Re: Yankee Network and Mutual

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

At 10:04 PM 6/8/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I believe it was David who mentioned his reasearch on Mutual and when the
>Yankee Network first began carrying their programmes.  According to
>Broadcasting (1 July 35), up until June of 1935, Mutual had no ability to
>send programming to stations other than their original outlets.  But in
>June, they began to make arrangements with other stations, and one such
>arrangement was made with the Yankee Network.  According to the story I
>found, on 29 June 1935, the Saturday Night Concert of the Philharmonic
>Symphony Orchestra was fed via WOR to the original affiliates, but also
>this time it was fed to the Yankee Network.    
>
I remember Mutual as, in large part, a network of regional networks. Besides
the Yankee Network in New England, there was the Don Lee Broadcasting System
on the West Coast, the Texas State Network, and the Intermountain Network
(in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, and New Mexico). There must have been
others as well. But in many parts of the country, stations affiliated
directly with Mutual. This was true in upstate New York and Pennsylvania,
for example.

At one point didn't the Yankee Network deliver programming to Yankee/Mutual
affils via an over-the-air FM relay (first from the original WGTR in Paxton
MA and then later from an FM atop Mt Washington)? My understanding was that
the purpose of the over-the-air relay was to reduce telephone-line charges.
But weren't phone lines used to deliver the programming to the FM TX? Maybe
that programming also came from an over-the-air pickup of an FM signal. That
signal would have had to come from Boston. But if that was the case, Mutual
still had to get its programs from New York to Boston via phone lines. So
where was the big cost saving? 

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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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