• 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

WALE 990 Off The Air

R

Radio1968

Guest
WALE has been off the air since Tuesday. It was nice listening to Legends 990 WLGZ out of Rochester tonight in the WALE COL, Greenville. It's nice to here good sounding audio quality on 990! I wonder why Davidson still hangs on to this dog?

link: http://www.legends990.com/
 
> WALE has been off the air since Tuesday. It was nice
> listening to Legends 990 WLGZ out of Rochester tonight in
> the WALE COL, Greenville. It's nice to here good sounding
> audio quality on 990! I wonder why Davidson still hangs on
> to this dog?
>
> link: http://www.legends990.com/
>
Just looked at the FCC website and clicked on the first link in Station ownwership and it says "Debtor in Possition".
Not sure what that means.
 
> > WALE has been off the air since Tuesday. It was nice
> > listening to Legends 990 WLGZ out of Rochester tonight in
> > the WALE COL, Greenville. It's nice to here good sounding
>
> > audio quality on 990! I wonder why Davidson still hangs
> on
> > to this dog?
> >
> > link: http://www.legends990.com/
> >
> Just looked at the FCC website and clicked on the first link
> in Station ownwership and it says "Debtor in Possition".
> Not sure what that means.

It means if you take a job there they'll pay you with Goya gift cards & a stuffed parrot
 
Yea WALE is all done with spanish for now, station will go dark for a month. I've talked to some ppl and it looks like its going back to english and becoming "City Talk 990" for Providence. Should be interesting
 
I'm not sure what the connection is between WALE and Davidson Media Group. I thought I read in NERW that he was buying it, but the FCC's database never listed Davidson Media Group as the owner. It also has never appeared on Davidson's Website either.
 
If Davidson does things at WALE like they're doing with the new talk format on WXCT they may carve out a niche. That frequency has tried just about everything since going on as WLKW in '61. I was engineer and overnight host when the station was doing the original Al Ham Music Of Your Life as WEAN in the '80's. We ran 50 kW daytime, and 500 watts at night. I can remember doing Saturday nights from the transmitter site in Burrillville and sitting across from the RCA BTA-50G Ampliphase day rig.
What a work of art that rig was!I believe the Debtor in Posession came about due to the cost of taking PCB's out of the soil there. The guy who bought the place from Francis Battaglia had to remove the stuff, and it bankrupted him...


Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
> I can remember doing Saturday nights from the
> transmitter site in Burrillville and sitting across from the
> RCA BTA-50G Ampliphase day rig.
> What a work of art that rig was!.......

Wish I could remember the year...around 1963...I did afternoon
drive when WLKW-990 was a daytimer. Could nail down the year by
the date of "The Great New England Blackout"...'cause I had just
signed it off and left the building (got off the elevator just
a minute before I woulda been trapped for hours)when the blackout
hit.

Only a few insiders knew BOTH meanings of "Beautiful" in two liners:

1. "The Sound of Beautiful Music" bespoke the music being played.

2. "The Beautiful Sound of WLKW" really referred to the audio quality.

The Ampliphase was about the best money could buy; Kenny Prior kept it
in top shape. Processing? We used only a CBS Volumax/Audimax pair
set up to ride gain as subtly as possible. The only thing that could
top the audio quality of the RCA Belchfire was the Western Electric
Doherty Linear 5-kW Rog Perry had kept alive at (then) WJAR-920. A
classic Class-A amplifier that Rog alleged was a backup but managed to
arrange constant maintenance for the more modern main transmitter so
the station sounded the best possible. But, by then, they were mostly
talk so it was a waste of excellence!

