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WCEV AM 1450 to close down

cyberdad said:
I remember WFAA and WBAP sharing 820. With the local Chicago 820 off at night, the Metroplex 820 had a good night signal here. Maybe it was my imagination, but I always thought WBAP had slightly better audio.
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I remember comparing logs with a fellow DXer in the early 60s. After WAIT signed off I picked up WFAA in Dallas and he heard WBAP. Each one of us were confused over what we really heard until we became informed about those two stations sharing the frequency.
 
The shared time FM arrangement in the NYC area has each station using separate studios and transmitters. WNYU has its studios at New York University in downtown Manhattan and its transmitter in the Bronx atop Montefiore Medical Center. WNYU is 8,300 watts at 78 meters (256 feet) in HAAT.

WFDU has its studios at Farleigh Dickenson University in Teaneck NJ. Its transmitter is atop the Armstrong Tower in Alpine NJ off the Palisades Interstate Parkway, the same location where Major Edwin Armstrong did his early FM experiments when hardly anyone had equipment to receive the station. WFDU is powered at 3,000 watts at 195 meters (640 feet) in HAAT.

WNYU has the frequency Monday-Friday from 1pm to 1am. WFUV has it all other times. There is a 15 minute gap between one station signing off and one signing on, even though those AM stations in NY, Dallas and Chicago had no gap, so listeners would go from one station to the other, maybe not even realizing the switch had been made.
 
Gregg. said:
The shared time FM arrangement in the NYC area has each station using separate studios and transmitters. WNYU has its studios at New York University in downtown Manhattan and its transmitter in the Bronx atop Montefiore Medical Center. WNYU is 8,300 watts at 78 meters (256 feet) in HAAT.

WFDU has its studios at Farleigh Dickenson University in Teaneck NJ. Its transmitter is atop the Armstrong Tower in Alpine NJ off the Palisades Interstate Parkway, the same location where Major Edwin Armstrong did his early FM experiments when hardly anyone had equipment to receive the station. WFDU is powered at 3,000 watts at 195 meters (640 feet) in HAAT.

WNYU has the frequency Monday-Friday from 1pm to 1am. WFUV has it all other times. There is a 15 minute gap between one station signing off and one signing on, even though those AM stations in NY, Dallas and Chicago had no gap, so listeners would go from one station to the other, maybe not even realizing the switch had been made.
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Minor correction: it's WFUV (and WNBM) up on Montefiore.

WNYU is up at Bronx Community College. It would be a much more potent signal if it could go to Montefiore.
 
CADXER said:
The interesting thing in the filing is that WCEV and WRLL used a different transmitter even though they were both housed in the same building and used the same tower at 3350 S. Kedzie in Chicago.
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Do they get to pick which transmitter they like best? :)
 
cyberdad said:
Do they get to pick which transmitter they like best? :)
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Actually... the filing from WRLL includes pictures showing that WCEV removed its transmitter. WRLL is annoyed (and justifiably so) that it ended up on the hook for the full rent at the site in 2020 even though it could only be on the air half the time.
 
The way I heard it, when WEVD 1330 and WPOW 1330 had separate sites, it sometimes took at least several seconds for them to switch between the two sites. The DXers near NYC were always listening during the few seconds they were off the air. The Chief Engineer in the 1970s at WTRX 1330 told me that most of their QSL Card and Reception Report requests came from the City of New York. I asked why that was and he explained the situation with the the Shared Time with separate TL sites.
 
In 1959, Chess Brothers Leonard and Phil, as the L & P Corporation, bought WTAC 600 Flint, Michigan. If you believed the WTAC Coverage Map, you would have assumed that WTAC could be heard in Detroit fairly well, enough to promote their Records in both Flint and Detroit. Because of the hilly ridge in between, the conductivity falls way off and it doesn't, between that and the DA pattern. They sold WTAC in 1961, and the proceeds were used to buy WHFC 1450 in 1963, and WEHS/WHFC-FM 97.9. WHFC soon became WVON, which despite it's 1000 Watts Day 250 Watts Night, served the demographics of Chess Records better and with many more people. Eventually, and again until fairly recently, 97.9 was WLUP, the Loop. The LUP was also a subtle reference to Leonard and Phil Chess. Since WLAP was in Lexington, KY, the opted for L U P, U being a mathematical symbol for and/combined with and the first letter of the Germanic/Yiddish word "und" meaning "and".
 
