StemCell said:
I always wondered why small markets had these flamethrower FM top 40 signals and all Philly had was that whimpy WIFI, compressed stereo 50kw @500' from Potshop road 27 miles from CC. Still no excuse not to make it into CC and points south and east, MMR would give them trouble all the time, but once you went out of the city they were OK....weird situation.
I remember, the WIFI/92 on-air studio monitor in Bala Cynwyd actually had to be hooked up to an antenna on the roof, or you couldn’t pick up the signal in the studio at all. Yet the calls on the request line were regularly from as far away as Ocean city MD, and Pottsville Pa. In fact in 1977, the grand prize winner of the school spirit contest was a high school in Pottsville Pa. The school spirit contest winner was based on the greatest level of participatory exercise of the contest requirements. And that come from the student body of a school that was over a three hour drive from the station. I remember it well, because I hosted first prize, a custom rock concert at the school. When I arrived at the school at showtime, I walked in to the gymnasium to what was at least 2500 kids. I think I was stared down, as I had to walk past what seemed like a hundred teachers, to get to the stage. The place was drop-dead pitch quiet. You could hear a pin drop. It was too eerie. I walked on stage, to stone cold silence. I could have crawled out of my skin. I reached for the mic and introduced myself, “Hi, my name is Sam Lit from WIFI92", and the place just erupted. The walls shook. The floor vibrated. You could actually feel the sound waves from the cheering, screaming and foot stomping. And they wouldn’t stop. I had to introduce the band over the roar. And when the band came on it was complete pandemonium. They screamed through the whole concert. I hadn’t heard anything so loud since I was 6 years old at convention hall in 1964 when my father brought in the Beatles. The cheering was so loud you could barely hear the band play. By the time I gave out hundreds of t-shirts, and awarded the other ancillary prizes, I swear I thought I was going def. My ears rang all the way through my three-hour drive home. I listened to WIFI/92 all the way through the mountains, down the turnpike, and back to Bala Cynwyd, at which time the station faded out in the parking lot of the studios. I never again dwelled on the local signal problems of 92.5 because the trade out of having the antenna at 500 feet HAAT, in Norristown with a raw 50,000 watts had distant resonance in parts beyond. Way Beyond. It was the best metro signal bar the sporadic local signal grade problems. And the local signal problems really were due to multipath from Roxboro and the PSFS antenna.
Of coarse, the first thing Beasley broadcasting did when they bought 92.5 in the 80’s, was move the antenna to the Roxboro antenna farm and fix the local signal grade. General Cinema declined the engineering study trade off during their tenure.
WIFI was legend as long as you weren’t in Roxboro’s multipath. Incidentally, the reason for being late to the antenna farm was 92.5 was originally a Norristown license.
