THOSE "IV" stations....

["PETER GEORGE, N1GGP" <PGEORGE@WELLESLEY.EDU>]

     I recall those "IV" stations quite well.  As far as I recall the
call-letters were WJIV, WBIV (no relation to the late WBIV/Natick, MA),
WOIV and WMIV.  Chances are the "IV" prefix also meant the number 4.
There were 4 stations covering a large area of New York State from
Buffalo to Albany.  I heard WJIV (101.9, Cherry Valley, NY) fairly
well in the Great Barrington area of Massachusetts.  I was trying to
listen to WPIX-FM from NYC (also on 101.9) but with NO avail.  These
stations at the time (1977) were broadcasting Pat Robertson's 
"Sonshine Radio" format originating from WOIV/DeRuyter (105.1) in
the Syracuse area.  It WAS a chain network using hilltop relays of
105.1 .  All stations used a trip-tone to start a cart deck at the
various transmitter sites.  Many times there WERE glitches.  For
example you would be listening to WJIV/Cherry Valley and hear......
"Sonshine Radio is a service of CBN, The Christian Broadcasting
Network.....(25 Hz tone)...."Serving Syracuse and the Southern Tier,
this is Stereo 105 (CLUNK)...."Serving the Capital District this is
Stereo 102, WJIV...Cherry Valley".  At the time, Cherry Valley had
a population of 800 souls (no pun intended).  All "IV" stations were
full-powered 50,000 watt facilities.  But being so far away to where
the population lives are major handicaps for all of these stations
to this day.  WJIV has major pockets of signal loss throughout Albany
and the Capital District and cannot be remedied due to the overloaded
FM dial throughout that area.  WNVE or whatever it is now (95.1
South Bristol Township) does have signal problems in the Rochester
area to which they had to add a translator on 95.5.  For some reason,
they HAD a transmitter "move", closer to Rochester and quickly had it
recinded to the original site once again.  (Don't know why).  The
95.5 Rochester translator probably has MORE listeners than the entire
full-powered station could ever muster.


So there....

- -Pete-

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Peter Q. George, N1GGP                  *  "Scanning the bands since 1967 !" 
P.O. Box 1183                           *                  +
Randolph, Massachusetts 02368-1183      *                  |
USA                                     *      73         +|+    de N1GGP
PGEORGE@wellesley.edu                   *                +\|/+
XERB@bigfoot.com                        *               + \|/ +
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