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WZZQ and the tornado

D

Doctor_Technical

The Yazoo City thread brought up my own experience with the Candlestick Park tornado of 1966, which was yet another F5 wedge-tornado monster. As a kid I recall looking over the empty field which was later to become Smith-Wills stadium and seeing that ugly black cloud off in the distance.

As you may recall, that was the first time that the big Channel 3 tower hit the ground. Which brings me to the my question about WZZQ: was it -- or more specifically the then-beautiful-music WJDX-FM -- also on the WLBT tower at the time? When I served my short tour of duty at JDX/ZZQ aound '78, I never thought to ask if the FM was originally on one of the AM towers, or maybe the big STL tower.

Just idly wondering if the re-build (or build) of the tall WJDX-FM antenna caused some attention to be paid to the station's format, and thus if the argument could be made for the tornado contributing to the subsequent format change to the great ZZQ.
 
This is a case where we miss Bob Rall's memory of all things in Jackson radio history. Miss ya man!
I'll make a weak attempt to fill in.

Seems that we always had tower space on WLBT's tower for 102.9FM since initially the tv and radio stations were owned by the same entity. As for the ZZQ to MSI change, I can assure you that had nothing to do with the tower.
 
ZZQ becoming MSI Miss 103 was bcuz Keymarket bought it. Nothing to do with antenna location on a tower. Keymarket had country FMs pulling huge shares in other markets. At the time, the aggregate total of AM country shares (1400, 1450, and at times 1590) never added up to more than 5, maybe a 6. It wasn't rocket science to realize that Jackson was no different from other markets in this part of the country ... where FM Country stations were getting huge numbers. Keymarket knew, too, that even tho ZZQ had double digit shares, the country successor would also get comparable 12+ shares, and the country format was easier to sell to advertisers (better demos). It ain't often you leave a 13 share on the table, but in this case it worked. WSLI AM, which had been wasting its Class C FM for years, turned it country about the same time (1982-83?), as WXLY (apparently chosen because "WXLY" sounds sorta like "WSLI" - cute, but hardly meaningful), but that didn't last long.
 
Very cool info, thx.

Like most Mississippi folks of my age who were raised on ZZQ, I am still painfully aware of flip away from rock. I was actually wondering about the original flip TO rock around 1968.
 
Doctor_Technical said:
As you may recall, that was the first time that the big Channel 3 tower hit the ground. Which brings me to the my question about WZZQ: was it -- or more specifically the then-beautiful-music WJDX-FM -- also on the WLBT tower at the time? When I served my short tour of duty at JDX/ZZQ aound '78, I never thought to ask if the FM was originally on one of the AM towers, or maybe the big STL tower.

Just idly wondering if the re-build (or build) of the tall WJDX-FM antenna caused some attention to be paid to the station's format, and thus if the argument could be made for the tornado contributing to the subsequent format change to the great ZZQ.
Click to expand...
Now mind you I was in and out of the area through these years, but as I remember, they went circular polarization after they put up the new tall tower; the old one was “only” 1700’. In late 1967 or early 68, I recall there was a new Visual Electronics 20 Kw transmitter and the old Western was retired to the back room. I remember looking at that thing and George Corkren exclaimed “we went from bad to worse!” along with with a couple other expletives.  They we running on an RCA BTF5B the front and back doors were off of the new rig. Beautiful music was coming out of the speaker.  I think it was 14-bays and they were constantly burning down the 3” rigid transmission line.
Now I know the FM transmitter was collocated with the TV out near Whitfield Hospital in Rankin County until they moved to Raymond in the early 1960’s. The original ch-3 turn-style antenna and tower stub from the old site is still out there at Raymond as of a year ago. I don’t know where the FM started life but WJDX would have been on 1300 kHz in those days before the swap with WRBC-620 and that is a whole ‘nuther story that I don’t have answerers to.
w/
 
Now mind you I was in and out of the area through these years, but as I remember, they went circular polarization after they put up the new tall tower; the old one was “only” 1700’. In late 1967 or early 68, I recall there was a new Visual Electronics 20 Kw transmitter and the old Western was retired to the back room. I remember looking at that thing and George Corkren exclaimed “we went from bad to worse!” along with with a couple other expletives. They we running on an RCA BTF5B the front and back doors were off of the new rig. Beautiful music was coming out of the speaker. I think it was 14-bays and they were constantly burning down the 3” rigid transmission line.
w/
[/quote]

I believe the Western Electric was the original FM transmitter. Seems like it went on in the late 40's from the Rankin county site and made the move to the current transmitter site in Raymond in 1953. The Visual DFM-20 was OK as a backup for several years, but it taxed the patience of several engineers when it was the main transmitter. The Visual was permanently retired after the tower collapse in 1997 took out part of the roof.

Seems like the 14 bay antenna was converted from horizontal to circular polarization sometime in the 70's. I remember stepping over the old horizontal bays and the remains of the circular bays / line sections in the storage building at Beasley Rd. when I was there in '91.

RFB
 
rfburns said:
Now mind you I was in and out of the area through these years, but as I remember, they went circular polarization after they put up the new tall tower; the old one was “only” 1700’. In late 1967 or early 68, I recall there was a new Visual Electronics 20 Kw transmitter and the old Western was retired to the back room. I remember looking at that thing and George Corkren exclaimed “we went from bad to worse!” along with with a couple other expletives.  They we running on an RCA BTF5B the front and back doors were off of the new rig. Beautiful music was coming out of the speaker.  I think it was 14-bays and they were constantly burning down the 3” rigid transmission line.
w/
Click to expand...

I believe the Western Electric was the original FM transmitter.  Seems like it went on in the late 40's from the Rankin county site and made the move to the current transmitter site in Raymond in 1953.  The Visual DFM-20 was OK as a backup for several years, but it taxed the patience of several engineers when it was the main transmitter.  The Visual was permanently retired after the tower collapse in 1997 took out part of the roof.

Seems like the 14 bay antenna was converted from horizontal to circular polarization sometime in the 70's.  I remember stepping over the old horizontal bays and the remains of the circular bays / line sections in the storage building at Beasley Rd. when I was there in '91.

RFB


[/quote]

RF, I'm pretty sure it was in the 60's after the rebuild. They were proudly touting the fact over-the-air that they were "100, 000 watts horizontal and 100,000 watts vertical". I was very interested at the time how they were accomplishing that. Everybody else was horizontally polarized at the time, referring to electromagnetic field of course.... LOL!
w/
 
We tried bringing back WZZQ on the Internet, but a lot of bad craziness broke out among those who never worked for the original station who volunteered for the new effort. Bottom line, we dropped the whole bunch and relaunched as DeepTracks.fm. Check it out and see what you think.
 
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