From kvahey@gmail.com Sat Jan 21 16:48:08 2023 From: kvahey@gmail.com (Kevin Vahey) Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2023 16:48:08 -0500 Subject: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? Message-ID: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? I am thinking of WTIC in Hartford (1925) - WBZ was Springfield until 1931 - Boston was WBZA and then they flipped calls. WEEI has had active call letters in Boston since 1924 but..... On FM I lean towards WTIC-FM Hartford (1944) - Boston it would be WERS (1949) From kvahey@gmail.com Sun Jan 22 04:05:38 2023 From: kvahey@gmail.com (Kevin Vahey) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2023 04:05:38 -0500 Subject: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? In-Reply-To: <12434b39-b581-1bdf-7fec-1b3d2d2ed99d@donnahalper.com> References: <12434b39-b581-1bdf-7fec-1b3d2d2ed99d@donnahalper.com> Message-ID: Scott made a strong case for WSAR in Fall River on Facebook WEEI and COL go back to 1924 but you have the shift from 590 to 850 in 1994 which blurs things. The post-WWII years had to be fascinating. with WHDH (850) and WLAW (680) building out massive transmitter locations in Needham and Burlington. The WHDH towers in Needham were for a short time the tallest manmade structures in New England. On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 3:17 AM Donna Halper wrote: > > On 1/21/2023 4:48 PM, Kevin Vahey wrote: > > What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters > > and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? > > > > I am thinking of WTIC in Hartford (1925) - WBZ was Springfield until > > 1931 - Boston was WBZA and then they flipped calls. > > True about WTIC; I can't think of any station earlier with the same > continuous calls or COL. Also true that WBZ was in Springfield at > first, although they did open up their Boston studio in February 1924. > And let's not forget WDEV in Vermont, which goes back to July 1931 and > those call letters are still in Waterbury VT, aren't they? > > > -- > Donna L. Halper, PhD > Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies > Lesley University, Cambridge MA > From dlh@donnahalper.com Sun Jan 22 03:17:02 2023 From: dlh@donnahalper.com (Donna Halper) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2023 03:17:02 -0500 Subject: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <12434b39-b581-1bdf-7fec-1b3d2d2ed99d@donnahalper.com> On 1/21/2023 4:48 PM, Kevin Vahey wrote: > What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters > and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? > > I am thinking of WTIC in Hartford (1925) - WBZ was Springfield until > 1931 - Boston was WBZA and then they flipped calls. True about WTIC; I can't think of any station earlier with the same continuous calls or COL.? Also true that WBZ was in Springfield at first, although they did open up their Boston studio in February 1924. And let's not forget WDEV in Vermont, which goes back to July 1931 and those call letters are still in Waterbury VT, aren't they? -- Donna L. Halper, PhD Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies Lesley University, Cambridge MA From wollman@bimajority.org Sun Jan 22 12:12:16 2023 From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2023 12:12:16 -0500 Subject: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <25549.28272.409065.289533@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> < said: > On FM I lean towards WTIC-FM Hartford (1944) - Boston it would be WERS (1949) No, WERS started out on 88.1. -GAWollman From scott@fybush.com Sun Jan 22 12:23:20 2023 From: scott@fybush.com (Scott Fybush) Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2023 12:23:20 -0500 Subject: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? In-Reply-To: References: <12434b39-b581-1bdf-7fec-1b3d2d2ed99d@donnahalper.com> Message-ID: <1e5d54d8-ff1c-ca31-784a-71e4019a64b1@fybush.com> Here's what I wrote on the FB group: It's tricky to try to do "same frequency" for anything before 1928. That's when the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40 created the basic pattern of classes and channels that we have now on the AM dial, modified somewhat by the NARBA shift of 1941. An extremely small number of stations near the bottom of the dial survived General Order 40 on their original frequencies (WLW, for instance), but none in New England. The