Boy, did that bring back memories!
I managed WABN for the church during that period, and am the voice on the ID's.
It's an interesting story. The station was donated to the church by Bristol Broadcasting and Pete Nininger when he bought WABN AM-FM. BBC was only interested in the FM, and gave the AM to us. It had been dark for almost a year when all of this took place, and we got it back on the air one day before the license would have been declared null and void. (The FCC only allows a station to be dark for 365 days before yanking the license). To do so required a new transmitter and antenna tuning unit. Broadcast Electronics shipped us an AM-1A rack-mounted 1KW transmitter by Fedex Overnight, and Tom King at Kintronics in Bristol quickly built us a new tuning unit and installed it for us.
For those from outside of the Abingdon Area, Blue Gotham was a long time teacher and retired school princpal from Abingdon who was known by most people in town. Blue had never done radio before, but because of her "celebrity" in Abingdon she gave the station credibility at a time when it was needed.
Unfortunately, just as the station was beginning to hid its stride, both economically and in listenership, the plug got pulled. Alltell, which owned the tower used by WABN, decided to replace the tower, and decided that the new tower would not be an AM series-fed type. After initially agreeing at the regional level to allow us to continue using the tower with a folded-unipole design, corporate-types at the national level nixed the agreement. This was about one week before the tower cosntruction was to begin.
When the old tower was dismantled WABN went dark again. It had been back on the air for about two years after being donated to the church. The church, which did not wish to invest the funds to lease/buy new property and build a completely new tower, decided to sell the station.
It was purchased by Ken Hill of WHCB for $50,000. They put it back on the air using a temporary horizontal dipole antenna on the church grounds until they could purchase land and build a new tower. The signal could barely be heard throughout Abingdon during the day, and only in the eastern part of town at night, even with 1KW! Eventually they got a new tower up, off of White's Mill Road, and the station's signal again became respectable. It is not quite as good as the original tower, which was about 100 feet taller, but it covers Washington County quite well during the day.
I've listened on line several times, and Rusty Cury is doing a good job running it. It's got the local emphasis that we also attempted to provide, which is more than welcome in a small town.
Rene' Tetro
Market Engineernig Manager
Salem Communications
WNTP/WFIL
Philadelphia
