Three Sisters is a trio of Cascade mountains in Central Oregon. I had no idea until just now that there was another set in Washington!
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Tacoma Radio stations targeting Seattle
- Thread starter e-dawg
- Start date
There's also Three Sisters Mountains in Alberta, California, Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, Australia and Scotland.
That's right Steve, Indian Hill. For some reason, the name of that hill escaped me. I guess it was 30 years ago...
I didn't have many dealings with the Indian Hill site. My job was moving 97.3 to WTM. I don't miss that drive up the crappy mountain road.
Hey Kelly, what was the original site in King County for KMCQ? Just out of my own curiosity.
I don't recall the name of the hill they were on after moving the station from The Dalles, Oregon to Enumscratch. I had just stopped by and visited based on the coordinates. They mounted the antenna on an existing microwave tower, with the transmitter and 'studio' in one of those construction office trailers at the base. In peering through the mesh over a window, it looked like there was a PC running the music.
Sorry Larry, I was going to comment on your comment and got distracted..
The difference between TV and radio from a transmit site perspective, is for many years (and still to this day) TV relied on subscription cable and satellite for transmission, where radio has always been TX site to receiver OTA. TV only has about 19% Over The Air viewership anyway, and very little to the market fringes. Even then, those areas like Everett, are served mainly by cable and satellite anyway, so putting a transmission site on a tall mountain is more trouble than its worth. In the Seattle area, the Comcast, Verizon plus Dish/DirecTV head ends are fed via fiber from the local stations. On the opposite end of the spectrum; in the Nashville Tennessee market the head-ends get signals primarily via OTA, because there are a ton of small local cable MSO's that occupy the surrounding counties.
Seattle was well ahead of most of the country, when it came to cable installations. When I visited my sister in 1969, she had cable. Besides the Seattle and Tacoma stations, there were channels two and six from Vancouver and 12 from Bellingham.
"Early" for cable was the 50's. That is when communities that were blocked from regular reception (such as the valley towns of PA in the Allegheny Mountains) installed antennas "up on the hill" an cabled the town from those reception points. Predominantly, the systems were owned by the towns or the townsfolk, thus the original name of CATV, "Community Antenna TV".
This has turned into a really interesting thread. Btw, when did 96.5 move from Cougar to West Tiger? My guess would be around 2006, as I remember coming home from my aunt and uncle's place in Lake Stevens one Sunday around that time expecting the station to have problems in downtown Everett as it always had, and it didn't. Another spot that st Tiger fixes in that area is at the base of the Clearview Hill.
Regarding 106.9, they changed call letters to KWWA sometime in the late seventies (although they remained the FM sister station of KBRO). At that time, they also went to a really awful automated pop music format -- dead air between every song, badly muffled audio, and never a commercial to be heard. They were running that way as late as 1984 (right before I moved to Texas). They got bought, upgraded, and moved into the Seattle market the following year and became KHIT.
KTAC-FM flipped to KBRD a couple years before the move to 103.7 -- AFAIK, they became KBRD in 1976 or 1977, and they shifted to 103.7 and boosted power in late 1979 or 1980. Presumably, they started targeting Seattle listeners once they boosted power; before that, they wouldn't have had a decent signal outside of Pierce County.
KNBQ started out as an automated adult contemporary format in 1976 ("Mellow sounds in contemporary music, 97 KNBQ"), switched to automated Top 40 at the start of 1977 (at which time they started calling themselves Q97-FM), went through a couple of different automated Top 40 variants (they started with Drake-Chenault's XT-40, but only stayed with that for about a year), eventually going to a full-blown live & local Top 40 format in 1979. Through all of that, they remained purely a Tacoma radio station. I'm not sure when they boosted their coverage to the point where they really tried to compete in Seattle, but I would guess it was in the early eighties.
Regarding KLAY on 1480; that happened after KLAY-FM was sold off and became KRPM -- before that, 1480 was KQLA. I remember that station well because their transmitter site was next door to my high school.
That is a pretty good history. KNBQ did indeed try and compete in the Top40 arena in the 80's. They had Gary Bryan and the late Beau Roberts in their lineup. In fact in the mid-80's there were four Top40 stations competing in the Seattle market. KUBE, KPLZ, KHIT, and KNBQ. It was super competitive for awhile. Eventually KNBQ went oldies, and KHIT went something else (???). I call this period the 2nd top40 glory period for Seattle, just after the KJR/KOL/KING battles 15 years earlier.
They must have changed back to KLAY at a later date.
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KNUA, jazz.
KNUA would eventually become the predecessor to KWJZ, airing smooth jazz circa 1990.
Like a couple other people here, I had no idea Enumclaw had a Three Sisters Mtn. Apparently it's closer to Wilkeson. At 4000+ feet, it's about 500 or 600 ft higher than KXXO's old Rooster Rock site. I wonder how far KBRD's old signal got out. Wikipedia says it had some signal issues near Lynnwood on 63KW. But at 4000 feet? Multipath from nearby hills I assume.
When 96.1 was on Rooster, they were SOLID with a few fuzzy spots all around Snohomish and north King County. At least until Vancouver took over by north Everett or Marysville. Loud and clear at Ocean Shores, also variably heard in Portland suburbs too. I could see why they did move to Capitol Peak - not only because of the 96.3 move by KWLZ, but also less need to travel a steep and icy/snowy road to get to the xmitter in winter. The one thing I've noticed is that they do great as long as you are south of Seattle, or right at the waterfront up to Mukilteo/Edmonds. Eastside areas are fuzzy and multipathed. Noticed that with 102.9 and even worse on 96.9, before I moved over to the dry side of WA.
