The whole Steve Hansen era at KDKA. Went from being No. 1 in town to dropping like a brick.
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What are Pittsburgh's Biggest Radio Failures?
- Thread starter F.M.Hertz
- Start date
Pratte...
I think the reasons for no sports stations here were "big picture" reasons....
1) The economy in Pittsburgh in the 80's and early 90's was incredibly bad. There was no money here. Look at the retailers who were based in Western PA at one time.... Wander Sales, The Appliance Store, GC Murphy, David Weis, Dahlekmpers, Mace Electronics, Thrift Drug, Servistar Hardware, National Record Mart, The Listening Post, Kaufmann's, Joseph Horne.. all failed or were sold in the 80's and early 90's.
2) No one owned more than 2 stations, by the rules of the day. The real growth in sports programming has come as a result of big companies owning up to 7 stations in a market.
KDKA had the Pirates.
Hearst had the Steelers and Myron.
WJAS actually had a nice run with Bruce Keidan doing a 2-hour show in the afternoon (if there was a station that should have taken the plunge, WJAS was it, but Music of Your Life was very profitable and very low overhead.
3) Sports is seen as a reasonable cost alternative today because of the death of the music business. The music business used to make its money from record sales, now it makes its money by charging radio stations. Music royalties were never seen as a big cost 30 years ago, so hiring a staff of DJs was the cheapest programming out there. One of the unintended side effects of consolidation is that it gave the music industry big, easily identifiable targets to go after for money, as opposed to 5,000 different station owners.
Back when WWSW tried their talk format, I was told that one of the reasons they dumped it was that their AFTRA contract also called for the producer jobs to be union, meaning they were very expensive. That meant it literally cost twice as much to go all-talk as it did to play music. And there was no revenue here to support it. This was a low-paying market. I read in an article about John DiBella that he made $42K doing mornings at WPEZ circa 1980.
So you had: Westinghouse ...KD / Pirates
Hearst.... WTAE/ 96KX/ Steelers
Nationwide, then Renda... WSHH/ WJAS (plus Renda owned 1360 prior)
EZ Communications... B94
ABC (then I'm drawing a blank...)..WDVE
Shamrock... WWSW AM/FM (on FM, WPEZ then 3WS)
Sheridan... WAMO AM/FM
Entercom... WEEP/WDSY
The Benns brothers... Y97/1550
Saul Frischling... WLTJ
Nelson Goldberg... WYDD/ WKPA
ABC then Bob Dickey... KQV
Some operation out of Long Island.... the 87 formats on 100.7 that included XX, Classy 101 and Mix Jamz....
Don't honestly know who owned WPIT before Salem...
Given that landscape it would have taken someone with some serious vision to go all-sports.
I think the reasons for no sports stations here were "big picture" reasons....
1) The economy in Pittsburgh in the 80's and early 90's was incredibly bad. There was no money here. Look at the retailers who were based in Western PA at one time.... Wander Sales, The Appliance Store, GC Murphy, David Weis, Dahlekmpers, Mace Electronics, Thrift Drug, Servistar Hardware, National Record Mart, The Listening Post, Kaufmann's, Joseph Horne.. all failed or were sold in the 80's and early 90's.
2) No one owned more than 2 stations, by the rules of the day. The real growth in sports programming has come as a result of big companies owning up to 7 stations in a market.
KDKA had the Pirates.
Hearst had the Steelers and Myron.
WJAS actually had a nice run with Bruce Keidan doing a 2-hour show in the afternoon (if there was a station that should have taken the plunge, WJAS was it, but Music of Your Life was very profitable and very low overhead.
3) Sports is seen as a reasonable cost alternative today because of the death of the music business. The music business used to make its money from record sales, now it makes its money by charging radio stations. Music royalties were never seen as a big cost 30 years ago, so hiring a staff of DJs was the cheapest programming out there. One of the unintended side effects of consolidation is that it gave the music industry big, easily identifiable targets to go after for money, as opposed to 5,000 different station owners.
