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WEAW 1330 HISTORY

better still, does anyone have any photos of the original tower site with the "top hats" on the antennas.

I only saw it once back in the early 70's and remember it as being somewhat unique to a future tower junkie.
 
317C50KW said:
better still, does anyone have any photos of the original tower site with the "top hats" on the antennas.

I only saw it once back in the early 70's and remember it as being somewhat unique to a future tower junkie.
Click to expand...

I remember the top loaded towers, but I only remember that there were four towers. If there were six, how were they arranged? Again, does anyone have a really really old database with this information?

There was an application for six towers at the present site for night operation with 52 watts. Could that be where the six towers comes from? The two new towers were in between the long north south dimension of the array.

It looks like the original array in Evanston was two towers. It was originally 500 watts DA-D.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
317C50KW said:
better still, does anyone have any photos of the original tower site with the "top hats" on the antennas.

I only saw it once back in the early 70's and remember it as being somewhat unique to a future tower junkie.
Click to expand...

I remember the top loaded towers, but I only remember that there were four towers. If there were six, how were they arranged? Again, does anyone have a really really old database with this information?

There was an application for six towers at the present site for night operation with 52 watts. Could that be where the six towers comes from? The two new towers were in between the long north south dimension of the array.

It looks like the original array in Evanston was two towers. It was originally 500 watts DA-D.
Click to expand...

Do you know what year WEAW moved from the Evanston site and began transmitting from Northbrook?
 
I suspect it was when they went from 1 kW day to 5 kW day. We could search David's Broadcasting collection and try to get an idea. I do remember that on my first visits to the Chicago/O'Hare area, that WEAW was very weak, whereas WNMP was quite strong.
 
Radioman148, I've narrowed the search from 1 kW to 5 kW to between 1960 and 1963. It would seem a bit soon for the 1 kW upgrade to change the TL also. But without more information, who knows.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Radioman148, I've narrowed the search from 1 kW to 5 kW to between 1960 and 1963. It would seem a bit soon for the 1 kW upgrade to change the TL also. But without more information, who knows.
Click to expand...

Thanks SC.
 
For some reason, I can't get the 1961-1962 Broadcasting Yearbook to come up. Maybe it's just the smaller A-M Radio List By State file. But it's in that range.

I guess there could have been more towers hidden by trees along the Toll Road.

Same thing happened with WIND. When they rebuilt the site, the towers were no longer top loaded. That was probably in the mid to late 1970s. Those towers are two or three times higher and can't get lost in the trees along the expressway.

I saw something about WEAW that said they sold the land in 1978, and it took a few years to get back on the air across the street.
 
I got the whole 1961-1962 Yearbook to download. It shows WEAW as 1 kW, DA-D, with a CP for 5 kW DA-D. There's nothing about a TL change in the yearbook. But to get the signal back over Evanston, it probably took 5 kW.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I got the whole 1961-1962 Yearbook to download. It shows WEAW as 1 kW, DA-D, with a CP for 5 kW DA-D. There's nothing about a TL change in the yearbook. But to get the signal back over Evanston, it probably took 5 kW.
Click to expand...

OK, so it was probably after 1962.
 
t.j. said:
Hey JKB:

Could you tell me the format of WEAW while you were there in the 70's

Thanks
T.J.
Click to expand...

It was mostly brokered, religious and ethnic (very profitable), but in 1978 they tried to make it a contemporary christian (what a dud), and then just before going dark in 1980 they briefly flipped it to what the PD called housewife music like Air Supply. It wasn't given a chance to gain traction before the owners pulled the plug on the station.
JKB
 
I was stationed at the Great Lakes Navy Base 1968-69 and remember WEAW 1330 quite well. It was 6 short towers, I think in 2 rows of 3 each, right off the 4-lane hiway I traveled on. I think the proximity to O'Hare limited the tower height. The programming was a complete hodge-podge. I remember some brokered ethnic, some segments of MoR music, and a female-oriented midday talk show hosted by a lady named Stella White whose voice wasn't what I would call an ideal "radio voice." The legal ID was "WEAW Evanston, a service to Metropolitan Chicago." Signal was quite strong at the Navy base.
 
J Alex Bowab said:
I was stationed at the Great Lakes Navy Base 1968-69 and remember WEAW 1330 quite well. It was 6 short towers, I think in 2 rows of 3 each, right off the 4-lane hiway I traveled on. I think the proximity to O'Hare limited the tower height. The programming was a complete hodge-podge. I remember some brokered ethnic, some segments of MoR music, and a female-oriented midday talk show hosted by a lady named Stella White whose voice wasn't what I would call an ideal "radio voice." The legal ID was "WEAW Evanston, a service to Metropolitan Chicago." Signal was quite strong at the Navy base.
Click to expand...

Good memory, Alex. Stella was with the station until Jane Hall flipped it Christian. The voice was the result of a lifetime of smoking. When I worked with her the only thing that differentiated her from a chain smoker was that she used a match or a lighter to light her cigarettes, never another cigarette. She was a nice lady. The station ID, when I was there, was "WEAW Evanston/Chicago, service..." We always had delusions of adequacy. - JKB
 
I suppose the old 1330 facility protected a lot of stations, hence 6 towers ... maybe 1340 in Joliet and Milwaukee, 1320 Kankakee ... who else?
 
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