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WALE former studios on North Main st....
- Thread starter Kenny Atkinson
- Start date
N1WVQ said:
Brother!...You got a little TOO close on this one!
That "tea" which Chris occasionally would brew for Frank Bagttaglia was a green herbal tea intended as a laxative.
N1WVQ said:
The unpleasantries of the situation itself (a silent 990-WALE)....is the end result of factors which are now almost 25 years in the making....ever since Harold Bausemer sold the place in 1989.
It all started out on a hopeful enough note when the Battaglia family moved what was then 1400-WALE out of Fall River and into Providence and onto 990. It was an attempt to be a third talk station in the market. But...everything was against the chances for success:
Promotion (outside of thier own air) was non-existant. The mostly inexperienced air staff tried thier best, but were not a match for 920 and 630. Then there's the neglect of the physical plant (which has already been discussed here). Combine all of this with poor ownership(s)....in this case, two poor ownerships in the last 25 years.....and THIS is what you get!!!
N1WVQ said:
Speaking of "The Commish"....What's taking them so long to get to the bottom of this sad-sack situation, anyway? I know they're a little obsessed these days with broadband, but COME ON GUYS ! ! !
Before we know it, this thing will have dragged on longer than "The Guiding Light".
Who cares? That station is never coming back on the air. The plant is beyond repair and it's not financially viable to put it back on the air. All that station ever was, was a "letterhead 50" with a crappy signal that was shoehorned into an overcrowded band. With the station gone, 990 is just a little bit quieter, giving other stations on the frequency just a little more hope.
Eventually, the station will be deleted.
As for the WLKW calls, Hall also has a WLKW-FM through subsidiary Cross Country Communications... 95.3 The Lake, it's all syndicated conservative talk with no local programming in the Jamestown, NY area. It's licensed to Celeron, NY.
Eventually, the station will be deleted.
As for the WLKW calls, Hall also has a WLKW-FM through subsidiary Cross Country Communications... 95.3 The Lake, it's all syndicated conservative talk with no local programming in the Jamestown, NY area. It's licensed to Celeron, NY.
If WALE were to be deleted, the other 990s aren't doing anything spectacular either. 990 in Ct. is some Spanish religious outlet, then there's the religious outlet out of upstate New York owned by Crawford Broadcasting. There's 990 in Montreal which switched to 690, then some 4th-tier Salem blabber from around Philly. Want to improve 990? Get rid of ALL of the stations on this cursed frequency! All of the way down the eastern seaboard, I cannot think of one 990 ripping up the airwaves!
The 990 here in Philly is Salem's WNTP, which was for many years Top 40 WIBG. It ran two Ampliphases; a 50 kW unit for daytime, and a 10 kW at night. I'd hear that, along with what is now WLLI Somerset PA, after WLKW would go off the air. But give the frequency back to the Canadians?(990 is a Canadian Class A). I always thought Providence had to protect the Newfie 990, CBY
Canadian AM's are migrating in droves to FM, but Montreal's 990 may come back on with some sort of a French-language format; the Montreal-Toronto corridor still has good AM activity.
Canadian AM's are migrating in droves to FM, but Montreal's 990 may come back on with some sort of a French-language format; the Montreal-Toronto corridor still has good AM activity.
N1WVQ said:
As someone who has always believed in the idea that "more voices are always better"....I can sympathize with your feelings about WALE.
My beef has never been with the idea of a "990 station" being part of our market....It's been about the unfortunate collection of people who have had thier paws on the license for almost the past 25 years.
A collection of people who allowed....for a variety of reasons....things to deteriorate to the point where the place....barring a small miracle....might never return to the air.
I agree with everything you've said. I think Aaron might be the only one qualified here to comment on the feasibility of 990 duplexing from N.P. with lower power & a looser pattern (10kW @ 3 towers?) but there must be a site inbetween Greenville & Providence that will throw enough of a signal over both communities!
