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FM Stereo

secondchoice said:
Cool engineering but could not make up for poor execution of on air programming. (That's just my opinion but compared to WBBM and NYCs 1010 very down tempo and really bad sounders)
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Sidebar here: Other than the heritage all-news stations, I think the best presentation was the short-lived News and Information Service (NIS), when properly executed by affiliate stations.

Here's about 20 minutes from WRR Dallas in 1976:
 
One of the many problems with NIS was, at the time, the network was fed on the same single phone circuit as NBC Radio network. No time for re-feeds to affiliates. No time for long-form programs to affiliates. Just trying to cram 50 lbs of goodness into a 5 lb bag. Probably would have worked for Westwood once they both NBC and MBS and multiple satellite channels.
 
bigdonho said:
One of the many problems with NIS was, at the time, the network was fed on the same single phone circuit as NBC Radio network. No time for re-feeds to affiliates. No time for long-form programs to affiliates. Just trying to cram 50 lbs of goodness into a 5 lb bag. Probably would have worked for Westwood once they both NBC and MBS and multiple satellite channels.
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Not as big a problem as you might think. NBC had the shared use of that single network phone circuit planned out well, and did still feed long-form programs on Sunday morning by having the hour preceding each such feed formatted so NIS stations could repeat it the next hour. The odds were very much against any major news breaking at that hour on Sunday.

I was the PD at a NIS station, post all-News, and I got to read the operations manual for it. Given the pre-satellite period that you correctly reference, it was quite an achievement.

And it is far too easy to criticize NIS decades later, out of context.

There were other reasons for NIS' demise, having nothing to do with your analysis. The most compelling reason was the lack of major market affiliates, which affected national advertising revenue. There was a big hesitancy by the stations NBC approached to sign, given that in their own O&O markets (the exception being WRC in Washington DC) they put it on their FMs, in an era where no one was likely to look for all-news anywhere but AM.
 
General Electric's 99.5 WGFM Schenectady (now WRVE owned by iHeart) is generally credited as the first FM station to broadcast fulltime in stereo, beginning in June 1961. Between WGY radio, WRGB television and WGFM, General Electric did a lot of broadcast experimenting at its big facility in Schenectady. WIQB 102.9 (now WWWW-FM) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is credited as the first station to broadcast in Quadrophonic FM Stereo.

Major Edwin Armstrong had begun experimenting with "multiplexing" FM radio in 1948 from his early FM station in Alpine, NJ, KE2XCC. In the late 1950s, the FCC used KDKA-FM Pittsburgh (now WLTJ) to broadcast using different stereo systems, including Zenith and General Electric. Those two systems were considered identical and eventually won the FCC's endorsement.
 
We can devote a couple of paragraphs to 104.3 WQIV as New York's Quad AOR station. While WPLJ and WNEW-FM were the big rock outlets in NYC, 104.3 WNCN played Classical music. It even had to compete with WQXR-AM-FM owned by the NY Times and WNYC-FM owned by the City of New York. I remember some newspapers published the classical playlists for all three stations. At 3:15 on Thursday, you can hear Debussy's "Clair de Lune." Can you imagine? WNCN decided more money could be made by switching to rock. And it saw the new interest in quad broadcasting as a way to set it apart.

In 1974, the station flipped to album rock, played using quad broadcasting equipment. It even hired a young Carole Miller to be one of the DJs. (Miller is still on the air on 104.3, now as evening DJ on WAXQ.) But listener groups were angry. Even though the FCC is not supposed to get involved in what a station programs, WQIV only lasted a year. It returned to classical in 1975.

I don't believe WPLJ or WNEW-FM ever experimented with quad. I seem to remember 105.5 WDHA in Dover NJ, also a rock station, did briefly.
 
Gregg. said:
Even though the FCC is not supposed to get involved in what a station programs, WQIV only lasted a year. It returned to classical in 1975.
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And ultimately, that was the case which was the beginning of the end for FCC involvement in programming content; WNCN hobbled along as ad revenues declined and finally went AOR in 1993 as WAXQ "Q-104.3".
 
The New Chico said:
KING-FM in Seattle did some experimental quad broadcasts on Sunday eveings for a few months. The story (related much later, BTW) was that it negatively affected fringe reception without netting much in the way of improved sound quality. Multipath is an issue in Seattle, and KING at that time was broadcasting from a fairly low antenna. Supposedly quad reduced useful coverage to about an 8 mile radius? Not sure I buy that, but this was supposedly reported at the time.

Of much more humorous interest was KQIV 106.7 Lake Oswego/Portland OR. They advertised their AOR format as "Rockin In Quad" and stated they were running full time in Quad. They, ummm, were not capable of transmitting quad...but they always wanted to. LOL their studio was an upstairs office of the local Elks lodge.

Rockin' In QUAD, baby!
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KING at first did FM/FM simulcasts with KZAM for its Classical programming. Then they had their own in-house quad multiplexer,
 
WEFM 99.5 Chicago, the Zenith-owned station, regularly broadcast in stereo beginning June 1, 1961, the same as General Electric's WGFM in Schenectady. The Zenith and GE stereo transmission specs were almost identical for reception so the FCC approved both.

WFMT 98.7 Chicago broadcast the Lyric Opera in quadraphonic, live from the Lyric Opera House, beginning in 1974. Not sure how many years the quad broadcasts lasted, but WFMT won a Peabody Award for the innovation.
 
Since it was GE that invented the FM Stereo system we now use, it would have been a surprise if WGFM did not broadcast in stereo :)
 


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