In the Mid-Willamette Valley of Oregon there is a sharetime arrangement on the C3 noncommercial channel allocated to Dallas - 98.3 MHz. Transmission facilities are shared and eventually the studio building in Salem. The licenses are for "Radio Poder" KTUP and "CCTVSalem" KMWV. KTUP operates during 10am-6pm while KMWV has the rest. The nearby KMUZ is relayed on one of the KMWV/KTUP HD channels to feed a 100.7 translator.. So, depending on the time of day KMUZ will air a KTUP-HD2 or KMWV-HD2 companion ID..
 
DavidEduardo said:
At one time... back in the 60’ at least... didn’t each one have a separate transmitter site? I recall there were brief pauses as each one signed off and the other came on. And if one had not synchronized it’s clock, local DXers sometimes had a few moments to hear other stations on the channel.
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Just came across this old post.....

If we're talking about the 1960s, IIRC what happened was WVON took over 1450 from WHFC and was alone on the channel for the rest of the channel.

You might have been thinking of 1240 in Chicago, which was home to three seperate stations. WSBC, WEDC, and WCRW. Mostly ethnic and/or brokered programming on each.

I'm not sure, but I seem to recall that WSBC and WCRW shared a transmitter while WEDC had its own. Or maybe WEDC shared with WSBC, In any case I'm pretty surer WSBC, the most financially stable of the three shared their transmitter with one of the others. At the location where I live now, as well as where I grew up ten miles east of here, none of the three was audible here at night. However, I remember one night I was in the city when "the baton was passed", and yes, there was a couple of second where the usual graveyard slop on 1240 came through in the clear. I also remember that WEDC was the station that came on with a signal that was slightly weaker.

WSBC, not surprisingly, is the station that remains.
 
Up near the corner of Greenwood between Dempster and Ballard, where the old WJJD transmitter was located after it moved from Mooseheart, I heard two 1240s switch a few times in the 1960s and 1970s. And definitely one was quite a bit weaker. But it was somewhat further away also. There were at least two transmitters then. The closest came in stronger than WLS, which surprised me. I had a Sony AM FM Cassette radio with a signal strength/tuning meter, and one was weaker. But there were also some changes along the line, including the 250 to 1000 watt conversions, which did not all happen at the same time. Probably the last one to change was WEDC. There were changes in the efficiencies, tower heights and series limiting resistors that showed up in Broadcasting. If you look at what the efficiency of WSBC versus the electrical height, you'll see that the power input still has to be less than 1000 watts. All of this is/was due to the proximity of WJOB 1230. The electrical height of the WSBC tower is 95.3 degrees, and the efficiency is shown as 241.4 mV/m at 1 km (150 mV/m at 1 mile), the recent minimum efficiency for Class C stations. The efficiency should be around 310 mV/m @ 1 kW with a full 1000 watt input. But it still has an amazing signal due to conductivity. A look at all three History Cards would tell the stories, if you can find the DWCRW and DWEDC ones.

Put in 60068 and you'll see that even with M-3, WSBC is stronger than WLS. And it was apparent to me the first time I visited, and the WLS signal was noisy on their first family Zenith transistor radio from circa 1960 (the one that cost $70-$100 and the kids weren't supposed to touch, so naturally when the parents left, every kid went for).
 
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It was there in 1962 or 1963, and I'd have to look at the History Card to see when they were licensed on Ballard Rd. and the Tollway. It was shortly thereafter. I think a Shopping Center developer offered them a lot of money for the property, even back then.
 
All three Chicago 1240s had their own towers and transmitters. I remember the switches from station to station with live announcers thanking the previous station.
I’d have to check to be sure, but WSBC bought out WCRW first, then WEDC, and moved to the WEDC transmitter.

Out here in the SW burbs, WCRW sounded the weakest, the others even.
 
Good luck with all three History Cards trying to figure out the timeline. Is there some way to reverse the colors on the Microfiche to print them out?

My recollection is that at one time, all three did have separate transmitters, but then two collocated and then the third. No doubt that at one time, the 250 watt stations had their towers near their ethnic and language target audience neighborhoods. Lower power stations have been able to do well that way over the years, putting their transmitter close to their target audience.
 
All this talk about Chicago's shared-time frequencies, and I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned 890.

WLS for many years shared the frequency (and the 50kw included) with WENR. This was well before my time, but if I'm not mistaken this ended in the early 1950s. I'm not sure if the two stations shared the same transmitter, but I'm guessing that they did.....at least in the final years of their shared time arrangement,

What I do know is that the WENR call letters were also on what became ABC O&O, channel 7 TV. Later WBKB, and now WLS-TV. The WENR calls also lasted into the early or mid 1960s on 94.7, before they were changed to WLS-FM, (94.7 went through a dizzying sequence of call letter and format changes....all on ABC's watch....before their eventual return to the current WLS-FM.)
 
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