Back when WWSW tried their talk format, I was told that one of the reasons they dumped it was that their AFTRA contract also called for the producer jobs to be union, meaning they were very expensive. That meant it literally cost twice as much to go all-talk as it did to play music. And there was no revenue here to support it. This was a low-paying market. I read in an article about John DiBella that he made $42K doing mornings at WPEZ circa 1980.
So you had: Westinghouse ...KD / Pirates
Hearst.... WTAE/ 96KX/ Steelers
Nationwide, then Renda... WSHH/ WJAS (plus Renda owned 1360 prior)
EZ Communications... B94
ABC (then I'm drawing a blank...)..WDVE
Shamrock... WWSW AM/FM (on FM, WPEZ then 3WS)
Sheridan... WAMO AM/FM
Entercom... WEEP/WDSY
The Benns brothers... Y97/1550
Saul Frischling... WLTJ
Nelson Goldberg... WYDD/ WKPA
ABC then Bob Dickey... KQV
Some operation out of Long Island.... the 87 formats on 100.7 that included XX, Classy 101 and Mix Jamz....
Don't honestly know who owned WPIT before Salem...
Given that landscape it would have taken someone with some serious vision to go all-sports.
Pratte and Clarke: Thanks for your thoughts and correction. I should have put 1982 as the year but WABC flipped, but I was writing on the fly. Not a great excuse, but I apologize. I even have the last half-hour on disc of WABC as a music station.
As for the thinking that Pittsburgh is behind the times, I can stand behind that comment, sort of. As a Western Pennsylvania native, I have come to realize that people are ever slow to change here. That can also be said for radio. It seems as if that thinking at The Big K is that "we've done it this way for 90+ years, and it's worked, so why change it?" WDVE also plays the same songs over and over (ex. Skynyrd's "Freebird" and Van Halen's "Ice Cream Man." ). It's good at times to go with the tried and true, but you also have to embrace change.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say for example that KDKA should have stuck with Kevin Miller. He was young, he was slowly building a following, and he was cutting into Rush Limbaugh's numbers in a huge way. The problem that he didn't work is that he wasn't promoted as much as some of the other hosts, they really didn't groom him in the way that they should have, and management left him out to twist in the wind after the "Market Square Dunk Tank Debacle" during the 2008 election. They could have made him a huge part of their format and brought a younger sound to the station.
What do we have now? Marty Griffin shooting from the hip and on the verge of getting himself and the station in a lot of hot water, and a retreaded Mike Pintek who is doing the same shtick that he did during his first tour of duty. Management doesn't want to change because they are still making money, and they don't want to piss off the rest of its audience even though it's slowly dying. Sorry to say it, but if CBS really cares about a heritage station they need to blow up the entire lineup including weekends, bring in some younger hosts under the age of 50, and not be afraid to have their hosts talk about topics that you would find in a hot talk format. Bottom line: take some chances and don't be afraid to push the envelope. Also, move to the FM frequency (100.7?)
As for WDVE, the music could be tweeked a little. Expand the playiist by adding more songs, play some fresher music, and play more from some local bands and package them as the next big thing.
Also, most of these stations broadcast on the internet, but don't realize what kind of goldmine they are sitting on. More and more people listen online in their offices, and there are those that have moved from the area that still listen to their hometown stations faithfully. In the next 5 to 10 years, most new cars will have internet radio. Most of these stations cover their spot breaks with filler such as playing snippets of old interviews, comedy bits from morning shows, promos and PSAs. That's wasted inventory. I'm surprised that the General Managers who love the money and tell their sales staffs to sell anything they can, don't really push their webcasting capabilities.
Maybe it's me, but radio programmers won't take any chances like they used to. I think that it's all because of the bottom line.
