Re: WEZE/WTAG

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>At 10:17 AM 6/5/99 -0400, you wrote:
>John Andrews wrote:
>>The overlaps in coverage would not be permitted under current regulations.
>>Any attempt to change the balance would have to be done with hearings at the
>>FCC.  Big bucks, and you could easily lose ground.
>Dan Strassberg wrote:
>But the current situation is grandfathered. WEZE could move as long as the
>move did not exacerbate the existing interference.
<snip>

        I've always found the WTAG-WEEI first-adjacent thing interesting as
a small broadcast history mystery. Both stations go back to the first half
of the 1920s. You'd think they would not have ended up virtually on top of
each other this way. I have a list from 1926 (both stations went on in
1924) that shows WTAG on 550 kHz with 500w and WEEI on 860 with 500w. The
next list I have is 1931, with WTAG on 580 with 250 w and WEEI on 590 with
1 kW. On the 1936 list, WTAG was up to 500 w and WEEI was still 1 kW. But I
believe 1936 is the year WEEI moved its transmitter from Weymouth (just
over the Fore River Bridge from Quincy near Route 3A) to the present site
and went to 5 kW. My 1942 list shows WTAG still at 5 kW day, 1 kW night.
WROW came on the air in 1947. And the Newfoundland station was not on 590
until sometime after 1942. WEEI seems to have senior status in the
Northeast in this situation. I think that's indicated by the fact that it
is DA-1. Its pattern may have been engineered to protect WTAG only at 1 kW
fulltime, and it definitely was not engineered to protect WTAG's 5 kW
nighttime signal, since that came later. In the NRC night pattern book I
don't see any WEEI null toward Newfoundland.
        If you listen carefully to the splash (more like a tsunami) on WEEI
as you pass through the Worcester area going west, you hear that the WEEI
signal remains pretty good. If you get far enough west of Worcester (almost
to Springfield), you can listen to it again. Another interesting spot is
northern Rhode Island, where, daytime, both signals are about equal and not
so strong that they splash each other to death, so you can listen to both
stations.

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