Original Transmitter sites

[LowellRadio]

WTAO 740am 250 watts daytime. The tower is still up on Concord Avenue in Cambridge MA.

 

[HHH]

Re: WEEI (now WEZE) (590 AM): I thought the site was always in Medford, at Wellington Circle. It's still there. When CBS owned it the transmitter building was always kept up...down to landscaping, as it was right on the Mystic Valley Parkway, near the old Cain's Potato Chips factory. Subsequently the building has not been maintained as well, in my opinion.

Yes, that's where 590 is now, and has been for many years. But before that, I understand that they were in Everett someplace. Not sure where.

WMEX was up in Chelsea south of the railroad tracks close to the water before moving to North Quincy. Again, not sure where.

Maybe Donna Halper or Scott Fybush know and can ring in.

Don't ask me why I got on this kick. Maybe had something to do with watching the youtube video of the original WBZ towers in Springfield come down.

 

[Early Byrd]

Re: WEEI (now WEZE) (590 AM): I thought the site was always in Medford, at Wellington Circle. It's still there. When CBS owned it the transmitter building was always kept up...down to landscaping, as it was right on the Mystic Valley Parkway, near the old Cain's Potato Chips factory. Subsequently the building has not been maintained as well, in my opinion.

Yes, that's where 590 is now, and has been for many years. But before that, I understand that they were in Everett someplace. Not sure where.

WMEX was up in Chelsea south of the railroad tracks close to the water before moving to North Quincy. Again, not sure where.

Maybe Donna Halper or Scott Fybush know and can ring in.

Don't ask me why I got on this kick. Maybe had something to do with watching the youtube video of the original WBZ towers in Springfield come down.

Funny thing is, when Tufts University just had a carrier current station, WTUR, they used 560 Khz as their frequency. Even with 5000 watts on 590 just down the street, the not over modulated WEEI did not splatter onto their on-campus signal.

 

[MickeyD]

For the record, WILD (1090 AM) is older than WORL by 4 years (1946 sign-on vs. 1950 for WORL), so that should have been included in your list. That site, also in Medford at 171r Corporation Way until recent years (now sharing the WKOX 1430 site nearby), was a mess, to be sure. The building was erected in 1946, and it looked like the site was not maintained since then.

I think that is incorrect. WROL (ex-WBSO, ex-WORL, ex-WRYT) has had at least two lives and the older of those lives dates back to long before 1950. I'm unlikely to get all of the facts right but there are people who can provide the correct history. Of those people, someone who posts here from time to time and is almost invariably accurate is Scott Fybush.

AFAIK, the WORL that had its transmitter in the Wellesley/Needham area started life as WBSO (nothing to do with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the calls stood for Babson Statistical Organization--a forerunner of today's Babson College). That station (I believe it was WORL before it lost its license for unauthorized transfer of control) left the air--around 1949. It may have started out with lower power but by the time it signed off, it was, I believe, a 1-kW daytimer on the present WROL frequency, 950. Different owners applied for a new station on 950, also a daytimer and also with the WORL calls, but using the former WHDH transmitter site on the Lynn Marsh Rd in Saugus (except for periodic flooding, a truly superb AM site). That's the WORL that signed on in 1950 from studios in the Myles Standish Hotel in Kenmore Sq (later a BU dormatory--but I believe that before the hotel was repurposed, the station had moved its studios to different quarters--also in the Kenmore Sq area). I don't know whether the station signed on in 1950 with the current 5 kW-D, but it may have.

I remember staring across the salt marsh from the Revere side looking at WROL's tower. I had to be about 8 years old back then and everyone I asked whose tower it was gave me the same answer. "Why that's WLYN"

 

[MickeyD]

WEZE ground floor studios were at the Park Plaza Hotel

I used to go by there when I was a kid and could never figure out what that equipment behind them was. It looked like and old transmitter and I couldn't imagine working in that little window studio. At night they would draw the curtains.

 

[MickeyD]

WEZE (1260 AM) also had studios in Park Square on the ground floor of a hotel with the shows done live behind a huge, curved picture window.

I believe that the WEZE studios were on the ground floor of the Park Sq Bldg, an office building. The Park Sq Bldg adjoined a hotel and I think you could walk back and forth between the hotel and the office building on several floors--not just the ground floor. So it may have seemed as though the studios were in the hotel, but I don't think they actually were. Wish I could remember the name of the hotel; it was one of the larger hotels downtown. Could it have been the Copley Plaza? It may still be there; I don't think it was torn down.

Yes they were.

 

[MickeyD]

Re: WEEI (now WEZE) (590 AM): I thought the site was always in Medford, at Wellington Circle. It's still there. When CBS owned it the transmitter building was always kept up...down to landscaping, as it was right on the Mystic Valley Parkway, near the old Cain's Potato Chips factory. Subsequently the building has not been maintained as well, in my opinion.

Yes, that's where 590 is now, and has been for many years. But before that, I understand that they were in Everett someplace. Not sure where.

WMEX was up in Chelsea south of the railroad tracks close to the water before moving to North Quincy. Again, not sure where.

Maybe Donna Halper or Scott Fybush know and can ring in.

Don't ask me why I got on this kick. Maybe had something to do with watching the youtube video of the original WBZ towers in Springfield come down.

Since it has been such a long time I am going to mention a story that was told to me by a man that owned a little fm radio station in Gloucester. He told me a story about a small am station thet was in Chelsea that would signal the rum runners off shore whether or not the coast was clear during prohibition.

 

[HHH]

Re: WEEI (now WEZE) (590 AM): I thought the site was always in Medford, at Wellington Circle. It's still there. When CBS owned it the transmitter building was always kept up...down to landscaping, as it was right on the Mystic Valley Parkway, near the old Cain's Potato Chips factory. Subsequently the building has not been maintained as well, in my opinion.

Yes, that's where 590 is now, and has been for many years. But before that, I understand that they were in Everett someplace. Not sure where.

WMEX was up in Chelsea south of the railroad tracks close to the water before moving to North Quincy. Again, not sure where.

Maybe Donna Halper or Scott Fybush know and can ring in.

Don't ask me why I got on this kick. Maybe had something to do with watching the youtube video of the original WBZ towers in Springfield come down.

Since it has been such a long time I am going to mention a story that was told to me by a man that owned a little fm radio station in Gloucester. He told me a story about a small am station thet was in Chelsea that would signal the rum runners off shore whether or not the coast was clear during prohibition.

Ah, looks like WMEX had "The Good Guys" even way back then!

Actually, that would have been the Pote Brothers' WMEX forerunner, WLOE, which was eventually denied a license renewal. The story goes that they simply applied for a new license (WMEX) in 1934, and used the same facilities!

The WMEX transmitter was in Chelsea, then moved to North Quincy (Squantum) in 1940 and was there for many, many years until the Waltham site was built in the late 70s/early 80s.

 

[carmen]

seems WMEX claimed the office park in north quincy would decrease their ground conductivity and produce unpredictable reflections

http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/359/359mass265.html

 

[WLYNWAZNgm]

WLYN and now, WESX, are on the tower located at
Caps Auto Parts, right on the Lynn/Saugus line.
WROL is about a mile or so further south...