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AM 600 Jax History Question

C

cd637299

Guest
Was just curious....

In 1980 when Cuba relayed Radio Moscow, how did the 600 Jax signal make out locally, and how did the engineers deal?

I know for a fact that I heard RM in Massachusetts during my military time there.

cd
 
I moved to Jacksonville as a young guy in 1945 right after WW2 ended and grew up there so I remember the local AMs quite well. I left in the 1960s for military service. I can recall when it became no longer routine to sign off at midnight, with WPDQ 600 and WZOK 1320 being among the first to begin 24 hour operation.

The tower setup for the original WPDQ on 600 KHZ (an ABC affiliate with studios in the basement of the Gulf Life Insurance building behind Cohen's department store) was, as I remember, always an "end-fire" array for the nighttime pattern with the 5KW signal directed off to the east-southeast at around 100 or 110 degrees in a single lobe to cover the city as well as possible.

If you go to the FCC website and bring up WBWL and look at the pattern plot for nighttime operation you will see that the nighttime lobe is off to the east, now at essentially 90 degrees. This seems to me to be a minor modification of what existed for so many years after the license was granted - maybe the the Disney group or some other owner got an OK to modify the night pattern slightly to the present direction to better deal with demographic changes in the area's population.

To respond to your inquiry, I suspect that the WPDQ night signal did quite well in the metropolitan area against whatever RF from Cuba on 600 KHZ made it into the Jacksonville area. Listeners off to the south towards Mandarin or to the north towards Oceanway or Yulee probably had a mix of signals at night to deal with. I don't believe there was ever a temporary authorization to run more than 5KW at night for WPDQ.
 
Richard Howard said:
WPDQ 600 and WZOK 1320
Click to expand...

WPDQ originally ran 5kw-D/1kw-N omni on 1270. WZOK (WJHP) ran 250w on 1310 (1340 post-NARBA). Also, WMBR ran 250w on 1400 and WJAX had 500w on 900 (5kw-D/1kw-N on 930 post-NARBA). WPDQ's move to 600 (and 5kw), WJHP's to 1320 (and 5kw), WMBR's to 1460 (with 5kw) and WJAX's power increase (also 5kw) all took place in the 40's, post WW-II.
 
Back in the 1980s WAIV-AM 600 ran 5kw-ND-D and 5.4kw-DA-N. I'm not sure why the station ran an additional 400 watts nighttime, but it may have been granted under an STA to better compensate for interference issues from Cuba.
 
jmtillery said:
Back in the 1980s WAIV-AM 600 ran 5kw-ND-D and 5.4kw-DA-N. I'm not sure why the station ran an additional 400 watts nighttime, but it may have been granted under an STA to better compensate for interference issues from Cuba.
Click to expand...

At some point, the commission began allowing an additional 10% power when operating in a DA mode.
 
Thanks for the additional interesting history and information on the original Jacksonville AMs as they were before I moved there in December 1945. I recall that WJHP was owned by John H. Perry, a newspaperman. Wasn't the transmitter site with the two towers (one had two or three bat-wing bays for the FM transmitter - 9.7KW ERP I believe) located at 1435 Ellis Rd?

Was WMBR initially owned and operated by the Washington Post newspaper or did that ownership develop later? Was the original WMBR transmitter site always at Lane Ave. and Stuart St., just south of the railroad tracks along US90? Seems like there were three self-supporting towers there.
 
I believe Post-Newsweek came into play when WMBR-TV was sold off from the AM-FM, becoming WJXT. I don't believe Post-Newsweek ever owned the radio stations.
 
Richard Howard said:
Thanks for the additional interesting history and information on the original Jacksonville AMs as they were before I moved there in December 1945. I recall that WJHP was owned by John H. Perry, a newspaperman. Wasn't the transmitter site with the two towers (one had two or three bat-wing bays for the FM transmitter - 9.7KW ERP I believe) located at 1435 Ellis Rd?

Was WMBR initially owned and operated by the Washington Post newspaper or did that ownership develop later? Was the original WMBR transmitter site always at Lane Ave. and Stuart St., just south of the railroad tracks along US90? Seems like there were three self-supporting towers there.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure where the original transmitter site for WJHP was, but I doubt it was the Ellis Road site. I expect the move to the site coincided with the power increase to 5kw (for the DA-N)

John H. Perry, Sr. and Jr. were both newspapermen. At their peak, they owned 27 newspapers in Florida, including the Jacksonville Journal, the Panama City News-Herald, and the Pensacola News-Journal.

The Perrys founded WJHP/Jacksonville, WDLP/Panama City and WTMC/Ocala. They also owned WCOA/Pensacola and others. There were also some TV stations - WJHP-TV/Jacksonville (channel 30) and WESH-TV/Daytona Beach (channel 2) and others.

WMBR radio and television was owned for a few years by the Post (they weren't the original owners), before they sold the radio stations to WWDC, Inc. - a Washington competitor to the Post's WTOP radio.

Like WJHP, I would imagine that the original WMBR transmitter was elsewhere, with the new site coming with the move to 1460 and 5kw.
 
There were also some TV stations - WJHP-TV/Jacksonville (channel 30) and WESH-TV/Daytona Beach (channel 2) and others.
Click to expand...

Were they responsible for moving the Channel 2 allocation from Jacksonville to Daytona Beach?
 
In addition to owning WTMC-AM 1500 (later 1290) Ocala, Florida, John H. Perry also owned the Ocala Star-Banner daily newspaper (now a part of the New York Times).
 
smedge2006 said:
There were also some TV stations - WJHP-TV/Jacksonville (channel 30) and WESH-TV/Daytona Beach (channel 2) and others.
Click to expand...

Were they responsible for moving the Channel 2 allocation from Jacksonville to Daytona Beach?
Click to expand...

Wright Esch built channel 2, so he might've been the proponent of the move you speak of.
 
Interesting. That signal has always been a monster in the Jacksonville area. I didn't know they were WAIV for a little while. I remember them as WBWL, and they were Jacksonville's best signaled sports station. Strangely, for several seasons, Jags games aired on 600 AM, 690, and 96.9 FM.

After they dropped sports, I remember them best simulcasting 96.9 for about a month. They had a monster signal, and could (and still can) be heard in the Charleston area.
 
charlestondxman said:
I didn't know they were WAIV for a little while... I remember them best simulcasting 96.9...
Click to expand...

Back in 1980 AM 600 held the call letters WAIV(AM) and was a 100% simulcast of Top 40 WAIV-FM 96.9. WAIV-FM, as a Top 40 station, was known as V 97 until the simulcast began with WSNY(AM). The AM calls were changed to WAIV(AM) and both stations together were rebranded as The Big Wave, WAIV.
 
jmtillery said:
That would be William Esch. The call letters - WESH - were derived from Esch's name - ESH sounds like Esch.
Click to expand...

I've always seen his name given as "W. Wright Esch". Never gave much thought to what the first "W" signified.
 
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