• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

The On-Again, Off-Again WALE

D

DG02816

Scott Fybush reports in this week's NorthEast Radio Watch that 990 WALE was silent due to not paying the transmitter site power bill.Maybe it's time for Davidson to try something other than Spanish AC,or sell the place outright. I was overnights there in the WEAN MOYL days, and remember it well as WLKW...a sad end for it...


Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
DG02816 said:
I was overnights there in the WEAN MOYL days, and remember it well as WLKW...a sad end for it...
Click to expand...

It was the station that never should have happened. When WLKW was first fired up in 1959 it was a born loser, signalwise. The six tower array dumped all but about six Watts of the 50-kW output into the ocean. BUT advertising agencies were less aware of stuff like that. They saw the 50-kW and leaped to their own assumptions.

50-kW also blinded advertisers to the negatives of it being a daytimer only.
Had they not been able to snatch up an FM (the former WXCN) cheap the end would have come much more quickly. Kind of insider knowledge here; I did weekends there for several years and about a year doing afternoon drive right down to the bitter end which, at the latest, was around 9pm. I had just closed it down in November of 1965 when the Great New England Power Blackout hit. Had I dawdled even a few minutes I would have been trapped in the elevator in the old Lowe's State Theater Building (studios, very cramped, were on the 4th floor). A key part of the initial success was a tremendous advertising campaign orchestrated by Bo Bernstein (agency). Award-winning billboards; bus cards; and the slogan that is still cited in marketing books: "UnRock". Tied nicely to the 7-up slogan of the day: "The Un-Cola".

Format miseries aside, once the agencies figured out that 50-kW listenable only to ships at sea, it was over. Doomed. Some day a merciful big wind will topple some of the towers and somebody will collect the insurance, nail plywood over the windows and get outta town.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom