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WYSL's 20/20 Party

M

Mark Giardina

I had the fortunate pleasure of being invited to a special 20/20 party for WYSL’s CEO and President Bob Savage. The event was to celebrate WYSL’s 20th anniversary and the radio station’s recent increase to 20kw.

At the party I ran into some old friends that I worked with back in the days when radio (to me) was fun. Going down memory lane is an experience that can be very enjoyable and sometimes melancholy.

Congratulations to Bob and his staff for the hard work in keeping WYSL on the air these many years. The station went from a 500kw daytimer, endured a fire in the early 1990s, and recently showed up in the local ratings. (Despite the fact many of us knew for years the station had listeners)

Bob has done what many of us only could dream. Start our own radio operation and make it a success. It took a lot of hard work, sweat, and determination, but the final result paid off.
 
500kw station: PJB, 800 on the dial, on the island of Bonaire, about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Figure-8 directional pattern aiming north and south. Cash-4-Christ format, aimed particularly for South American audience.
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Isn't XEX in Mexico City (730 on the dial) a 500kw'er too?
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And then there was "Radio Antilles" at 200kw on the island of Montserrat, before the volcano took out the two towers. (930 on the dial). Don't know the call letters.... and neither did anyone who worked there know. Calls should start with "Z", as Montserrat is a Brisitsh island.
 
If I remember correctly, XERF ran 250kw on 1570 from Villa Acuna, Mexico - right across the Rio Grande from Texas. I got a QSL card from them when I was a kid.
 
Didn't Wolfman Jack go out over a signal from Mexico that packed a monsterous amount of KWs during the 50s?
 
You guys should read Fowler and Crawford's definitive book on superpower Mexican stations, "Border Radio." It's the story of how country-and-western went mainstream thanks to high-power AM radio...the beginning of PI (per inquiry) paid shows, pre-recorded programming, and a lot of hugely entertaining people. I think Dr. John Brinkley's XERA in Acuna actually had a Mexican CP for 850KW but if I recall it's unclear whether that monster was ever built. There's also a link on Jim Hawkins' site to a photo of one of the massive power tubes used in one of the border blasters - if I recall the filament current draw was on the order of 450 amps! Fascinating stuff. At one point Dr. Brinkley had AT&T put in an equalized phone line from his goat-gland clinic in Kansas all the way to Acuna at a cost of $10K a month - and this was in 1936 dollars. And then there was the story about the Good Doc inviting leading 1930s radio technicians down to see his 100KW XER transmitter. Over dinner the engineers told Brinkley he could go to 500kw if he wanted. Doc asked, and how much would THAT cost? The engineers did some quick figuring and told him he'd need to replace the eight power tubes in his Tx plus have one spare on hand, at a cost of $4000 per tube. The story goes: Brinkley thought about it for a minute, said, "well, guess we'd better do it," and pulled out a bankroll, pulling off 36 $1000 bills and passing them down the table to the speechless Western Electric guy.
 
Re: WYSL's 20/20 Party/Border Blasters

I heard an interview with Wolfman about his days on his border blaster (XERB, if I remember correctly from my 1960's USN days in CA). "Birds would fly by the towers, and DIE.
 
Dr Brinkley had a house up here in the mountains of North Carolina..near Cashiers..His place is about 4 miles from here. There is a nicely built stone home and in the embankment from the highway there is the name "Doctor Brinkley" in laid-in bricks. Rumours around here were that he had made a deal with the local power company to bring in a HUGE amount of current for a "project" that he was going to start..never knew why there is this GIANT electric powerhouse built..Beautiful old fired brick and glass building. I love the "X" stories, and would love to be able to see more especially about what happened to these great old transmitters..

Congrats again to Bob , Judith and WYSL..I am proud to be a small part of their station!
 
Good posts in this thread from Mike, Bob, Jeff and Jim. I once heard an interesting story about Randy Michaels tinkering with the WLW transmitter when he was part of the Jacor team. As the story goes, he wanted to see if he could fire up the Bog One's 100kW water cooled, pond-fed transmitter. The story is more likely urban legend because the big ol' water cooled monster was probably dismantled by the late 70's and early 80's. Then again, with Randy, ya never know.

I very much enjoy these stories. AM radio continues to retain its charm to me, yet one of the increasingly annoying things about AM, particularly the big corporate AM's, is the ghastly quality of the audio on many stations. And please, don't even get me started on the cancer that is HD.

I don't think AM is dead, certainly not stations like WYSL, but so many stations sound as if they're on life support that you can almost hear the intermittent 2 kHz tones of a heart-respirator monitor in the background. As a side bar, does anybody think people under 50 will return to AM as a regular source of music, news and entertainment?

-9-
 
Element9 wrote
I don't think AM is dead, certainly not stations like WYSL, but so many stations sound as if they're on life support that you can almost hear the intermittent 2 kHz tones of a heart-respirator monitor in the background. As a side bar, does anybody think people under 50 will return to AM as a regular source of music, news and entertainment?
Click to expand...

I think it could happen. The catch is that it would have to offer a distinct form of programming and market the heck out of it. None of the "we'll do format X better than station A in this market idea". The rewards would be variable and work would be hard. Will happen is another story entirely.
 
"I once heard an interesting story about Randy Michaels tinkering with the WLW transmitter when he was part of the Jacor team. As the story goes, he wanted to see if he could fire up the Bog One's 100kW water cooled, pond-fed transmitter. The story is more likely urban legend because the big ol' water cooled monster was probably dismantled by the late 70's and early 80's. Then again, with Randy, ya never know."

The real story's even more interesting than that. Turns out WLW still has its very FIRST 50 kW transmitter, a 1927 vintage Western Electric 7A, which is said to be the very first "50" built and put in service by anyone other than the one Westinghouse built at the same time for KDKA. Michaels and WLW CE Paul Jellison made it a special project to get it ready to fire up once again as Y2K approached, because there was no way anything in its circuitry could be remotely compromised by the Y2K computer bug that everyone was afraid of in those days. On the evening of December 31, 1999, they succeeded in getting that 1927 transmitter back on the air for the first time since the mid-1970s, and that was the transmitter that broadcast WLW's programming as the 20th century came to an end. It took the feed from the modern Orban Optimod audio processor easily, and sounded great.

Early the next morning they put the old Western Electric rig to bed and fired up their current model Harris DX50 once again. But the old WE transmitter still exists intact and gets fired up every once in a while to make sure it's still operational. It's now 80 years old, but it still stands ready to serve as a working backup transmitter if it's ever needed again...which may make it the oldest radio transmitter still in service worldwide.
 
Element9 said:
does anybody think people under 50 will return to AM as a regular source of music, news and entertainment?

-9-
Click to expand...


People under 50 can't return to an AM that they never listened to in the first place.

Shortly after the mid-70s I began to hear smug and condecending "civilians" of my generation (50+) point out "I NEVER listen to AM...I ONLY listen to the FM".

Somewhere in the mid 80s I started to hear...."What is AM?"

At around that time I was offered a job as Ring Announcer for the WWF; being the forward thinking, big picture fella' that I am........."Naaah, AM Radio is the future", says I.
"I'll just stay put, It's AM for me"
 
Somewhere in the mid 80s I started to hear...."What is AM?" At around that time I was offered a job as Ring Announcer for the WWF; being the forward thinking, big picture fella' that I am........."Naaah, AM Radio is the future", says I. "I'll just stay put, It's AM for me"
Click to expand...

You woulda been great! And rather than hearing "are you ready to rummmmmmmm-ble!" we might be hearing "are you ready to seggggggggg-wayyyyyyyy!?" instead.

Oh how the course of entertainment might have been altered!

I'll bet WWF doesn't offer TIA-CREF. And with your 30 years "in," some might offer that you made the right decision staying at WEBR/WNED-AM.

-9-
 
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