WBLS

[PTBoardOp94]

Do the math. The Class B New York FMs bill, on average, about $18 million a year, give or take. If the transmitters and gear use 5 to 6 kilowatt hours an hour for electricity at the current NYC commercial rate, that is about $16,000 a year.

And, as we found out in various lawsuits, WBAI was paying about $50,000 a month in rent to the ESB. I assume that was the total for space on the combined antenna and equipment space, but the summaries I read weren't explicit.

 

[K.M. Richards]

If it was 20KW, it obviously was not on the Empire State Building at the time.

Agreed, so I looked it up in the interest of completeness. WEVD-FM got a CP specifically authorizing a move to the ESB August 7, 1970. The subsequent ERP increase was authorized along with a change in transmission line July 12, 1972.

 

[fybush]

Most of the FM stations that went on Empire moved there beginning in 1966, as the Alford master antenna provided transmission capacity for more than a dozen signals. Until the Alford, the only FMs that were on Empire were associated with TV stations and shared their antenna apertures. WNBC-FM on 97.1 was the original FM there (NBC had exclusive transmission rights at Empire until the early 1950s), followed later by WCBS-FM, WABC-FM and WOR-FM.

The Alford made it possible for the "independents" to join the club up there - 92.3, 93.9, 96.3, 97.9, 98.7, 99.5, 101.9, 102.7, 104.3, 105.1, 107.5 and then later on 106.7 and finally 100.3 made up the Alford combiner roster before it was supplanted by the current ERI master antenna in the late 1980s.