As for the thinking that Pittsburgh is behind the times, I can stand behind that comment, sort of. As a Western Pennsylvania native, I have come to realize that people are ever slow to change here. That can also be said for radio. It seems as if that thinking at The Big K is that "we've done it this way for 90+ years, and it's worked, so why change it?" WDVE also plays the same songs over and over (ex. Skynyrd's "Freebird" and Van Halen's "Ice Cream Man." ). It's good at times to go with the tried and true, but you also have to embrace change.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say for example that KDKA should have stuck with Kevin Miller. He was young, he was slowly building a following, and he was cutting into Rush Limbaugh's numbers in a huge way. The problem that he didn't work is that he wasn't promoted as much as some of the other hosts, they really didn't groom him in the way that they should have, and management left him out to twist in the wind after the "Market Square Dunk Tank Debacle" during the 2008 election. They could have made him a huge part of their format and brought a younger sound to the station.
What do we have now? Marty Griffin shooting from the hip and on the verge of getting himself and the station in a lot of hot water, and a retreaded Mike Pintek who is doing the same shtick that he did during his first tour of duty. Management doesn't want to change because they are still making money, and they don't want to piss off the rest of its audience even though it's slowly dying. Sorry to say it, but if CBS really cares about a heritage station they need to blow up the entire lineup including weekends, bring in some younger hosts under the age of 50, and not be afraid to have their hosts talk about topics that you would find in a hot talk format. Bottom line: take some chances and don't be afraid to push the envelope. Also, move to the FM frequency (100.7?)
As for WDVE, the music could be tweeked a little. Expand the playiist by adding more songs, play some fresher music, and play more from some local bands and package them as the next big thing.
Also, most of these stations broadcast on the internet, but don't realize what kind of goldmine they are sitting on. More and more people listen online in their offices, and there are those that have moved from the area that still listen to their hometown stations faithfully. In the next 5 to 10 years, most new cars will have internet radio. Most of these stations cover their spot breaks with filler such as playing snippets of old interviews, comedy bits from morning shows, promos and PSAs. That's wasted inventory. I'm surprised that the General Managers who love the money and tell their sales staffs to sell anything they can, don't really push their webcasting capabilities.
Maybe it's me, but radio programmers won't take any chances like they used to. I think that it's all because of the bottom line.
Part- I know about the struggles of the Pittsburgh economy you're speaking of.
But at this time WTAE makes a bold attempt at general talk- why not sports talk?
One thing that might have been a reason why there were no full time sports talk radio stations at this time was Myron Cope was in semi-retirement and only doing two shows a week come 1989. Now, if Myron decides he's going to stay on full time, maybe WTAE tries to build around him.
Certainly Steelers/Pitt/Myron from 6-8/Phil Musick from 3-6/Stan Savran 9-12/Bruce Keidan 12-3/Von Benko 8-11 and then whatever else whenever else (Hillgrove? Colony? Junker? Someone young, new, and cheap who would have sent in a tape at that time like Scott Ferrall, Mark Madden, or possibly Ron Cook?), even in the days before you could have a syndicated programming fill in the slots, would have been big.
I did some research and found out WIP in Philly actually carried Larry King overnight, and since a lot of King's show was sports orientated that was a good fit for the era for overnight.
Sports morning shows weren't really en vouge back then, so you could have continued with the morning show WTAE had then, possibly with longer sports updates and more recorded commentaries from the sports talkers (commentaries were commonplace on the WTAE morning show then; I still remember Phil Musick leading one off with "The two most overrated things in the world are sex with virgins and," which, to be honest, after hearing that lead in I don't remember what the "and" was. I will, however, go on record as saying in 1989 the three most overrated things in the world were sex with virgins, Bubby Brister, and Jim Leyland), and its heavy news content.
By the way, before anyone says that I am second guessing- trust me- I was thinking as a teenager how big all-sports talk in Pittsburgh would have been.
Other ideas-
WIXZ. Signal a setback, but at that time they had the Cleveland Cavaliers, NASCAR, Ron Barr, high school sports, etc.
In this case, the way it would have worked is if the station had hired a bunch of young talent for minimum wage or something and they were innovative and compelling enough to have made it. I have no idea if WIXZ could have promoted this, my guess is they couldn't have, but I do think the talent could have carried the station.
