Re: WEZE/WTAG

["John Andrews" <johna@comrex.com>]

Martin Walters wrote:

>        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.


Martin, my understanding is that WTAG and WEEI both moved during a period of
regulatory chaos in 1927, when the Dept. of Commerce had been ruled
ineligible to be the regulatory agency, and before the Federal Radio
Commission was established.  I'm sure Donna Halper can either correct or
amplify this... a lot of my knowledge is WTAG-specific, and I may not have a
good grasp of the big picture!

Anyway, the lists of dates you and Donna have quoted for WTAG are
essentially correct.  I wish I still had access to the documents at TAG, but
my memory is still fairly good.  TAG's original transmitter site was in
downtown Worcester, an inverted "L" antenna on top of the C.T. Sherer store
on Front Street.  In the early '30s, the newspaper, which had owned the
station since 1925, erected towers on top of the Bancroft Hotel and the Park
Building.  This created a "T" antenna with the center downlead dropping to a
penthouse on the T&G building.  This was used as a main antenna for only a
few years.  It then became an auxiliary antenna, and although the towers
were removed in the early '40s, a lower version that stretched from roof to
roof was an auxiliary antenna until the station moved in 1987.

The Holden site went on the air in 1937 with 1KW, DA-1.  This was a 3-tower
"peanut-shaped" pattern that expanded their coverage north and south, and
maintained the old 500 watt "T" antenna contours east and west.  Those 3
towers went down in the 1938 hurricane, and were replaced by early 1939.
They then installed the present 5 kw day pattern in 1939, reverting to the
"peanut" at night.  In 1941, they added two more towers, and established a 5
kw night pattern.  In 1954, one of the night towers was lost in Hurricane
Carol, and the pattern was re-worked to use all four of the remaining
towers.  So there has been no change in the day pattern since 1939, and none
at night since 1954.

What has changed, IMHO, is the integrity of the ground system.  Those
interference areas have definitely moved closer to the station.

John Andrews

------------------------------