Re: Wee Eye

["Bill O'Neill" <billo@erols.com>]

At night, 850 suffers from
>severe phasing on the Framingham-Natick line. So, aside from the better
>daytime coverage in a restricted area west of Boston, 590 and 850 have
quite
>comparable signals despite 850's 50 kW and better-than-half-wave towers.
>Moreover, 590 beats 850 hands down on the South Shore and Cape Cod and
>covers southern NH better than 850 does.

As they say on the farm, 'my Momma didn't raise no dope', so this boy ain't
never taking on Dan when it comes to signal strength discussions!  But I
will speak from the Lowell/Dracut area perspective in which I was raised on
radio to say that WEEI just never cut it here in terms of signal.  Couple
that, I suppose, with two local AMs for news, etc. in the area and WEEI's
more Boston metro focus, and the interest was not there?  My folks (now in
70s) say that they did listen to WEEI more in the 30s and 40s than later on.
Likely a listening habits versus technical delivery thing.  Add to that
WHDH's comparably broader regional appeal than that of WEEI as well as a
cleaner delivery to the burbs, and there you have it.

I would be curious as to the results of WWRC Washington's upgrade on 980 kHz
from 5 kW to 50 kW and the "metro" rationale there?...

Bill O'Neill

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