In the days of Prime Sports 1360 I remember they did have local update anchors. Some of these guys went on to much bigger and better things. Is it so hard to believe that Phil Elsin, son of Howard Elsin (the dentist turned sports talk show host on KDKA), who went on to become a rather prominent sportscaster in Little Rock, Arkansas; or Kevin Henry, who went on to be a television anchor and reporter for 15 years in Virginia, could have been good and compelling local sports talk show hosts?
96.1- This is a real out-of-the-box thought, because NOBODY was thinking FM talk back then. But 96.1 back then had the Steelers, and I'm sure Pitt wouldn't have minded if their games were simulcast on FM back then, too.
Now, I don't know. Kiss is doing pretty well now, so people might think I'm crazy to suggest they should have become an all-sports station back then.
But hey, anything to have prevented us from seeing those horrible Variety 96 TV ads in the mid-90s with the perky woman saying "Hootie and the Blowfish!"
Anything.
Next idea- Taking one of those frequencies that were still on the air but really not doing much and making it all sports. Why did 970 have to wait until 2000 to go all sports? Why did 1080, once the flagship of the Pittsburgh Penguins, simulcast WDSY instead of trying to do something with the station?
You can say it would have taken someone with real vision. I say it would have taken someone to have just scanned their AM dial at night at the time or known what was being broadcast in neighboring cities. I say you could have gotten the same demo tapes you get from young broadcasters just looking for a chance, found some good ones, and paid them box tops and bottle caps and made it work in the days right after the debut of WFAN and most certainly in the days of the One-on-One sports network (1993) to provide filler programming.
I say that during the newspaper strike of 1992, with the Pens winning the Stanley Cup, the Pirates winning their division, and the Steelers having the best record in the AFC that to NOT have a local all-sports radio network to capitalize on this is the height of stupidity!
But at this time WTAE makes a bold attempt at general talk- why not sports talk?
One thing that might have been a reason why there were no full time sports talk radio stations at this time was Myron Cope was in semi-retirement and only doing two shows a week come 1989. Now, if Myron decides he's going to stay on full time, maybe WTAE tries to build around him.
Certainly Steelers/Pitt/Myron from 6-8/Phil Musick from 3-6/Stan Savran 9-12/Bruce Keidan 12-3/Von Benko 8-11 and then whatever else whenever else (Hillgrove? Colony? Junker? Someone young, new, and cheap who would have sent in a tape at that time like Scott Ferrall, Mark Madden, or possibly Ron Cook?), even in the days before you could have a syndicated programming fill in the slots, would have been big.
I did some research and found out WIP in Philly actually carried Larry King overnight, and since a lot of King's show was sports orientated that was a good fit for the era for overnight.
Sports morning shows weren't really en vouge back then, so you could have continued with the morning show WTAE had then, possibly with longer sports updates and more recorded commentaries from the sports talkers (commentaries were commonplace on the WTAE morning show then; I still remember Phil Musick leading one off with "The two most overrated things in the world are sex with virgins and," which, to be honest, after hearing that lead in I don't remember what the "and" was. I will, however, go on record as saying in 1989 the three most overrated things in the world were sex with virgins, Bubby Brister, and Jim Leyland), and its heavy news content.
By the way, before anyone says that I am second guessing- trust me- I was thinking as a teenager how big all-sports talk in Pittsburgh would have been.
Other ideas-
WIXZ. Signal a setback, but at that time they had the Cleveland Cavaliers, NASCAR, Ron Barr, high school sports, etc.
In this case, the way it would have worked is if the station had hired a bunch of young talent for minimum wage or something and they were innovative and compelling enough to have made it. I have no idea if WIXZ could have promoted this, my guess is they couldn't have, but I do think the talent could have carried the station.
In the days of Prime Sports 1360 I remember they did have local update anchors. Some of these guys went on to much bigger and better things. Is it so hard to believe that Phil Elsin, son of Howard Elsin (the dentist turned sports talk show host on KDKA), who went on to become a rather prominent sportscaster in Little Rock, Arkansas; or Kevin Henry, who went on to be a television anchor and reporter for 15 years in Virginia, could have been good and compelling local sports talk show hosts?