Back to the studios: 1185 N. Main St. was a weird place. It smelled of mold and whatever the massage parlor downstairs was cooking; its cinderblock walls had been painted white but had dirtied; the blue carpet had last been cleaned sometime in the '80s it seemed; its other outside doors opened up to nowhere (there were barriers to keep you from falling to the alleyway below); the offices were arranged in a circuit; the fluorescent tubes barely worked and the who place had a feeling of being worn-just worn. As you went up the stairs from the parking lot, you opened doors to an alcove where there were snack machines (after Battaglia). If you were buzzed in you were then in the lobby where there was a reception desk off to your left and the conference room straight ahead. Turning right you went through a door past the G.M.'s office followed by the P.D.'s office & the engineering closet. In 2002 there were cabinets which were gone by 2005-replaced with the P.D.'s new office. You then had 4 "studios"-what had once been WLKW AM & -FM housed the middle studio as the control room with an ancient board, the right studio next to the engineering closet was the talk hosts' studio, the left "studio" was storage (with some original WALE stuff from 1956 that I should've photocopied!) with an arcade video game machine that had been rigged to play for free and next to that was production. These studios were arranged in a U shape. If you dared, the bathroom was around the corner from production. It had seen unspeakable horrors of which I dare not repeat here. If you went straight in 2002 you came across a hallway of offices which could be opened with a screwdriver. There was a singular office on the right with no door and then some bathrooms which hadn't worked in forever. Neither did the lights. There was a corner office with no door that the sports guy used and more empty desks with melted Jolly Ranchers & soda making the drawers sticky. Rounding the conference room's backside you came across the sales manager's office (2002)/owner's office (2005). There had been many repairs done between 2002-2005. But the place was still a dump. The air monitor was a P.O.S. 1980s' radio which once the sales manager had retuned to The Score so he could hear Jim Rome (but guess who got the initial blame). The pots were crunchy & the spots sounded awful. The boards had missing faders, the boards' clocks didn't keep proper time & in all honesty, should have been taken out back & shot about 10 years before I got there. The satellite dish on the roof wasn't connected & even if it were the mesh was missing in a couple of panels. However, in the 5 months there I think I got more for a book than any other station I've worked. The building should probably be condemned, the station has been sorely neglected for decades.
As for the programming, that's been discussed here at length for over a decade & in radio circles it's been ridiculed & laughed at for even longer. Wolfman Jack was talking about XERF but could have been talking about WALE when he said "for all its power, it was really a nowhere station". WALE/990 is simply put, the single worst radio station to have ever existed to date. Even John Brinkley's KFKB had a structure about it outside the quack cure programs. WALE was the epitome of bad radio, inside & out. Yet, if it does get deleted, I think we've lost something. The sports guy I mentioned earlier started an internet station with 990 as the frequency to keep that station at that time alive. It just remains to be seen if there's an obituary for it or not.
As for the programming, that's been discussed here at length for over a decade & in radio circles it's been ridiculed & laughed at for even longer. Wolfman Jack was talking about XERF but could have been talking about WALE when he said "for all its power, it was really a nowhere station". WALE/990 is simply put, the single worst radio station to have ever existed to date. Even John Brinkley's KFKB had a structure about it outside the quack cure programs. WALE was the epitome of bad radio, inside & out. Yet, if it does get deleted, I think we've lost something. The sports guy I mentioned earlier started an internet station with 990 as the frequency to keep that station at that time alive. It just remains to be seen if there's an obituary for it or not.
N1WVQ,
Grady Moates would be far the better one to talk to on moving 990 to North Providence. When I worked there during the WEAN days, he told me that 10 kW from a 4-tower setup would easily beat the 50 kW from Burrillville. The case of 990 under Battaglia and Raposa would make a beautiful textbook case on how NOT to do radio.
Grady Moates would be far the better one to talk to on moving 990 to North Providence. When I worked there during the WEAN days, he told me that 10 kW from a 4-tower setup would easily beat the 50 kW from Burrillville. The case of 990 under Battaglia and Raposa would make a beautiful textbook case on how NOT to do radio.
N1WVQ said:
990 in Connecticut - WXCT actually switched formats to Spanish Tropical in January 2012 and only runs Spanish Christian programming on the weekend. Monday-Friday it's a simulcast of POWER 1270 WSPR from Springfield. Sometimes the simulcast sounds good other times it doesn't. (Once last fall I tuned it and everything was skipping - commercials, music, etc. Whatever they use to feed the signal from the WSPR studio in West Springfield to WXCT's facilities in Southington must've failed because where I can live I can pick up WSPR too and they weren't having the skipping problem). I have 3 gripes about how that station operates - 1. They have an old legal ID that plays automatically over the programming recorded by the former GM/OM of the station. 2. The other legal ID they have isn't legal. "WSPR POWER 1270. WXCT POWER 990. Springfield, Massachusetts. Hartford, Connecticut." And 3. Although by day they can reach a couple communities where there is a large Hispanic population - there is not much of as Hispanic Population in Southington itself where their studio/towers are and its COL. There are 2 stations in Florida on 990 that run Radio Disney. And there's a 990 in Virgina that's sister to WXCT that runs news/talk. WLEE I think are the calls.
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