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Those were the days!!

There were many, many examples of FMs never being built or pursued halfheartedly because of interest in dominant, cash-cow AMs. WHEC (later WAXC) had an FM CP that was never built. Ditto WNOX in Knoxville. WENE Endicott signed on as an AM-FM simulcast in its first 1947 incarnation on graveyard frequency 1450, but the FM never made the transition when WENE moved next door - physically and electromagnetically - to 1430 at a nearby site in 1950.

There were many parallels with successful AMs which pursued TV CPs but abandoned those plans when the problems of early UHF broadcasting started becoming apparent in the 1950s. WENE pursued Channel 40 in Binghamton but later backed out; WARC/WBBF held a TV CP for years for Channel 15.
 
"WHEC (later WAXC) had an FM CP that was never built."

The Broadcasting Yearbook says WHEC's proposed FM, which got the callsign of WHEF, may actually have gotten on air briefly in the late 40s, with 65 kW on 96.5 (later WCMF's frequency). However, that may or may not have been an accurate listing--Broadcasting was known on occasion to treat stations that their owners told them WOULD be on the air by yearbook publication time as having signed on, and it didn't always come to pass--and they didn't always check until years later. Warren Doremus, who was around and programming WHEC back then before moving over to the TV side, and is still alive and well and living in the area, would know for sure. If WHEF ever signed on it probably lasted only a short time. A lot of successful AM stations threw their FMs away in the late 40s and early 50s...case in point, WAGE in Syracuse had an FM sister station on (I believe) 96.3 with about a 5 KW ERP signal from a downtown antenna site. It signed on with afternoon and evening simulcasts of the AM station in about 1947, but it was long gone by the time Meredith bought WAGE and changed it over to WHEN (AM) as sister station to WHEN-TV in 1954. WHEN CE Bob Ardner, who babysat the FM operation while it was on the air, showed me an old log book for it, and told me he tried to talk former owner Frank Revoir out of shutting it down and turning in the license (not to mention turning back the CP for WAGE-TV Channel 10 in 1948, which never got built). But Revoir was convinced both FM and TV were fads that couldn't ever turn a profit. Oops....

WENE, of course, finally got its FM sister station years later when Merv Griffin put WMRV on the air.

As to why Chennel 15 was never built, Bill Pearce told me once that apparently WBBF owner Maurice Forman (who had the CP) became convinced UHF would never compete with the two strong VHFs in the Rochester market. Everyone saw what happened to WBUF in Buffalo in the days before the all-channel tuner legislation when even a network's money couldn't make a UHF station pay against a pair of VHFs. Both Forman's Star Broadcasting Co. and RAETA were in the fight for the last VHF in town (Channel 13) for years, along with a bunch of other local firms, before everyone called a truce, the all-channel bill made UHF more viable, and RAETA went off to build Channel 21 while someone (maybe ABC according to some) brokered a deal to get 13 on the air as a joint venture and an ABC affiliate.

WVET also had a CP for Channel 27 in Rochester, as a way out of its sharetime agreement with WHEC over Channel 10. It dumped that CP in 1961 when Veterans' Broadcasting was able to sell its share of Channel 10 to Gannett and buy WROC-TV, then on Channel 5, instead.
 
I know this is kinda out of the area but still on topic........ WIBX in Utica put WIBX-FM on the air in the late 40's and it lasted only a few years. Story goes it interfered (a harmonic) with something going on at nearby Griffths Air Force Base. They voluntary gave up the license and the FCC promised them another frequency when they were ready. The tower and transmitter building sat on Smith Hill unused for over 20 years -although the owner, Freddie Bowen did live there. They did sign on again in the early 70's as WIBQ-FM on another frequency 98.7 now WLZW. Ironically, according to the YEARBOOK, the original frequency 96.9 was later taken by WOUR in the late 60's. WOUR's tower is across the street from the original FM tower.

Now the hook to this story is that CBS encouraged the Bowen family to take out channel 4 to be Utica's CBS affilate. It never happened. I guess the cost of building WIBX's new 5,000 watt signal was too much for them. Too bad WIBX-TV. How it would have changed the landscape of televsion broadcasting in Utica.
 
Bob1370 said:
A lot of successful AM stations threw their FMs away in the late 40s and early 50s...case in point, WAGE in Syracuse had an FM sister station on (I believe) 96.3 with about a 5 KW ERP signal from a downtown antenna site. It signed on with afternoon and evening simulcasts of the AM station in about 1947, but it was long gone by the time Meredith bought WAGE and changed it over to WHEN (AM) as sister station to WHEN-TV in 1954.
Click to expand...

I've found several references to WAGE-FM on 98.5, and I understand the antenna was mounted atop the office building at the rear of Loew's State Theatre on Salina St., which fortunately has been preserved as the Landmark Theatre:
http://landmarktheatre.org/history.php

In the late '40s, WFBL also built an FM on 93.1 in the Town of Pompey. It transmitted from one of the quonset huts on Sevier Road, across from the Channel 9 tower (this was later purchased by Al Wertheimer, who put it back on the air as WDDS), and just down the road, WNDR had a similar FM facility.

Question: Did the callsign WAGE stand for anything significant? For instance, "We Appreciate General Electric"? GE was Syracuse's largest employer in those days, and a job at Electronics Park did pay good wages, so I wonder if there was a connection. Some GE history here:

http://danmoore.com/electronicspark/electronicspark.html
 
" Did the callsign WAGE stand for anything significant? For instance, "We Appreciate General Electric"?

Don't think so, because WAGE was under construction in 1940 and on the air by 1941, built by Syracuse real estate developer Frank Revoir, while the biggest part of GE's Electronics Park was largely a postwar project. If it had any significance no one knew it around town by the early 70s. Of course by 1954 it was WHEN (AM), sister station to Meredith's WHEN-TV (so named when Ted Meredith built it in 1948, because he liked catchy callsigns, and was inspired by Rochester's WHAM to find another callsign that would spell an actual word).
 
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