oldest surviving callsign in New England is, of course, WBZ, but it moved from Springfield to Boston in 1931. Looking back at the first issue of White's Radio Log from 1924, there is only one callsign that survives today in its original COL, and nobody else here has mentioned it yet: WSAR in Fall River. It was on 254 meters/1180 kc at the time. (It will turn 100 this July!) General Order 40 moved WSAR to 1450, which is the pre-NARBA antecedent of today's 1480. It doesn't get much more stable than that. Other familiar call letters from the 1924 White's include WABI in Bangor (which survived intact on AM until just a few years ago), WNAC in Boston (antecedent of today's WBIX and, in a way, WRKO), WTAT Boston (ancestor of WEEI and today's WEZE), WJAR and WEAN Providence (today's WHJJ and WPRV), WPAJ New Haven (WDRC Hartford) and WCAX (WVMT) Burlington. So... the best answer I can give to your question would be WSAR, so long as you accept the constant pre-1928 frequency changes that almost everyone went through. I agree with WTIC-FM as the oldest surviving FM callsign in New England. The 1944 Broadcasting Yearbook (the first after the FCC regularized FM callsigns) shows WTIC-FM and WDRC-FM in Hartford, but that WDRC-FM license is what eventually became today's WZMX 93.7, not the current WDRC-FM 102.9. (Since this was back in the 42-50 MHz era, there's no "same frequency" at play here, of course.) Boston had WBZ-FM, WGTR (actually in Worcester), WMTW on Mount Washington, WTAG-FM in Worcester, and WBZA-FM Springfield. Only WGTR (now WKVB 107.3) and WTAG-FM (now WSRS) have survived. There was no other FM at the time in New England. From that entire single-page list of commercially-licensed FM stations in 1944, the only others that have survived since without changing calls are WNYC-FM in New York, WBBM-FM in Chicago and WMIT in North Carolina. WNYE New York, KALW San Francisco and WBEZ Chicago add to that list on the noncommercial side - and since WNYE has had those same calls since it signed on as an "Apex" high-frequency AM station in 1938, it can claim the very oldest calls on FM anywhere in the country. And the answer for TV is trivial - it's WBZ-TV, of course, which will turn 75 in June and has never been anything other than "channel 4," albeit only virtually now. On 1/22/2023 4:05 AM, Kevin Vahey wrote: > Scott made a strong case for WSAR in Fall River on Facebook > > WEEI and COL go back to 1924 but you have the shift from 590 to 850 in > 1994 which blurs things. > > The post-WWII years had to be fascinating. with WHDH (850) and WLAW > (680) building out massive transmitter locations in Needham and > Burlington. The WHDH towers in Needham were for a short time the > tallest manmade structures in New England. > > > > On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 3:17 AM Donna Halper wrote: >> On 1/21/2023 4:48 PM, Kevin Vahey wrote: >>> What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters >>> and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? >>> >>> I am thinking of WTIC in Hartford (1925) - WBZ was Springfield until >>> 1931 - Boston was WBZA and then they flipped calls. >> True about WTIC; I can't think of any station earlier with the same >> continuous calls or COL. Also true that WBZ was in Springfield at >> first, although they did open up their Boston studio in February 1924. >> And let's not forget WDEV in Vermont, which goes back to July 1931 and >> those call letters are still in Waterbury VT, aren't they? >> >> >> -- >> Donna L. Halper, PhD >> Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies >> Lesley University, Cambridge MA >> From 011010001@interpring.com Mon Jan 23 07:58:50 2023 From: 011010001@interpring.com (Rob Landry) Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2023 07:58:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: What station in New England has the longest continuing call letters and COL on the same frequency that only changed by treaty mandates? In-Reply-To: <25549.28272.409065.289533@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> References: <25549.28272.409065.289533@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> Message-ID: Then it has to be WGBH-FM (October 2, 1951). Rob On Sun, 22 Jan 2023, Garrett Wollman wrote: > < said: > >> On FM I lean towards WTIC-FM Hartford (1944) - Boston it would be WERS (1949) > > No, WERS started out on 88.1. > > -GAWollman >