Re: Red Sox on WHDH

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 11:22 PM 8/2/97 +0000, you wrote:
>I haven't been able to totally track it down, but it does seem that baseball
>moved over from WNAC to WHDH around 1947 or 1948.  It was still on WNAC
>(WAAB had moved to Worcester) in 1944-5...  by 1949, the Red Sox games are
>listed as WHDH.  When I was a kid, I recall Curt Gowdy and, I think, Bob
>Murphy was his sidekick?  Ned Martin came later... sponsors were
>Narragansett Beer Hi neighbor, have a 'Gansett) and Atlantic Gasoline
>(Atlantic keeps your car on the go...). 
>
I read somewhere (a long time ago), that, for many years, WHDH carried both
the Red Sox and the Braves play-by-play. This certainly seems possible
because WHDH was, at the time, one of the few independent full-time stations
in Boston. Baseball on network affiliates was a problem. Radio networks were
not happy about having network programming pre-empted by baseball.

Until 1947 or 1948, WHDH was a 5 kW station (DA-N) transmitting from what is
now the WROL site in Saugus. WROL's day signal is about the same as WHDH's
day signal would have been back then. At night, WHDH may have had some
problems in places like Lexington, but who lived up this way back then? Not
too many people, and besides, there wasn't much co-channel interference.

The same story I read that talked about WHDH carrying both teams said that
the one of the things that motivated the Herald-Traveler to go for 50 kw was
that the old TX in Saugus was held together with chewing gum and the station
was always going off the air because of technical difficulties. Frequently,
the technical difficulties prevented the games from being heard, according
to the story. I tend to take that part with a grain of salt. I can believe
that the TX was unreliable. But if that was the problem that the
Herald-Traveler wanted to fix, a new 5-kW TX at the Saugus site would have
been a lot cheaper than a whole new site.

Anyhow, in those days, it was customary to "re-create" away games from a
(Western Union?) ticker. This scheme also made it possible to delay the
broadcast of one game when the two teams played at the same time. Since
night baseball wasn't nearly as popular in those days as it is now, there
must have been many days when both teams played at the same time.
Presumably, though, having both teams simultaneously at home in Boston
didn't occur very often.

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Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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