WBZ-AM backup transmitter in Allston is gone

[Fenway1912]

On October 6th the tower that was used as a backup transmitter for
WBZ-AM in Allston was dismantled.


My research indicates the tower was erected around 1950 as a backup to
the taller tower used by Channel 4 and was only used when there was an
ice buildup on the taller tower. That tower collapsed during Hurricane
Carol in 1954 and the small tower was used by Channel 4 until they
were able to use the old WEEI-FM tower in Medford before moving to
Needham in 1957.

The tower was then used as a backup for WBZ-AM.

The tower had to be taken down to clear space for the new Channel 4
studios which will replace the current facility built in 1948.

 

[TheBigA]

On October 6th the tower that was used as a backup transmitter for
WBZ-AM in Allston was dismantled.

Had access or use of that tower been included with the sale to iHeart? Probably not.

 

[CTListener]

On October 6th the tower that was used as a backup transmitter for
WBZ-AM in Allston was dismantled.


My research indicates the tower was erected around 1950 as a backup to
the taller tower used by Channel 4 and was only used when there was an
ice buildup on the taller tower. That tower collapsed during Hurricane
Carol in 1954 and the small tower was used by Channel 4 until they
were able to use the old WEEI-FM tower in Medford before moving to
Needham in 1957.

The tower was then used as a backup for WBZ-AM.

The tower had to be taken down to clear space for the new Channel 4
studios which will replace the current facility built in 1948.

When did WBZ(AM) last have to use this backup, and for how long? Will the station now just leave the air in the case of ice buildup or some other problem at the Hull site?

 

[davideduardo]

When did WBZ(AM) last have to use this backup, and for how long? Will the station now just leave the air in the case of ice buildup or some other problem at the Hull site?

AMs generally do not go off with ice buildup unless it shorts base insulators or guys all the way to the ground. It's FM antennas that can get coated with ice and start building up standing wave due to size and shape distortion.

I had FM relays in Ecuador that would ice up at night but we designed our FM transmitters to accept pretty high standing wave and never lost airtime. And the antennas were yagis, which simply sagged a little but did not fully cover with ice. We were more concerned with hail storms which could produce pretty large balls of ice.

 

[nowradioguy]

When did WBZ(AM) last have to use this backup, and for how long? Will the station now just leave the air in the case of ... some ... problem at the Hull site?

IIRC, several years ago, maybe as many as 10, the Hull towers were being painted during the day, and the SFR tower at 10 KW came in handy. It caused WBZ to sound like a station from a distant city (I live in the Merrimack Valley), and the background hiss was way louder than that due to their HD signal back then. Of course, the trmtr at SFR was not equipped for HD.

What will they use now? Glad you asked! They stream via the iHeartRadio app.

 

[davideduardo]

IIRC, several years ago, maybe as many as 10, the Hull towers were being painted during the day, and the SFR tower at 10 KW came in handy. It caused WBZ to sound like a station from a distant city (I live in the Merrimack Valley), and the background hiss was way louder than that due to their HD signal back then. Of course, the trmtr at SFR was not equipped for HD.

What will they use now? Glad you asked! They stream via the iHeartRadio app.

It's significant to note that very few AM stations have alternate auxiliary transmitter sites or even a "spare" tower. Generally, redundancy is maintained up to the transmitter but the transmission lines and towers and ground systems are seldom duplicated at another location due to the huge cost and amount of land required.

Offhand, I can't name one AM station I know to have an auxiliary site today. There must still be a few, but I am unfamiliar with any. This is, of course, a Scott Fybush question.

 

[vmorrison99]

WBZ Transmitter

I do not know when it was last used but I remember back in the 80's it would be fired up on Sunday into Monday overnights while maintenance was being done in Hull.

 

[TheBigA]

I can't name one AM station I know to have an auxiliary site today.

Even if they did, it wouldn't be located on the property of a previous owner.