Also, re: KONG TV, I wonder, had they gone on in 1984 with the CP, would they have gone the low-budget indie route or more religious? I wonder if that big library of classic TV shows they had in the late '90s (Hawaii Five-0, All in the Family, even old movie serials!) was designed to be their format in 1984. Remember, the original KONG CP was not KING Broadcasting's. Also seemed interesting that they wanted to use Cougar Mtn even though their license and (not-to-be) studios were in Everett. Could have been a Snohomish County-localized indie.
Finally on cable, yes, Seattle had cable early on. Of course, it was Astoria OR that got the first cable system in 1948 or 1949, whenever KRSC-5 was piped in. Ellensburg got their cable rather early too, early '60s. In those days, KIMA Yakima, KOMO/KING Seattle, KXLY Spokane and a clock channel were carried. Sample ad for Jerrold Cable on page 5:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=4oJvMfeQlr8C&dat=19620316&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
Like a couple other people here, I had no idea Enumclaw had a Three Sisters Mtn. Apparently it's closer to Wilkeson. At 4000+ feet, it's about 500 or 600 ft higher than KXXO's old Rooster Rock site. I wonder how far KBRD's old signal got out. Wikipedia says it had some signal issues near Lynnwood on 63KW. But at 4000 feet? Multipath from nearby hills I assume.
When 96.1 was on Rooster, they were SOLID with a few fuzzy spots all around Snohomish and north King County. At least until Vancouver took over by north Everett or Marysville. Loud and clear at Ocean Shores, also variably heard in Portland suburbs too. I could see why they did move to Capitol Peak - not only because of the 96.3 move by KWLZ, but also less need to travel a steep and icy/snowy road to get to the xmitter in winter. The one thing I've noticed is that they do great as long as you are south of Seattle, or right at the waterfront up to Mukilteo/Edmonds. Eastside areas are fuzzy and multipathed. Noticed that with 102.9 and even worse on 96.9, before I moved over to the dry side of WA.
Also, re: KONG TV, I wonder, had they gone on in 1984 with the CP, would they have gone the low-budget indie route or more religious? I wonder if that big library of classic TV shows they had in the late '90s (Hawaii Five-0, All in the Family, even old movie serials!) was designed to be their format in 1984. Remember, the original KONG CP was not KING Broadcasting's. Also seemed interesting that they wanted to use Cougar Mtn even though their license and (not-to-be) studios were in Everett. Could have been a Snohomish County-localized indie.
Finally on cable, yes, Seattle had cable early on. Of course, it was Astoria OR that got the first cable system in 1948 or 1949, whenever KRSC-5 was piped in. Ellensburg got their cable rather early too, early '60s. In those days, KIMA Yakima, KOMO/KING Seattle, KXLY Spokane and a clock channel were carried. Sample ad for Jerrold Cable on page 5:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=4oJvMfeQlr8C&dat=19620316&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
KBRD/KMTT never had multipath issues, except maybe in downtown Seattle. Only the Queen Anne and Capital Hill stations had less multipath in downtown. The issue was lack of building penetration, not distance for vehicles or portable radios. Being so high and so far away, Entercom was concerned KBRD/KMTT wouldn't at least have signal parody with the Cougar and new W. Tiger stations in the Seattle area. To Seattle from Enumclaw, made KBRD/KMTT a rimshot signal.
KONG received the original CP for Cougar Mt. in 1984. The applicant was: Zeus Corporation of Washington, Inc. Zeus chose the KONG call letters to get a rise out of King Broadcasting at the time. Really, they were looking for some controversy and a potential suitor to buy the Construction Permit so they didn't have to actually build the station. Zeus chose Cougar Mt. to file, because they knew there was no way one of the local stations would be willing to rent tower space to a competitor on Capitol, or Queen Anne Hill(s). With the CP getting close to expiring, and the Cougar moratorium still preventing construction of KONG on Cougar, Zeus ran out of time and money, agreeing to do a time brokerage deal with KING for pennies on the dollar and KING willing to construct KONG on their tower on Queen Anne. When the Commission relaxed the ownership cap allowing duopolies, KING exercised its first rights of refusal and purchased KONG.
Even on the G8, KXXO has a better signal now at my location than they did from Rooster Rock, though I can't be sure they were ever at full power from that location when I had the G8. I do remember one summer afternoon I was DXing and KXXO was barely audible, with Vancouver dominating. By that time, they had switched to the backup fulltime until the new site was built. I do remember that signal having a few really odd dead spots, the most noteable was just south of JBLM.
Determining what the first cable system was has always been debatable. There is certainly a sign at the Astor(ia) Column, indicating, that's where it all began but I've heard of several others including what eventually became Cablevision Systems, which was somewhere in Pennsylvania.
I can't recall the years, but KXXO ran at significantly reduced power and height from their backup site, due to a failed utility power line up Rooster Rock. Once discovered, finger pointing as to who was responsible for maintaining and repair of the utility power went back and forth for a while. In the meantime, KXXO had to run off their much lower power backup site, eventually abandoning Rooster Rock for Gold Mt.
Kelly - The backup site was located on a mountain just south of Tenino in Thurston County. They used this site until the new site was constructed on Capitol Peak (which allowed the station to resume full power operations).
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