AM stereo in Albany/Glens Falls?

[danikayser84]

Which stations in the Albany/Glens Falls area have been in AM stereo in the past? I can think of four off-hand:

- 1540 WPTR/WDCD used to be in AM stereo from the early 80s until either Crawford bought the station or it went IBUZZ (could someone chime in, when exactly did WPTR/WDCD shut off AM stereo?)
- 1460 WOKO/WGNA/WDDY was also in AM stereo from 1987 to when Radio Disney adopted IBOC...
- 1410 in South Glens Falls was also in AM stereo for a time in the 1980s and 1990s as WSTL with a country format.
- 810 WGY ran in AM stereo until 1997, then dropped it (the station had been running a news/talk format since 1994, I think)

Was WROW 590 or WTRY/WOFX 980 ever in stereo? There may be others I'm missing...

 

[THE_KNICKMAN]

I was a little surprised that WGY once had AM stereo, don't ever remember it being publicized. Not ever having a receiver capable of AM stereo, I would not have known. WSTL used to have a liner ' Whistle country stereo- W-S-T-L"

 

[ADD1966]

WSTL used to have a liner ' Whistle country stereo- W-S-T-L"

They never used my suggested liner, "Whistle blows 24 hours a day!"

 

[Rich883]

Both WROW and WTRY were never stereo. WTRY had stereo equipment right up to the transmitter, including CRL audio processing, but never implemented. WROW similarly had stereo consoles, but player music from mono carts, then stereo RTR decks. As I recall the STL was mono, and the processing was mono.

On WGY, I am almost positive they they never were AM stereo. the link from the studio to the transmitter was mono, and had a mono DBX processor in front of it, and at a later point the audio went from the mono phone line and changed to a subcarrier on the 99.5 STL to the channel 6/ 99.5 site, then a second hop back to the 810 site.

 

[danikayser84]

According to this webpage, it mentioned that WGY was in AM stereo until 1997...

 

[AMonFM]

1540 was AM Stereo until they replaced the transmitter with a new Nautel unit for IBOC-HD, however, it was turned off for a time in the 90's when Albany Broadcasting owned it.

1460 started AM stereo during their brief stint as an oldies station - 1987 or thereabouts.

980 installed stereo audio equipment for a planned switch to the 'expanded band', where stations were encouraged to run in stereo. The move to 1640 of course never happened, and they never used it on 980.

810 only *tested* AM stereo at the TX site, very briefly in the mid 80's. The engineers weren't impressed with how they thought it degraded the groundwave signal (bogus, Am stereo didnt effect signal), so it was never used more than a few times. I've had AM stereo receivers of one kind or another since '84, never actually heard 810 in stereo myself.

1410 ran it from their riverside transmitter in the 80's, it wasn't reinstalled when they started diplexing from the 1230 stick.

That was about it in the capital district. Other regional signals that I could hear in Stereo were 570 & 620 from Syracuse, 1310 from Utica, 620 from Burlington VT, 1080 from Hartford, 1030 Boston and i'm probably forgetting a few as well.
Many of the big 50kw stations around the nation did run it though... it was cool to hear WLS, WOWO and WKBW rockin out in stereo. The technology had much more acceptance north of the border, where a larger percentage of stations ran it since music on AM lasted a bit longer in Canada vs. the US (not to mention C-QUAM didn't have the political hurdles to leap there like it did here). The CBC didn't adopt it though, as their microwave audio distribution system was mono only.