96.1- This is a real out-of-the-box thought, because NOBODY was thinking FM talk back then. But 96.1 back then had the Steelers, and I'm sure Pitt wouldn't have minded if their games were simulcast on FM back then, too.
Now, I don't know. Kiss is doing pretty well now, so people might think I'm crazy to suggest they should have become an all-sports station back then.
But hey, anything to have prevented us from seeing those horrible Variety 96 TV ads in the mid-90s with the perky woman saying "Hootie and the Blowfish!"
Anything.
Next idea- Taking one of those frequencies that were still on the air but really not doing much and making it all sports. Why did 970 have to wait until 2000 to go all sports? Why did 1080, once the flagship of the Pittsburgh Penguins, simulcast WDSY instead of trying to do something with the station?
You can say it would have taken someone with real vision. I say it would have taken someone to have just scanned their AM dial at night at the time or known what was being broadcast in neighboring cities. I say you could have gotten the same demo tapes you get from young broadcasters just looking for a chance, found some good ones, and paid them box tops and bottle caps and made it work in the days right after the debut of WFAN and most certainly in the days of the One-on-One sports network (1993) to provide filler programming.
I say that during the newspaper strike of 1992, with the Pens winning the Stanley Cup, the Pirates winning their division, and the Steelers having the best record in the AFC that to NOT have a local all-sports radio network to capitalize on this is the height of stupidity!
F.M.Hertz said:
What major radio decision in the last 80 years has NOT been motivated by the bottom line?
One of the reasons commercial radio started was companies that owned stations also had a stake in selling radio receivers.
Parttimer said:
Taft?
Parttimer said:
Taft did own KQV between ABC and Calvary Inc. (Dickey)
Pyramid Broadcasting owned WPIT/AM-FM
Boss Radio said:
Yes... thanks....
And to Pratte.... why WTAE, for instance, went general talk instead of all-sports is that the sales side of the business wasn't comfortable with trying to sell something that super-served one demo (men 25-54 in this case). Aside from rock stations, the narrow, channel-driven sales approach that you can execute when you own a cluster of stations is very risky when you only own one.
Why not 1080? 4 watts at night. From Hampton Township. When I worked at WEEP in the 80's we couldn't even hear the night signal in the studios downtown, we had to run a phone line from the modulation monitor at the transmitter site to have an air monitor.
Sports talk in Atlanta got started when two guys did an LMA on 790, and one of them did an airshift himself. Now it's owned by a big company and is hugely successful. The answer here would have been for someone to buy and upgrade 540 or 620 (which Stevens eventually did with 620, but with a different business plan).
Personally, if I hit the Powerball, I would want to buy out Renda and Stevens here, plus get 103.5 from Keymarket. I'd leave WSHH alone (or, although it sounds crazy, maybe lean it older to try and get to #1 6+ a la WDUV in Tampa), put a good new rock simulcast on 103.1 and 103.5 to make the X decide whether it's a rock station or a sports station, do sports on 620 and news/talk on 1320, and flip 770 and 1360 to someone. But that's just me....
Part, why dream on Powerball?
I would be willing to go in with you on that and get some investors!
I would ask this- if 1080 was only four watts at night, why was it the Penguins flagship some 40 years ago? I realize that the NHL wasn't the draw then it is today, but how did anyone know they were playing?
Even the Pittsburgh Gladiators Arena Football team aired their games on KQV, which doesn't have a great nighttime signal at all, but at least it can be heard.
Again, though, we're down to cliches now. "The sales staff wasn't comfortable selling to only one demographic."
Were Joe DeStio and Eartha Jackson any more comfortable doing sports reports after years of news when the switch finally did occur?
Did nobody show them that WFAN was the top billing station in the country?
Did nobody remind them that, "Hey, we're WTAE. We've been the city's sports leader for quite some time now, let's go with our bread and butter?"
Did nobody come to the conclusion that- "HEY! THIS IS RADIO! YOU SELL TO TARGET DEMOS!!!!"
