I saw this post awhile back and decided to make a new thread outlining the downfall of the radio station to those of you who are wondering what happened.
I remember it being sometime in 2011 or 2012-ish the Radio Station was sold to a new company who wanted to "update" the station into the new era. They went in and removed all of the AM Transmitters the Mainframe and the Computers that ran the station seamlessly for decades and when they put in their new equipment nothing worked. I only know this because my Father who was a Friday Radio Host at WPAM "Rick's Rockin' Requests", along with Bob Murray who ran the Lunch hour special during the weekends were not notified of this prior and walked into the station to prepare their radio shows only to find out that everything that was worked for during those decades was lost and thrown in the trash. All of the Record Stacks, the CDs in which there was Hundreds upon hundreds of, Recording's of past radio shows, Tapes commercials and etc were all tossed in a dumpster.
They tried to gets Bob and Rick back to the station to help them get the AM Station back on the air but the price it would cost to replace those transmitters was more than they thought. They were massive cabinets that ran off of vacuum tubes and all i remember going there with my dad at 3-4am to fix them as they went bad there was atleast 5 or 6 of these massive things in the equipment room. I believe they were RCA or Art Deco transmitters. They eventually refused to helped them and the station fizzled off the air for months.
Eventually the station was brought back online some months later but the AM Signal was not as great and you could not get the station from outside Pottsville.
In which in turn sucks because WPAM was THE radio station for Schuylkill County during any sort of Major Storm or disaster as the station shared power with the Local School that sits less than a football field away with backup generators so the station in its time never went off the air. I basically grew up at that station during my childhood and thats what got me into classic rock and music.
I know it's not an exciting story but its a story at the least for those of you left with questions and i hope it sums it up.
Rick never forgot about his listeners and every so often he goes onto to tell stories about meeting famous people and the events that were held at the station and the memories made there.
"More rock than you can shake a tambourine at. The Phoenix 1450 WPAM Pottsville"
I remember it being sometime in 2011 or 2012-ish the Radio Station was sold to a new company who wanted to "update" the station into the new era. They went in and removed all of the AM Transmitters the Mainframe and the Computers that ran the station seamlessly for decades and when they put in their new equipment nothing worked. I only know this because my Father who was a Friday Radio Host at WPAM "Rick's Rockin' Requests", along with Bob Murray who ran the Lunch hour special during the weekends were not notified of this prior and walked into the station to prepare their radio shows only to find out that everything that was worked for during those decades was lost and thrown in the trash. All of the Record Stacks, the CDs in which there was Hundreds upon hundreds of, Recording's of past radio shows, Tapes commercials and etc were all tossed in a dumpster.
They tried to gets Bob and Rick back to the station to help them get the AM Station back on the air but the price it would cost to replace those transmitters was more than they thought. They were massive cabinets that ran off of vacuum tubes and all i remember going there with my dad at 3-4am to fix them as they went bad there was atleast 5 or 6 of these massive things in the equipment room. I believe they were RCA or Art Deco transmitters. They eventually refused to helped them and the station fizzled off the air for months.
Eventually the station was brought back online some months later but the AM Signal was not as great and you could not get the station from outside Pottsville.
In which in turn sucks because WPAM was THE radio station for Schuylkill County during any sort of Major Storm or disaster as the station shared power with the Local School that sits less than a football field away with backup generators so the station in its time never went off the air. I basically grew up at that station during my childhood and thats what got me into classic rock and music.
I know it's not an exciting story but its a story at the least for those of you left with questions and i hope it sums it up.
Rick never forgot about his listeners and every so often he goes onto to tell stories about meeting famous people and the events that were held at the station and the memories made there.
"More rock than you can shake a tambourine at. The Phoenix 1450 WPAM Pottsville"
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