At some point, every connection that once existed between WBZ-AM and CBS or WBZ-TV will disappear. In fact, at some point, the call letters will change.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I recall that WBZ had two transmitters in Hull. I don’t know whether they still do. Back in their AM stereo years, the Hull backup didn’t have it.

 

[fybush]

Offhand, I can't name one AM station I know to have an auxiliary site today. There must still be a few, but I am unfamiliar with any. This is, of course, a Scott Fybush question.

There are a few, even now. 50 kW WHAM right here in little old Rochester has a 12 kW transmitter at the site of sister station WHTK 1280, about eight miles to the east. It feeds one tower of WHTK's four-tower array, and WHTK has to operate nondirectionally from another tower at the site when WHAM is on from there. WOAI in San Antonio has a completely separate backup facility in Elmendorf, near the site it used from 1959 until the 1990s before it moved eastward to its current site. (But the aux site is new construction, built several years after the old Elmendorf site was dismantled.) WWL New Orleans has the ability to use the site of its sister station WWWL 1350.

More common, at least for the old-line 50 kW clears, is a second tower at the same site as the main transmitter, usually fed by a completely separate transmitter and transmission line. KFI, WSM, WFAN/WCBS, WMAQ/WBBM, WLW, WGN, CFZM/CJBC, WJR, WABC, WBAP, WCCO, WHAS, WLS, KDKA, WHO, KNX, WTIC (using the tower of former sister station WFSB-TV at the same site) all have such backup capacity.

And of course most directional AMs have at least some ability to stay on the air with one tower even if they lose others. At our WXXI 1370 here in Rochester, it would take a lot to silence the facility completely. There's generator backup if utility power goes out (which is VERY rare here), four towers to choose from should one be lost, a main Nautel XR6 transmitter that is almost completely internally redundant at full power (two separate power amplifier sleds, two power supplies), multiple STL paths (telco line, DSL, even feeding by FM HD2 if need be), and our old faithful 1955-vintage RCA BTA-5G that's ready to roar back into service when we need her.

I suppose if the building burned completely to the ground, we'd be off the air for a while... but Armstrong is only a 90-minute drive away in Syracuse and we could probably get our hands on an X1000 tuned to 1370 and get it set up in one of the doghouses at a tower base to get us back on the air within a few hours. Take down all four towers, too, and the next call would be to Entercom to see if we could put that X1000 a mile away at their AM site. (We'd do the same for them, of course.) And if they say no, we'd toss a longwire down from our FM/TV tower to the roof of the transmitter building...

 

[Greg Strickland]

As I understand it, FCC staff is flexible with Special Temporary Authority and auxiliary antenna authority for AM stations that intend to provide usable service to their community of license when the main licensed antenna is not available, especially for events beyond the broadcaster's control. Difficulty arises if a broadcaster appears to be doing something not in compliance with the license, FCC rules or policy.

As Scott Fybush already covered very well, an AM station located close to its small community of license can throw up just about anything on-site and it will work. In most cases the ground system still is usable. Daytime should be fine. Night time could be problematic if incoming interference is high (hello graveyard channels) or if protection is needed to a station that will not tolerate fringe interference even for a short time.

KFI licensed the self supporter at Montecito Heights for an auxiliary antenna during the main tower reconstruction, after a pilot knocked the main tower down. I recall the short, top-loaded auxiliary antenna at the main site spoken of as "The capacitor". For those wondering why- when compared to a wavelength, short towers exhibit capacitive reactance, and long towers exhibit inductive reactance.

Although fading away from the audience , in many ways AM is a lot of fun, because it is so physical and in the hands of engineers on the ground. As a hobby a small stand alone AM could be fun for a older radio person, who might rather groom and cultivate the ground system lawn than mow the lawn at home.

There are some adorable original smaller town AM facilities and sites still in existence. I don't like seeing them falling apart. Folks get out there and tidy up the antenna base area. Happy to see some of these stations are fixing up their studios, though.