Did nobody look over at WDVE, see that they were capitalizing on catering to the demographic you speak of and taking the city by storm, and ask "how can we get in on that?"
Side note- that's essentially what 97 Rock did during that period of time. Which I know a lot of people liked back then because they played stuff like Judas Priest and Metallica that WDVE generally did not, but then even that edge to their rock music began to wither away, and then the reason you listed to them, if you did, was eventually because they were the flagship for Pitt and/or had on The War Room with Jim Quinn. Outside of trying to sell us the idea that "Piano Man" was a rock song, their playlist differed very little from WDVE, so why not just go with No. 1?
This is total hindsight now, but had Steel City gone all sports in FM back when (which would have been asking a lot because I don't know if FM talk in 1990-91 even existed anywhere), you get the feeling if Pitt and Quinn would have metriculated there it would have been very big. Granted, Quinn didn't arrive until the mid-90s and Pitt towards 2000, but with a more talk centric format they would have definitely been players for these entities sooner. Heck, the Penguins left in 1994 to go to WTAE, an FM station back then that would have bid for them and built around them would have been huge! And why with the Steelers/Penguins/Pitt WTAE waited until the Pens left, Myron left for good, and the other contracts were drying up to go all sports, instead letting 1360 beat them to the punch (!), shows some serious lack of vision.
Back to my original question on WTAE- Did the sales staff actually say "I'm more comfortable selling to the likes who listen to Lynn Cullen and Sally Jessy Rapheal than the likes who listen to the Steelers?"
Time to get some new salesmen if they were.
I would be willing to go in with you on that and get some investors!
I would ask this- if 1080 was only four watts at night, why was it the Penguins flagship some 40 years ago? I realize that the NHL wasn't the draw then it is today, but how did anyone know they were playing?
Even the Pittsburgh Gladiators Arena Football team aired their games on KQV, which doesn't have a great nighttime signal at all, but at least it can be heard.
Again, though, we're down to cliches now. "The sales staff wasn't comfortable selling to only one demographic."
Were Joe DeStio and Eartha Jackson any more comfortable doing sports reports after years of news when the switch finally did occur?
Did nobody show them that WFAN was the top billing station in the country?
Did nobody remind them that, "Hey, we're WTAE. We've been the city's sports leader for quite some time now, let's go with our bread and butter?"
Did nobody come to the conclusion that- "HEY! THIS IS RADIO! YOU SELL TO TARGET DEMOS!!!!"
Did nobody look over at WDVE, see that they were capitalizing on catering to the demographic you speak of and taking the city by storm, and ask "how can we get in on that?"
Side note- that's essentially what 97 Rock did during that period of time. Which I know a lot of people liked back then because they played stuff like Judas Priest and Metallica that WDVE generally did not, but then even that edge to their rock music began to wither away, and then the reason you listed to them, if you did, was eventually because they were the flagship for Pitt and/or had on The War Room with Jim Quinn. Outside of trying to sell us the idea that "Piano Man" was a rock song, their playlist differed very little from WDVE, so why not just go with No. 1?
This is total hindsight now, but had Steel City gone all sports in FM back when (which would have been asking a lot because I don't know if FM talk in 1990-91 even existed anywhere), you get the feeling if Pitt and Quinn would have metriculated there it would have been very big. Granted, Quinn didn't arrive until the mid-90s and Pitt towards 2000, but with a more talk centric format they would have definitely been players for these entities sooner. Heck, the Penguins left in 1994 to go to WTAE, an FM station back then that would have bid for them and built around them would have been huge! And why with the Steelers/Penguins/Pitt WTAE waited until the Pens left, Myron left for good, and the other contracts were drying up to go all sports, instead letting 1360 beat them to the punch (!), shows some serious lack of vision.
Back to my original question on WTAE- Did the sales staff actually say "I'm more comfortable selling to the likes who listen to Lynn Cullen and Sally Jessy Rapheal than the likes who listen to the Steelers?"
Time to get some new salesmen if they were.
