; a member of the boards of directors of Broadcast Music, Inc. and Associated Music Publishers; and a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences.
