Why Is WMAS's Tower So Short?

[Gregg]

94.7 WMAS Enfield runs the maximum 50,000 watts but only has a tower 180 feet above average terrain. With 50 kw they could have gotten a 500 foot tower, although with a fellow Cumulus station in Newark NJ at 94.7, they'd never seek to raise their tower height now.

The two other Class B stations in the Springfield market, WHYN-FM and WAQY, both have full Class B power and antenna height. (Class B covers most of the Northeast out to Milwaukee and down to Norfolk, as well as Puerto Rico and most of California.)

In fact, the WMAS tower must be in a valley because the actual tower is listed at 325 feet high, even though it's only 180 feet above average terrain. Most FM stations have opposite numbers. They try to position their towers on a hill or mountain, so they don't have to build and maintain a tall man-made tower.

I can remember in the 70s when WMAS-FM simulcast with then WMAS-AM 1450. The DJs liked to brag that their FM signal could be heard over six states. OK, Mass, CT, VT, NH and maybe the northwest corner of RI. But how did that 180 foot tower hit what I assume was NY? Could you pick up the WMAS-FM signal just at the border between Mass and NY State? Or maybe on a hilltop on the farthest eastern point of Long Island?

I'm sure it wouldn't be possible today to hear WMAS in six states.

 

[VoiceofWayne]

They COULD have located their antenna on Mt. Tom like their competitor WHYN-FM, or Provin Mountain like WAQY albeit at a decrease in ERP. I believe the thought was to keep the full power 50KW FM signal on the AM stick to better penetrate office buildings in downtown Springfield. With this arrangement, they would also save on tower rental costs but have a higher electric bill.
WMAS was originally licensed to Springfield, but "moved" to Enfield to allow WPKX to "move" to Windsor Locks to serve the Hartford market.

 

[reelyreal]

WMAS-FM went on the air from Mount Tom in 1947, and later moved down to the AM tower. I'm not sure why they moved.

 

[fybush]

Money.

At the time, FM sites had to be manned whenever the transmitter was on, and there just wasn't enough (or really any) return on investment on the FM from staffing a separate site on Mount Tom. Putting it at the AM site allowed the AM staff to babysit the FM whenever it needed attention.

There was a CP some years back to move 94.7 up to either Provin or Tom (I think Tom), but there's also value (especially to an AC station with heavy office listening) to having a smokingly strong signal in the core of the market. On less selective radios, WMAS-FM blows away everything else in downtown Springfield, after all.

 

[WBIMDJ]

WMAS was originally licensed to Springfield, but "moved" to Enfield to allow WPKX to "move" to Windsor Locks to serve the Hartford market.

Why would WMAS's city of license affect WPKX's change in city of license and location?

 

[reelyreal]

It's a long story, but with the WPKX antenna atop City Place I, the station no longer provided adequate coverage of Enfield. WPKX (now WUCS) changed its community of license to Windsor Locks, but doing so removed the "first local service" to Enfield. Citadel agreed to change WMAS-FM's community of license to Enfield to maintain the "first local service," and in exchange Clear Channel provided use of a generator at a tower site out in New Mexico.

 

[Gregg]

Isn't that a crazy story? So today a station with the call letters WMAS for MASsachusetts has its city of license in Enfield CT.

And isn't it crazy that decades ago, to save money, the owners of WMAS-FM actually moved the transmitter OFF a mountain and onto the tower of its co-owned AM, even though that only gives the station 180 feet above average terrain.

I really can't think of any other Class B station in the Northeast that has such low height above average terrain. Several Class B stations on Cape Cod, where there are no natural hills, have towers lower than 500'. But stations on Cape Cod really don't need to hit communities off the cape and may have FAA issues. WMAS has no such excuse.

 

[Bill-in-CT]

And isn't it crazy that decades ago, to save money, the owners of WMAS-FM actually moved the transmitter OFF a mountain and onto the tower of its co-owned AM, even though that only gives the station 180 feet above average terrain.

Some companies got out of the FM business in the 50s, including the owners of WAVZ-FM and WELI-FM. Regarding power and height, WLAD-FM had something like only 325 watts on a telephone pole next to its AM tower, until 1974.