WCHA-800

[DaveWilliams]

Sounds like WCHA-800 is now Oldies, simulcast with WHAG-1410, well at least to the extent they call music 'oldies' these days.

 

[RockofHBG]

That is correct. As of September 1, both WCHA and WHAG are carrying Scott Shannon's True Oldies Channel, dropping The Music Of Your Life which both stations had aired since May 1993. For the first time, the stations are regularly simulcast. There had been a temporary simulcast in mid 2009 due to a server crash in Hagerstown. Programming originates from Chambersburg, allowing both frequencies to have local news. The Music Of Your Life had been dying on the vine, beginning when the format stopped being distributed by Jones. It has become a total train wreck. On the other hand, True Oldies is amazingly well produced, unlike other satellite music formats that are primarily on the air for small market, throwaway frequencies. True Oldies is produced with programming placed first.

 

[GuyFry]

Speaking of that Chambersburg station.....did you know that there used to be a WCHA-TV, Channel 46? Yup; they operated for about a year in 1953 and '54...ceasing operations in July of 1954. They were a DuMont affiliate. Not sure they had a network feed via telephone line. They make have taken n off the air pickup off WNOW-TV, Channel 49 in York, which was also DuMont. Anybody know the location of WCHA-TV's transmitter site..and whether the tower is still standing. I wonder if Chambersburg's WJAL-TV69 operates from the same site? A fire on whatever mountain they were on burned their transmitter a few years ago. I'm not sure about WCHA-TV's operating power....(probably an RCA 1 kilowatt xmtr)...or whether they even got a city grade signal into Hagerstown or Martinsburg. I knew a fellow named Arthur "sully" Sullenberger who picked them up with a rooftop mast in Lancaster in '54. Some of those set-top converters worked well but some had terrible "drift"..and 6AF4A tubes had to be replaced freuently. Ah, those early days of Pennsylvania's scads of early, ill-fated UHF stations! The stuff legends are made of.

 

[RockofHBG]

Ah, yes WCHA-TV.....one of Sam Booth's few failing enterprises. Not his fault,though, when TVs were being manufactured without UHF tuners. WCHA fell to same fate many as other UHFs at the time. I believe the old transmitter sight is up on South Mountain, East of Chambersburg. Until the bathroom at the studio (in the old Cumberland Valley Railroad administration building at Penncraft and Lincoln Way East in Chambersburg, where WCHA AM and it's sisters still remain) was remodeled about a decade ago, the remnants of a shower stall remained that once enabled showering to take off makeup and relieve the sweat of the hot TV lights

 

[vacuum tube]

The tower was/is a 369 ft type 3600 made by Wind Turbine Company of West Chester PA. The drawings of the tower from 1953 indicate it was located on a mountain top in PA off an unidentified dirt road near a fire tower. The antenna was an RCA TFU-24, 40 feet in length. The tower was moved to 880 Commonweath Ave in Hagerstown, MD, after the TV station went dark. This was used when 106.9 WARK-FM went on the air in 1958. The tower was fitted with a 2 bay RCA BF-12B pylon FM antenna. The tower is/was shared with 1490 WARK AM until the FM site was moved to the current South Mountain location on the Frederick/Washington county line. The tower is still standing and in use to this day by WARK AM (shunt fed unipole). The old RCA pylon antenna is still atop the tower but the 1kw Westinghouse FM transmitter and feed line is long gone.

 

[loeper]

WNOW TV 49 was mentioned in this thread...I remember that station having lived in York in the 50s but don't remember how long it was on the air. did it stay on for a while after Dumont went off the air or did it fold with that network? I do remember that the WNOW radio operation (the fm later became Q106) rattled around in the TV building after it went off the air. are the radio operations still on "pleasureville hill"?

 

[GuyFry]

Loeper asked about the old Ch. 49, WNOW-TV. It lasted more than two years after the DuMont network died. They ran old movies for a couple of hours each night from 8pm until 10:30 or so. During their last few months, they took some prime time NBC shows that WGAL-TV was not carrying. (Note that Ch. 8 had a dual NBC/CBS affilation at that time And they carried Baltimore Oriole baseball. The WNOW-TV antenna was finally removed from the tower up on Pleasureville Hill some time ago, making way for an array of land mobile atetennae. Ch. 49's stick still lay where it dropped..some distance east of the tower in a field. The building has been taken over by some non-broadcast business. The famed "101 Ranch Boys" weekly live studio origination may have been WNOW-TV's most nobable show. Doc Daugherty (later of WSBA fame) was Channel 49's principal on camera news presenter and commercial voice. I never understood why WSBA-TV, Ch. 43 didn't snap him up. A man of real class and warmth. Lowell Williams, Richard Berg and Will Groff made a heroic effort to keep WNOW-TV going after DuMont died. The station was taken off the air on May 31, 1958 shortly after William F. Rust bought WNOW-AM-FM-TV for $255,000. For lore about the station, ask Glenn Winter, their Chief Engineer, who went on to own WSHP in Shippensburg and a couple of other small stations. I have often thought that WNOW-TV and WCMB-TV in Harrisburg could have simulcast
movies and syndicated shows after their DuMont affiliations ceased in 1955. But, it wasn't to be.

 

[grandoleopry]

In answer to Loepers question.
The Radio Operations for WQXA have long since moved from the Pleasureville
site. Since Aquired by Citadel the radio stations 105.7 FM & 1250 AM were
first moved to Elizabethtown with 106.7; Those operations minus the AM
were moved to Camp Hill several years ago.
AM 1250 was sold off to Wilkins Communications ; now call letters WYYC operating
from a building along South Queen Street in York.