Skin Radio on WHAT 1340 AM: Your thoughts

[8638]

If I recall correctly 1540-WPGR/WNWR was granted 500 watts night time coverage in the early 90s, but WNWR
decided to go back to daytime broadcasting only. Why did they make an odd decison of that nature???

A story I once read somewhere online is that the owners of the station didn't pay the guy who engineered the nighttime power. Supposedly, he went to the TX site one night and repossessed his gear! I have no clue about the truth of this; just repeating what I read. Also, I'm told of this .5 Kw authorization, but have never seen anything in print to support it. I remember an authorization for .007 Kw (7 watts) night, though. I'd think that even with KXEL and WPTR, you'd be able to hear 500 watts night in center city (referencing another post). I remember post sign off for 1540 when I lived in Ewing, NJ, near Trenton. I'd hear WARD Pittston sometimes before they'd sign off (believe they moved to 1550), and also heard ZNS-1 and WPTR.

 

[BRUSSTAR]

Would you know if WHAT's callsign was assigned sequentially? Many early stations have an "A" as the third letter, which usually indicates that the calls were part of a series (if they don't stand for anything that makes logical sense.)

Actually WHAT wasn't a sequentially-assigned callsign... It's unclear (to me, anyway) what exactly it represented-- or if it was even requested at all (random assignments had taken the place of sequential ones by the late 1920s)...

You're absolutely right about the third letters of early callsigns... Vintage sets of call letters with either an "A" or a "B" in the third position dating from 1922 thru 1927 are sequential assignments, at least nine times out of ten... One of my biggest radio geek pet peeves is the re-writing of history; the phony "slogans" folks claim call letters "stood for"... I blame the myriad of Internet pages floating around with bogus "histories" for the bulk of this (Wikipedia pages alone are chock full of errors, but there were many inaccuate ones long pre-dating that resource)... I suppose it's neat and romantic to say "W-whatever" stood for something remarkable, but the truth is most of these supposed meanings were really just backronyms-- if they ever really existed at all.

Some really early callsigns did actually stand for things, even before call letter requests were accepted by the Department of Commerce... Callsigns like "KOP" (Detroit Police Department) and WJR ("Jewitt Radio") came before requests were allowed-- but their grantings do appear to have been intentionally-timed. And no, the "JZ" in WJZ did not stand for "Jerzey". The straws some will grasp at to find a hidden meaning in callsigns are, and truly should be, unbelievable!

Not that I expect anyone to do this, but a trip to Maryland to inspect the original records of the Department of Commerce (and later, it's Federal Radio Commission) will pretty much verify all of this... Now if only we could get people to stop repeating other nonsensical myths of lore like, "Marconi invented the radio", or, "Broadcasting began with KDKA in Pittsburgh"...

 

[eatspaste]

Well it has been over 2 months since WHAT 1340 AM changed to Skin Radio. I would like to get your general thoughts on the format?

I listened to Skin Radio for about 15 minutes tonight (the length of my commute through Center City where I could get the station) and I heard COMMERCIALS!!! Woo hoo, a sure sign of success!!

No. They were those horrific dmarc/Google ads. The break consisted of TWO structured settlement commercials, that nerdy Focus Factor voiceover guy who was selling some stress relief snake oil product, and 3 or 4 other awful spots. Nothing local.

Then they came out of the break by saying, "Skin Radio - [they] WILL be different."

I laughed and then the station faded out.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Would you know if WHAT's callsign was assigned sequentially? Many early stations have an "A" as the third letter, which usually indicates that the calls were part of a series (if they don't stand for anything that makes logical sense.)

Actually WHAT wasn't a sequentially-assigned callsign... It's unclear (to me, anyway) what exactly it represented-- or if it was even requested at all (random assignments had taken the place of sequential ones by the late 1920s)...

You're absolutely right about the third letters of early callsigns... Vintage sets of call letters with either an "A" or a "B" in the third position dating from 1922 thru 1927 are sequential assignments, at least nine times out of ten... One of my biggest radio geek pet peeves is the re-writing of history; the phony "slogans" folks claim call letters "stood for"... I blame the myriad of Internet pages floating around with bogus "histories" for the bulk of this (Wikipedia pages alone are chock full of errors, but there were many inaccuate ones long pre-dating that resource)... I suppose it's neat and romantic to say "W-whatever" stood for something remarkable, but the truth is most of these supposed meanings were really just backronyms-- if they ever really existed at all.

Some really early callsigns did actually stand for things, even before call letter requests were accepted by the Department of Commerce... Callsigns like "KOP" (Detroit Police Department) and WJR ("Jewitt Radio") came before requests were allowed-- but their grantings do appear to have been intentionally-timed. And no, the "JZ" in WJZ did not stand for "Jerzey". The straws some will grasp at to find a hidden meaning in callsigns are, and truly should be, unbelievable!

Not that I expect anyone to do this, but a trip to Maryland to inspect the original records of the Department of Commerce (and later, it's Federal Radio Commission) will pretty much verify all of this... Now if only we could get people to stop repeating other nonsensical myths of lore like, "Marconi invented the radio", or, "Broadcasting began with KDKA in Pittsburgh"...

George:
One story goes-
WNAT became WHAT when someone misread the handwritten call letter assignment on the Dept. of Commerce record about the time it was transferred to the new Federal Radio Bureau (FRB).
At one time an actual scan of the Commerce Dept. record for WNAT (Philadelphia, PA) was posted on the internet and it was easy to see how it could have been mistaken for WHAT by the way the N was formed.
Of course I was not working at the Federal Radio Bureau at the time, but it could be true.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Quote from:
http://www.broadcastpioneers.com/banks.html

The station came on the air in 1923 as WNAT. At that time, WNAT broadcast at 833 KHz, sharing their frequency with WGL, Philadelphia’s first radio station and WWAD. Two years later in 1925, WNAT shared time and their 1200 KHz frequency with WIAD and WWAD, all three were 100 watt Philadelphia stations. In 1928, WNAT, still at 100 watts, was sharing their 1040 KHz frequency with the more powerful WRAX, a 250-watt Philadelphia station. In 1929, it became WHAT Radio and the following year moved to 1310 (where it would stay for several years) sharing time with WFKD in Philadelphia.