You miss my point, albeit slightly, on the sales issue. I think sales management was worried about having their entire fortunes made or broken one one narrow demo... at least with a general talk format you had male and female demos, and could potentially be included in a wider variety of agency buys.
FM talk was a rare breed in the 90's... Press Broadcasting had an outlet called "New Jersey 101.5" that was very successful. They tried to duplicate that when they bought 104.1 in Orlando (I lived there at the time) and it struggled until they put Howard Stern on in the morning, then it was a home run. FM talk was viewed as needing to be different from AM talk and with very few exceptions only worked if it included Stern.
No clue on how WEEP carried the Pens...before my time.... probably simulcast on FM?
And by the way, the "WFAN was the highest billing station in the country" story has an asterisk.... that number included all of Westwood One's billing.
FM talk was a rare breed in the 90's... Press Broadcasting had an outlet called "New Jersey 101.5" that was very successful. They tried to duplicate that when they bought 104.1 in Orlando (I lived there at the time) and it struggled until they put Howard Stern on in the morning, then it was a home run. FM talk was viewed as needing to be different from AM talk and with very few exceptions only worked if it included Stern.
No clue on how WEEP carried the Pens...before my time.... probably simulcast on FM?
And by the way, the "WFAN was the highest billing station in the country" story has an asterisk.... that number included all of Westwood One's billing.
Parttimer said:
Not that it would have made a huge difference but WEEP's post-sunset power facility was from closer-in the Spring Hill site. The authorization at the time specified daytime and critical hours from Hampton. Nevertheless, that 4 watts blanketed a few streets on the North Side and not much else.
Bob E. Nelson said:Not that it would have made a huge difference but WEEP's post-sunset power facility was from closer-in the Spring Hill site. The authorization at the time specified daytime and critical hours from Hampton. Nevertheless, that 4 watts blanketed a few streets on the North Side and not much else.
That was the old WILY tower, as well as the old WEEP-FM site. I didn't know 1080 ever had ANY power at night,
not even four watts. The never-built CP would have moved the COL to Hampton Township and the frequency to
1070, with 25kw days and 2.5kw at night. As I recall, they were opposed by 1060 Canton (then WQIO, and now
WILB), which also wanted to move to 1070. The WEEP array would have required eleven towers! It's no wonder
it was never built.
C.
Wasn't WEEP-AM a daytimer in the '70s? When they had the talk format, they'd sign off and send people to FM for the rest of the programming.
Boss Radio said:
Notwithstanding the pre-sunrise/post-sunset authorizations, 1080 has always been a daytimer. I imagine they
probably could get some kind of minimal nighttime power with the right directional array, but it would not cover
Pittsburgh, and probably wouldn't reach very far, especially if it originated in Hampton.
C.
The first couple years of Penguins play-by-play were on WEEP-FM. They were there because no one else wanted them. KDKA did the Penguins a huge (and inexplicable) favor by picking up their games in 1970.
Bob E. Nelson said:Parttimer said:
Not that it would have made a huge difference but WEEP's post-sunset power facility was from closer-in the Spring Hill site. The authorization at the time specified daytime and critical hours from Hampton. Nevertheless, that 4 watts blanketed a few streets on the North Side and not much else.
Myron told me that he did a study to get some night time power. He designed an array of 6 or 7 towers in a semi circle which would support a large mesh fence about 200 feet high. He would then place one additional tower in the focal point and he would be able to operate with about 50 watts. He admitted that it was not practical. This was to protect WTIC. He didn't think it would be a problem with KRLD.
cingram said:
The memory is getting fuzzy in my dotage but I'm fairly certain that WEEP did operate for a few hours beyond sunset with the PSSA facility.
I remember heading up to a WPNT late night remote at the Memories night club in the North Hills Village, going up East Street...and, sure enough, there was WEEP with a marginal signal mixing with WTIC. Intrigued, with some time to spare before I had to be on site, I drove up McKnight Road to see how far it went before it getting clobbered. It was gone totally...not a whiff...by Siebert Road.
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