As to the PCB thing...that little time-bomb is probably still lurking
at a half dozen other stations around Providence. Makes me wonder what
might be slumbering away in the soil at the old WSAR site along The
Taunton River (vacated in the late 50's or early 60's) from when they
tore out the old General Electric 5-kW primary and 1-kW backup! I don't
believe anything ever was built on that site when the planned nuke power
plant came to naught. I'd guess that if and when somebody does want to
build something there it could get interesting!<P ID="signature">______________
"environmentalism is collectivism in drag."
--George Will (or won't)</P>
 
> Yea WALE is all done with spanish for now, station will go
> dark for a month. I've talked to some ppl and it looks like
> its going back to english and becoming "City Talk 990" for
> Providence. Should be interesting
>
If 990 goes local talk, could mean the end for HJJ.
It could wind up competition for PRO,which would be a good thing
for all of us.
Isn`t C.R.I. the owner of 990?
If they are ,this will never happen. They are cheap as they come..
 
Does the WALE have a decent daytime signal in Providence? If they do and have the right hosts local and syndicated and a good promotions/sales team they will do good as an alternative to WPRO/WHJJ. Unlike WARL which only masquerades as a Providence Station by having studios on Dorrance Street.

And can WARL ever be successful, without masquerading as a Providence station?
 
> And can WARL ever be successful, without masquerading as a
> Providence station?

Why wouldn't WARL want to masquerade as a Providence station? The Attleboro metro area isn't really big enough to support it's own station.
 
> Why wouldn't WARL want to masquerade as a Providence
> station? The Attleboro metro area isn't really big enough to
> support it's own station.

I believe it's not a question of the size of the Attleboro market.
In fact, WARL as it originally was, WARA, made decent money off
extreme localism. Well supported by local businesses.

That seems to have happened in Attleboro is much the same as has
happened in smaller markets all around the country. Cities have
sprawled into nearby suburban small towns with lots of housing for
people who work in the larger city and identify with IT rather than
with the city in which they really live. They also have access to
internet sites for stuff like school closings and "swap shop" programs
have died at the hands of the grandest of all "swap shops", e-Bay.

Some of the attempts at rebranding to nearby larger cities was
abetted by loosened FCC standards which allowed very low power stations
to kick up to 5-kW or so, giving them coverage that made the local
market seem like small beer.

Jean Shepard has a term for this stuff in the 1960's. He called it:
"Creeping Meatballism". The tendency for bigger cities to engulf
suburbs and sort of "homogenize" the people. Everybody driving similar
cars; watching the same TV programs; wearing the same clothes. Today
it's been improved upon. Entire regions have become "meatballized" even
in terms of politics.

My bet is that a very high percentage of the Attleboro/North Attleboro
population thinks of themselves as Rhode Islanders and are mildly shocked
each year when they have to sort out paying income tax to RI and MA...
sorta puzzled why they have to pay anything to Taxachusetts when they're
emotionally Ocean Staters. Gee, if WARL managed to portray themselves
as a Providence station, though with perhaps a tiny little bit of news
out of Attleboro, folks who actually live in Attleboro might be convinced
they're listening to a slick big city station, not some local yokels
playing at radio.

Sicker'n hell.....but anybody got a better idea? <P ID="signature">______________
"environmentalism is collectivism in drag."
--George Will (or won't)</P>
 
Jay,

For 990 to be successful it has to first get rid of the WALE callsign;too much bad baggage dating back to when Francis Battaglia bought the place and moved the Fall River call to Providence.With the debacle of trying to outdo WPRO and WHJJ on merely having 50 kW, he lost money quickly. He was finally forced to broker out his time in order to survive. I remember the 50 kW day signal to be adequate for most of the state. A good idea would be to bring back
the WEAN calls and image/position the facility that way. Perhaps news from NBC, CNN, or Mutual would help. Failing that, they could LMA it out to WADk and WJZS; 990 Swing AM, anyone???


Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
> A good idea would be to bring back
> the WEAN calls and image/position the facility that way.

Not impossible...FCC database shows the call is NOT currently in use.

Anyone with a memory long enough to reach to the Providence Journal
ownership of WEAN (790) would associate it with news and information.
Of course all such folks are probably senile or dead and wouldn't
contribute much in the way of numbers.....
<P ID="signature">______________
"environmentalism is collectivism in drag."
--George Will (or won't)</P>
 
> That seems to have happened in Attleboro is much the same as
> has
> happened in smaller markets all around the country. Cities
> have
> sprawled into nearby suburban small towns with lots of
> housing for
> people who work in the larger city and identify with IT
> rather than
> with the city in which they really live.

