Re: WHET (Was: Re: WCOP and the Lawsuit)

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

The story behind WHET/WDLW/WRCA's new antenna is the following:

When WCRB was built (or became a fulltimer--I think it was originally a
daytimer) it had to protect both WEVD and WBBR (later WPOW) in New York
City, which shared time, AND WHAZ, Troy New York, which shared time with the
two NYC stations. WHAZ was then owned by my alma mater, RPI, and it operated
a grand total of six hours per week (Mondays 6:00 PM to midnight). Despite
its limited schedule, WHAZ was a very old station and required a high level
of protection from co-channel interference.

At some point, Richard Eaton's United Broadcasting, the owner of WPOW,
bought WHAZ with the idea of converting its six hours on Monday nights into
extra time for WPOW. WHAZ became a daytimer. That plan didn't exactly work
out according to Eaton's plan. WEVD protested and the FCC required WPOW and
WEVD to divide the Monday time the same way that the time was divided on
Tuesdays through Fridays (3:00 AM-8:00 AM WPOW, 8:00 AM-5:00 PM WEVD, 5:00
PM-8:00 PM WPOW, 8:00 PM-3:00 AM WEVD). Overall, on weekdays, it was 2/3
WEVD and 1/3 WPOW.

Then later, WEVD, which had been transmitting from Queens, wanted to improve
its signal by using the WPOW TX on Staten Island. There was one problem:
>From Queens, WEVD offered some protection to WCRB/WHET--not by design
really--WEVD was much older--but just because of the directional pattern.
WPOW's Staten Island TX, on the other hand, was southwest of all of NYC
except sparsely populated Staten Island. The pattern pushed everything to
the northeast, over NYC and on toward Boston. During the after-dark hours
when WPOW operated, WCRB received much more co-channel interference than it
received later in the evening from WEVD.

So the idea must have occurred to someone at WEVD to pay off WCRB. I've
never been able to prove this, but I think that WEVD or maybe WEVD and
WPOW--which stood to derive revenue from leasing its TX to WEVD 16 hours a
day--paid or partly paid for the new facilities of what had become WHET by
the time the new facilities went on the air. With WHAZ gone at night, it was
possible to replace the three tower array, which protected New York and
Troy, with a two-tower array that protected only New York. Moreover, the
200' towers were replaced with 300' towers that are also guy-wire top
loaded, so the antenna efficiency got a big boost. The orientation of the
towers, which was optimized for nighttime operation also turned out to be
quite good for protecting the adjacent-channel station in Attleboro during
the daytime. The result was that Waltham got a much improved daytime signal
in exchange for accepting much higher levels of interference from WEVD/WPOW
during all nighttime hours. I believe that 1330 delivers a 5 mV/m signal
over substantially all of Boston.

Several years after all of that happened, the two New York stations merged
and then went through several owners and call letters. The current NYC
station is WWRV owned by Radio Christiana International, the Spanish
religious broadcaster that operates a blow-torch station on 530 on Turks and
Caicos Islands in the Carribean. WWRV wanted to move its TX from Staten
Island to the Jersey Meadowlands, where nearly all of the NYC AMs are
located. (The exceptions are WFAN/WCBS and WQEW.) The Meadowlands, with
their outstanding soil conductivity, are the best place to locate AMs
serving NYC. An ideal site turned out to be the WWDJ site in Hackensack. Its
the second farthest north among all of the directional NYC-area AMs. From
the WWDJ site, WWRV is able to serve NYC without delivering to Boston
anything like the nighttime skywave signal that it used to send up here from
Staten Island. As you might imagine, though, the interference gets worse as
you travel south. On the South Shore, it's still pretty bad.

I think the history of WCRB's power increases went something like this
(unfortunately, I can't help with dates) Sign-on 500W ND D. Later 1-kW DA-2
(three-tower array). Then 5 kW-D/1 kW-N DA-2 (three-tower array). Then 5 kW
DA-2 (three tower array). 1977 5 kW DA-2 (two-tower array with improved
efficiency and new patterns, much improved signal to the northwest).

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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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