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Question For David Eduardo And Other Radio History Experts

S

Schroedingers Cat

Do any of you know where more complete sets of FCC History Cards are archived? The FCC has some, but to my investigation, only a handful California stations are at the FCC site. It appears to show the parameters of the station before computer records. I happened upon them looking up information on KBRT.

I am really interested in DA parameters from the 1940s and 1950s, when the first big increase in DAs occurred around the time of NARBA. This usually occurred when stations increased day or night power from 500 or 1000 watts nondirectional to 1000 or 5000 watts directional. Also, into the 1960s, when stations increased to 5000 watts daytime and/or nighttime, and often modified existing patterns with shallow nulls and deepened them to allow more power.
 
There is a discussion thread on this where many of our posters have discussed it. In reference to one post I saw, they are often divided between call letter changes. I helped put the information together once for the late Bill Sanderson for Jeremy Ruck from Markley and Associates. It involved old call letter changes, and approximate dates. It worked. They found just about everything by looking at three sets of call letters, apparently on different history cards.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Do any of you know where more complete sets of FCC History Cards are archived?
Click to expand...

This may be a discussion for Scott Fybush. I know he mentioned a friend who retrieved some such hand-kept data from dumpsters when the FCC moved to The Portals... A lot of paper data may simply be gone.
 
Nope..the guy I knew is retired from ABC News in DC. I believe he still has a full set of fiche. I think the FCC does, too, and they're slowly working to get it all posted on the website.
 
I was looking closer at the information and couldn't find any DA or efficiency data, at least on the ones I looked at. So maybe there is another data set with that also. With contract engineers not being on site, and all the studio and office moves, I'm sure a lot of the old station engineering files may have met the same fate. I hear stories of new owners and managers ordering purges of all old equipment and probably files. Some area engineers hang out and see what's being thrown out, sometimes old transmitters and antenna bays are rescued. It's sometimes amazing how good some of the equipment is that is thrown out. Better than what a lot of stations have in service.
 
The card files were used (in the days before CDBS) as a handy index to the deeper set of station files. Each entry on the card pointed to a full paper application, and it was those full applications that included all the DA and efficiency data.

Those old files aren't online anywhere. They exist (or so I'm told) in the National Archives, and are accessible in College Park, Maryland to anyone determined enough to go down and poke through them.

http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/173.html
 
FCC cards

The FCC Call Letter Cards are stored at the National Archives at the University of Maryland in College Park. The actual cards are still in 3" x 5" boxes, arranged alphabetically by call letters. They do NOT contain any other info beyond the calls.

I am unaware if the History Card microfiche are there too or not.
 
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