All of this makes sense. Yet Attleboro is so close to Providence that it's almost hard to contemplate. The distance between Providence and Attleboro is about 11 miles, center to center. If a business in Attleboro sold an appealing product, advertising on WARL would capture not only the local audience but also that of a Providence resident who would drive a few miles.

But as the answer to Jay Clark/Marc B's question as to whether WARL could serve the Attleboro community, it would not seem to make all that much sense why a station would target only the area surrounding the COL instead of the metropolis next door. It's like asking whether WFNX would be more profitable targetting Lynn than targetting the Boston area.

> Some of the attempts at rebranding to nearby larger cities
> was
> abetted by loosened FCC standards which allowed very low
> power stations
> to kick up to 5-kW or so, giving them coverage that made the
> local
> market seem like small beer.

Actually, this is really going on at it's worst MetroWest right now. 1470 WAZN moved into Boston (via Watertown) a few years ago. Langer's 650 WSRO has applied to move closer to Boston by relocating to Lexington. WKOX, which was formerly the full-service outlet, will no longer have a night signal in Framingham once it moves to Watertown. And of course, the old WKOX-FM is now on the Pru (as WROR). What's left? The world-famous WBIX, which could care less about the area, and that's it.
 
And I remember Harry McKenna, Jim Young,Steve May, Art Hume, Alan Munro, and Eddie Pearson LOLOL! And I'm not out of my 50's yet!

Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
> If Davidson does things at WALE like they're doing with
> the new talk format on WXCT they may carve out a niche.
> That frequency has tried just about everything since going
> on as WLKW in '61. I was engineer and overnight host when
> the station was doing the original Al Ham Music Of Your Life
> as WEAN in the '80's. We ran 50 kW daytime, and 500 watts
> at night. I can remember doing Saturday nights from the
> transmitter site in Burrillville and sitting across from the
> RCA BTA-50G Ampliphase day rig.
> What a work of art that rig was!I believe the Debtor in
> Posession came about due to the cost of taking PCB's out of
> the soil there. The guy who bought the place from Francis
> Battaglia had to remove the stuff, and it bankrupted him...

Didn't WXCT switch to a different talk format, now running ship-sinking "talk radio for women"?
 
> Jay,
>
> For 990 to be successful it has to first get rid of the
> WALE callsign;too much bad baggage dating back to when
> Francis Battaglia bought the place and moved the Fall River
> call to Providence.With the debacle of trying to outdo WPRO
> and WHJJ on merely having 50 kW, he lost money quickly. He
> was finally forced to broker out his time in order to
> survive.


Francis did not buy the station; his father did. He ran the talk format with Steve White, et al. Although the Francis-hating bandwagon gets a bit tired. Try competing with WPRO
 
Although WXCT is calling themselve's Talk Radio For Women, it's not all women issues talk. Here's a partial Porgram Schedule.

10AM-12PM Debbie Nigro - Women's Issues
12PM-1PM The Truth About Nutrition - Health Type Show
1PM-2PM Tammy Bruce - Political Show
2PM-3PM Dave Ramsey - Finacial Advice
3PM-5PM Dr. Laura - Relationship Advice, Moral Issues, etc
5PM-6PM Ray Lucia - Finacial Program
6PM-7PM Investor's Edge - Finacial Program
7PM-8PM Invested Central - Finacial Program
8PM-9PM Dave Ramsey - Finacial Advice
9PM-10PM Bruce Williams - Various Topics
10PM-11PM Michael Regaen - Political Show
11PM-12AM Rusty Humphries - Political Show
12AM-3AM Rollye James - Various Topics
3AM-6AM Dave Ramsey - Finacial Advice


The Central Connecticut Women's Forum also buys a one hour block of time every Tuesday morning. The show discusses the issues women in the world of business are facing.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom