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WALE-Are they even on the air?

I've heard many tales, few are positive, about the Mighty White Whale of 990 WALE, Greenville. But something I've always wondered: I know many owners have used WALE's technical ERP of 50,000 watts to claim a ridiculously huge signal coverage area. And supposedly that ridiculousness is compounded by a facility that's had years of neglect and isn't broadcasting even as well as it's licensed for.

However, just looking at Radio-Locator, it would appear that WALE's licensed coverage area is, well, it's not hideous. It covers Providence and the surrounding suburbs well enough, anyways.

Could WALE actually be a decent Providence signal if it were fixed up to the max it's licensed for?

I'm mostly thinking in terms of WRCP becoming WRNI, and how WBUR poured a lot of money and effort into fixing 1290 up and the result was a pretty nice signal, all things considered.
 
It could be, yes. Although I've heard from an engineer who said it'd be better to reduce it to 10kW & take down 3 towers & the signal would be equivalent, if not better. Remember: this station's signal goes out to sea but it takes 40 miles of land to get there.
 
Even if you could get a decent owner willing to invest money into the station and fixed the signal, etc do you really think anyone would listen to it? The station has been neglected for a long number of years, especially in the last 5-10 years where it's spent most of the time off the air.

990 in Hartford (former sister station to Arpin's WARL) is another that's been neglected for a real long time. The only difference is DMG manages to keep it on the air. (Aside from the 4 days back in October/November that part of Southington had no power due to the Blizzard and on occasion losing the feed to New Jersey).
 
In perverse "logic", that off-air period could be a benefit in that it could be spun as a "new" station coming on with a whole P.R. campaign behind that. Of course, this being A.M. that probably stands a 50/50 chance of working & would most likely be a long time before it gets the ratings of, say, WPRO.
 
Wow, A bunch of posts here and none of us find worth our while to tune in a radio to see.WALE is so bad nobody wants to waste energy to tune in 990...to even see.

This is hilarious! ;D
 
kenwood101 said:
Wow, A bunch of posts here and none of us find worth our while to tune in a radio to see.WALE is so bad nobody wants to waste energy to tune in 990...to even see.

This is hilarious! ;D

Time has come for a guilty confession....so...here goes... :D

Ever since 1290 flipped over to Spanish language, there's been an extra unused AM pre-set on my car stereo....so I put 990 on it for the purpose of occasionally "checking-in"....just to see if anything was there.
 
Dighton Rockhead said:
kenwood101 said:
Wow, A bunch of posts here and none of us find worth our while to tune in a radio to see.WALE is so bad nobody wants to waste energy to tune in 990...to even see.

This is hilarious! ;D

Time has come for a guilty confession....so...here goes... :D

Ever since 1290 flipped over to Spanish language, there's been an extra unused AM pre-set on my car stereo....so I put 990 on it for the purpose of occasionally "checking-in"....just to see if anything was there.

I have a feeling that this one will never see the light of day again. I'm sure it's reaching the end of the one year drop-dead mandate, if it hasn't already done so. It would take a miracle to see this station back on the air again. Frankly, 50,000 watts to "feed the fishies" seems like a waste of electricity. Reducing to 10,000 watts with 3 less towers would make sense. Nobody likes to see any station fail. But this one.......... it seems like a license to LOSE money. A "WALE" of a waste.
 
Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:
I'm sure it's reaching the end of the one year drop-dead mandate, if it hasn't already done so.

Peter:

I'm cynical enough to believe that the Peter Arpin ownership will do whatever it takes so that he can maintain his death-grip on the license as long as possible.

They could always arrange to have 990 "come back from the dead" for a few days.....say....every 11-plus months....in order to keep the license active for another year.

If I'm mistaken....please correct me...but...couldn't the Arpin ownership just continue doing this indefinietly??
 
Arpin probably can do that. WCKL 560 in the Catskills has been doing this for years to keep its license.
 
From one who was there back in the day:

1. Originally 990 was workable with 250-Watts from a rooftop location in downtown Providence. Yes, rooftop was OK then and, yes, 250-Watts was an FCC acceptable power level.

2. The alternative, given spacings, was a location in or near Burilville (spelling?) with at least 10 kW and a directional array.

The decision was to go with Burillville but with 50,000 Watts so as to stake a "highest power in Rhode Island" claim. It was known, at the time, that it was a feed-the-fishes waste but the PR value of the 50-kW was deemed valuable and was bragged of in the call, WLKW (L being roman numeral for 50 and KW being obvious.

The current all, WALE, was relinquished from 1400 Fall River when Milt Mittler sold the station 10+ years ago.

My feeling is that Rhode Island has too many signals for anyone to make more than a bare income and this one, 990, oughta be allowed to die.
 
MarcB said:
DG02816 said:
Arpin probably can do that. WCKL 560 in the Catskills has been doing this for years to keep its license.

WCKL has finally been LMAd out and has been on for the past few months. They even picked up the Redsox.

WCKL was sold. They were sold to Brian Dodge who was LMAing them.
 
Well, to Dodge's wife, legally...

(And do we know for sure that the transfer has actually been consummated?)
 
This is a shame, I remember WLKW quite well during its Beautiful Music days. Later on, it tried MOYL, returning to that format in the latter part of the '80's as WEAN. Battaglia never should have carpet-bagged the WALE calls from Fall River; it seems since those calls went on 990, they cursed the place.
 
DG02816 said:
This is a shame, I remember WLKW quite well during its Beautiful Music days. Later on, it tried MOYL, returning to that format in the latter part of the '80's as WEAN. Battaglia never should have carpet-bagged the WALE calls from Fall River; it seems since those calls went on 990, they cursed the place.

Dave:

It wasn't so much that the W-A-L-E calls inflicted any kind of "curse"......But rather the Battaglia family's "Reign of Error" during the 1990's and into the early 2000's that "lowered the bar" in the market.....the likes of which had not been seen before around here.

Who else would have dared to air something like "American Dissident Voices"?.....or allow the anti-semetic rantings and ravings of one "Rick Adams"?.....or allowed the stunt where Steve White faked his own death on the air?.....

All of this, and a great deal more.....can be laid directly at the doorstep of the Battaglias'.....to say nothing of the years of neglect and lack of maintenance of the technical "nuts and bolts" that keep an AM station running.
 
Something similar is happening on 740 on Ling Island. Originally a live and local daytimer with the call WGSM, it was sold some years ago to a Korean proctologist, Dr. Richard Yoon. He changed the call to WNYH after upping power to 25 kW from the original 5 kW-D, 1 kW-CH. He tried running brokered Korean Christian programming, oldies and infomercials with programming ending at odd times. Legal ID's nowhere near the TOH. This station was also the R.Disney affiliate for NY for awhile before RD got WQEW, and I bet ABC did the upgrade, now that I think of it. It's now running Spanish Christian programming. I bet it would do well with a dedicated staff who knew what the hell they were doing. Same applies for WALE; Arpin and Yoon have a pair of toys to stroke the ego, but that's it for both stations. Beyond sad.
 
Dave,

When RD was airing on 740 (back in 96) they were still owned by Barnstable. They must've already been 25KW because I remember getting them in the car in Bristol, Connecticut. - Crystal clear at that. After RD was dropped because of 'QEW they flipped to Standards as a simulcast of their sister station 1100 WHLI. Later it was sold to Koreans who were LMAing a station in NYC from Arthur Liu. Then they spent quite a bit of time off the air before Dr. Yoon bought it. They were running Korean Programming and religious hymms on Sundays. Then it became a mix of Oldies and Infomercials with announcements to buy times. Then in October 08 they LMAd the station to One Caribbean Radio and the station began a Regaee format. OCR subleased some of the air time to other people including former NBC 4 Consumer Reporter Asa Arrons. At that point they were struggling to keep the station on the air (equipment failure?) and One Caribbean Radio terminated their LMA. They went back to the Oldies Programming. Then it went back to Korean Programming. Then they LMAd it to Radio Cantico Nuevo, who is LMAing the station currently.

As for One Caribbean Radio they're now LMAing 97.9 HD2 in New york City. Personally I'd rather be on AM than the HD2 channel of an FM station. :p
 
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