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DAVE HARRELL, DENNY BATEMAN AT WGUL, 1980S

Anyone know what Dave Harrell is up to these days? He has to be one of the nicest radio guys I ever knew. Cox needs to bring him back to WDUV.
 
Fantastic clips! WGUL was a fantastic radio station. Later on, when their 860 kHz AM went 24 hours, they utilized real DJs during the daytime hours, and the Music of Your Life satellite programming during the night. The effect was seamless and professional. Thanks for these clips, Jeff -
 
The original WGUL-AM 1500 (now WPSO) has an amazing signal for a 250 watt high dial postion AM station. I have heard that station clear along the Gulf all the way into Levy County, over 100-miles North of the 1500 tower site. Of course once you go inland by a few miles you lose the signal. But even at that, 1500 still has one of the better AM signals.
 
Jeff,

Let me also add a THANK YOU for posting the videos!

Hank Shaw hired me to do some part time board op work at WGUL / WPSO around that same time (1981), and seeing the videos brought back a lot of memories. I'd leave my overnight job at 107.3 WWBA when Ron Stauner arrived, and haul ASS up US 19 all the way to New Port Richey in time to sign WGUL on the air.

I think of all the gas burned just to make $5 bucks an hour... ugggh!

Makes me appreciate all the toys and "remote log in" software we have today.
 
jmtillery said:
The original WGUL-AM 1500 (now WPSO) has an amazing signal for a 250 watt high dial postion AM station. I have heard that station clear along the Gulf all the way into Levy County, over 100-miles North of the 1500 tower site. Of course once you go inland by a few miles you lose the signal. But even at that, 1500 still has one of the better AM signals.
Click to expand...

Salt water path really enhances an AM signal. 1600 out of Key West is easy to listen to here in Sarasota out by the beach. When I was a kid, I used to go to Myrtle Beach SC and the radio station everyone on the beach was listening to? The Big Ape, the mighty 690 out of Jacksonville. Great signal on the beach. Go a mile or so inland and it was gone. 550 out of the panhandle comes in well here in the Tampa area along the beach. WWL New Orleans is also an easy salt water path here. I'm sure there are more
 
jmtillery said:
The original WGUL-AM 1500 (now WPSO) has an amazing signal for a 250 watt high dial postion AM station. I have heard that station clear along the Gulf all the way into Levy County, over 100-miles North of the 1500 tower site. Of course once you go inland by a few miles you lose the signal. But even at that, 1500 still has one of the better AM signals.
Click to expand...
Driving along US 19 in New Port Richey one day a few months ago, what did my eyes behold but TWO towers, side by side, where there used to be just ONE at the 1500 site. And shortly after that, back to just one. So it appears that they put a little money into the business end of the radio station and erected a new tower replacing the old one. Didnt look any higher but the weird thing is that an ASRN update filed 9/8/09 showed the tower DISMANTLED and no other entries showing a new tower in its place! I dont know if there is any big lag between filings and when they show up online in the FCC database but thats all I see posted as of today. No engineering changes for WPSO or WZRA TV either. I didnt drive right up to the tower, but is still sprouts the cell phone ants about a third of the way up and of course the WZRA chan 48 TV ants up at the top that did look new.

When WTAN was down at the waters edge in Clearwater they could be heard in Cedar Key I've been told. When I worked at KPOI in Honolulu AM 1380 5KW omni we put a solid signal out to Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, I would get requests from the military bases there every night. Gotta love salt water!
 
Absolutely!!! The salt water does amazing things with AM signals. I've heard WWL in Crystal River as clear as if it were local. I've never heard WTAN in Cedar Key, but I'm sure it had a great signal there if the tower was anywhere near the Gulf. WWBA-AM 820 is another good example. Even with a directional pattern, it still covers from the Florida Keys all the way to the Panhandle during the day.

Back in the 1970s I worked for 500 watt WTRS-AM 920 in Dunnellon. The station was sold in 1980, and the new owners had planned to move it to Crystal River near the Gulf. The predicted contour showed the new 500 watt signal going from Tampa to Horseshoe Beach along the Gulf Coast with the main omni-directional signal covering a much smaller area isolated to Crystal River. The build-out was never implemented, but I often wondered what it would have been like to hear that station at such a great distance along the Gulf Coast.

To Jeff: Thanks for the video post. I never worked for WGUL nor had I even stepped inside the radio building, but I have heard the station for years, so I had a mental picture of the station before I saw the videoa. That's quite a little station.
 
To go along with this discussion of salt water coverage, I just scanned and uploaded the coverage map that appears in the 1960s brochure for WGUL:

http://fivay.org/images/wgul94.jpg

I may be wrong about this, but I think I recall Thad Lowrey telling me that the station got into some trouble with the FCC over this map, maybe because it does not indicate the field strength for the one contour that is shown.

I do recall when I worked there that a person told me he listened to the AM-1500 signal in Homosassa every day...
 
I meant to include this reference in my earlier post just so people could get some perspective on ground conductivity. Salt water has a conductivity of 5,000 millimhos/meter, ground conductivity in west central Florida (Suncoast, Nature Coast) is 4, center of the state (Orlando, Lakeland) is 2! And South Florida up the Atlantic coast to around Melbourne is a whopping 8. Across America values range from 0.5 to 30 millimhos/meter. This mapped out on the FCC database as Figure M3, search from their home page.

Obviously conductivity is the opposite of resistance which is why the unit of measurement is MHO or ohm spelled backwards. Not making this up! Mr Wizard signing off for tonight. 8)
 
Nostalgia, thanks for the information. You have shed some very much appreciated additional light on the subject that many of us, or at least myself, didn't know. I have known for years that Florida is one of the worst states for AM ground conductivity in the country, but I was not aware of the logistics as you explained. Possibly what you have described could be because of all the limestone and shale under the ground, or possibly it could be all the sand on top of the ground. I'm not a geologist and I don't pretend to be, but there are some very interesting geological aspects to consider when it comes to radio waves and signal strength due to AM ground conductivity. Night-time skywave propogation is something else altogether that I have also found to be of interest.
 
MsMusicRadio said:
Too bad Cox can't put both these guys on WDUV
Click to expand...

Cox can if they choose to add these two legends (assumming they are available) to the programming line-up. However, I believe the expense factor (as in salaries) is why we won't hear either one on WDUV anytime soon.
 
A couple of other great DJs, Les Foerster and Bob Reynolds, worked with Denny near the end of the music run on WGUL, and they would also be great on WDUV. Of course, this is all just wishful thinking!
 
There's no doubt about it. WGUL had a great sounding format and air-staff on both AM and FM when it was The Music of Your Life.
 
And if you want to know what really sounded good, it was the relatively short period when WGUL AM broadcast with C-Quam AM stereo. One day I drove my car to a point approximately equidistant between their FM and AM tower sites, and the AM stereo sounded much better than the same simulcast program on FM. There was no comparison as to the crispness, fidelity, or separation. I became an avid believer in AM stereo after that. If it had been mandated in receivers, it might have saved AM radio. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
 
I wonder which format makes more money on 860? The old one or the stuff there now? Why did Dave Harrell leave WDUV?
 
My guess is that the public has abandoned AM as far as music goes. The signals are weaker in many cases (and particularly at night), and the fidelity is poorer, and there is no stereo. I don't think the public turns to the AM band for music anymore. Even when WGUL (AM) carried the music format, and as good as they were, I believe that WDUV (FM) was the top-rated station.

I think that the segment of the public that regularly listens to talk radio is probably rather small, but it is a hard-core, reliable, audience that meets many of the demographics that the stations are targeting. Besides, what else can the stations run, if the public isn't going to tune to AM for music?

I think that with talk radio, AM may be doing what it does best. I don't personally listen to talk radio, and I would love to see music back on it, but I don't think it's gonna happen.
 
I remember well AM Stereo, and I thought it sounded quite superior in audio quality. I believe AM Stereo can still be a viable option for AM improvement today provided, as was mentioned, it is mandated that AM receivers are required to have AM stereo capability.

Music on AM is probably, for the most part, a thing of the past, although I believe there are rare exceptions where music AM stiil exist and can still survive and do quite well. The key is programming and proper positioning by identifying the key target money demo to make it economically feasable. Of course, it goes without saying that the MOST important part of this whole scenario is signal and a coverage footprint that will actually cover the desired target market. Without an adequate signal, all the best programming, sales efforts, management and marketing are, for the most part, futile undertakings.
 
HD on AM sounds like FM and HD on FM sounds like Dolby 5.1! If the car makers put HD radios in the new cars, you could then again play music on AM and it would sound GREAT! I have a HD car radio and it makes the AM stations that run HD sound so good. Remember the old Delco AM radios that came with your new car in the 60's and how great it sounded. HD radio has brought back those days. We just need to have the cars put them in as a standard package and you would see a great boon for music on the am dial.
 
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