 

[davideduardo]

As Scott already covered very well, an AM station located close to it's small COL can throw up just about anything on-site and it will work, because the ground system probably still is usable. Daytime should be fine. Night time could be problematic if incoming interference is high (hello graveyard channels) or if protection is needed to a station that will not tolerate fringe interference even for a short time..

My only fallen tower story occurred in early 1970 at WUNO in San Juan, 5kw day and 1 kw night, non-directional on 1320. Replicating quite a few other tower failures, a lawn mowing tractor at an adjacent property hit a guy anchor and severed a cable making the tower go horizontal.

The station had just been sold to Mooney Broadcasting (WMAK, WKGN, WBSR) and the seller was very slow in putting up a new tower. In the meantime, the station put up a longwire hung from a stub of the old tower to a phone pole. The signal was cut, I was told, buy about 75%. They finally put up a military surplus self supporting tower on an adjacent property and when I arrived to manage the station, it was on the new tower but dead last in the market; it had not been at the very top prior to the tower failure, but being at the bottom was something new and billings had fallen to less than 20% of the pre-failure level.

What I don't understand is why, with an existing ground system, they did not buy ham radio tower sections that could have been assembled to at least 100 feet if not more and would have matched the old doghouse much better. With top loading, probably could have gotten 25 ohms or so, although pretty reactive.

The worst thing is that there is nothing harder to do than to rebuild a station that lost its core and its "sparkle". A lot of 12 to 15 hour days were spent rescuing both the audience and the advertisers; In 90 days we hit #2 and in 6 months we tied #1.

From that point on in Puerto Rico I kept supplies of copper wire, insulators, coils and big caps in case I ever caught a re-run of that movie. When located far from the mainland before FedEx, that was my insurance policy. Of course, when you over-prepare nothing bad ever happens! That's a corollary to Murphy's Law. That new tower, put up in 1970, even survived the horrible hurricane of three years ago in PR.

 

[Greg Strickland]

Adding to my 1:19 PM post above, many AM stations are still viable and loved by an audience, especially with FM presence from a translator.

I love AM, and I'm happy my employer has them.

btw- As I understand it Valcom 75 and 85 foot antennas can be seen by some non-directional AM stations as cure for the real estate blues. Devil is in the details... The field tests on which the calculated efficiency figures are based were performed with the Valcom antenna mounted above a ground system consisting of 120 buried radials, each 120 feet in length. No free lunch in electromagnetics.

My personal opinion- an inconsistency and disingenuous aspect of NIMBY is objection to something that preserves open space. A proper AM site is mostly a large green lawn in an area that may be mostly built-up. Didn't Bethesda homeowners lament loss of green space associated with WMAL site de-commissioning? Wasn't there an AM station out west that proposed four 150 foot flagpole-like, un-lit towers painted sky-blue on grassy rolling terrain next to a highway. I recall hostile tone of the objections was startling.

Some AM stations don't mind if neighborhood folks enjoy the lawn for dog walking and jogging, etc. I think there is an understanding the neighbors will in turn keep an eye out on the site.

 

[TheBigA]

Didn't Bethesda homeowners lament loss of green space associated with WMAL site de-commissioning?

That's the nice way of putting it. They were opposed to the sale because of the additional infrastructure required for the residential neighborhood, the roads, the sewers, the water, etc., plus the additional children for schools, etc. According to the article below, the sale would have gone through sooner had it not been for the homeowner opposition.

https://insidetowers.com/cell-tower-news-cumulus-closes-sale-of-former-wmal-tower-site/

 

[spt87]

I recall that WBZ had two transmitters in Hull. I don’t know whether they still do. Back in their AM stereo years, the Hull backup didn’t have it.

My understanding is both Hull transmitters had C-Quam as they rotated use of the transmitters weekly. They replaced one of the Hull transmitters about 2002 and it did not have AM Stereo as it was being setup for HD Radio. They mostly ran on the new transmitter with the other (still with c-quam) being a backup. Periodically, for maybe a year, they would be in stereo when that backup was in use (I have one of those occasions on tape somewhere). Once the HD was implemented I don't think they were ever in c-quam again.