Re: WEZE/WTAG (fwd)

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

At 11:00 PM 6/6/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>BTW, it occurs to me that WLAW, licensed to Lawrence and having Boston 
>studios, might be an early example of what is now a common practice, 
>witness WROR-FM, Framingham and WAAF, Worcester.
>
The official studios (per FCC requirement) had to be in Lawrence or at the
Burlington TX site. Many stations complied with the studios-in-COL
requirement by (really) renting a closet in a hotel, installing a mic jack
in the closet, and running a leased phone line to the TX. They could then
originate programming up to some maximum number of hours per day from
studios elsewhere. I suspect that WLAW was able to program from Boston as
much as it wanted to because network feeds apparently counted in the hours
of programming that "originated" from the COL studios.

As for how WLAW got to be 50 kW, I don't know the details but I can guess.
At one point, the FCC was very much biased against the idea of stations
located in suburban communities actually being designed to serve the major
city of which the COL was a suburb. But the heyday of the "if you are
licensed to a suburb you can't really serve the central city" mentality was
in the late 70s. Before that, when WLAW was granted its power increase, the
FCC looked the other way when it realized that an application was intended
to provide service to a community other than the COL. I think this "look the
other way" mentality held sway immediately after WWII, which is when WLAW's
application for 50 kW was processed. It would not surprise me to find out
that in even 1937, when WLAW first signed on, the owners had already thought
about facilities that would give the station a major signal in Boston. In
fact, in a totally cynical move, the FCC may have granted WLAW's original
application or its application for 50 kW over competing applications
_because_ the applicant was proposing a station NOT licensed to Boston. Yet
the Commission was almost certainly aware of the applicant's intent and
chose to ignore it.

- -------------------------------
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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End of boston-radio-interest-digest V3 #407
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