WMEX Web site alleges that the station has applied for full-time operation

[dan.strassberg@att.net]

I've noted nothing in the daily FCC actions (although I 
could have missed it), but the "Guestbook" section of 
www.wmex.com alleges that the station has filed an 
application for nighttime service. According to the Web 
site, the station is hoping that the FCC will grant the 
application by the end of the year. The statement is 
similar to one that owner Alex Langer made over the air 
earlier this summer when he was fielding listener calls.

If rumors I heard elsewhere are true, the application is 
for 2500W-N. The power suggests that Langer has applied 
for night service from the WBPS site on Sewell St in 
Ashland using the same facilities that were granted to 
the station in the late 1970s when it was WGTR.

Night service began in 1981 under program-test 
authority, but the station was never able to make the 
magnificent five-tower array meet its specifications for 
protecting co-channel Class B KYW Philadelphia. After 10 
years of fruitless adjustments to the pattern and power, 
the local station went dark in the early 90s until 
Langer revived it in 1996 as 500W daytimer, WJLT (now on 
650).

The 40 kW-D/22-kW-CH daytime signal that WMEX puts out 
from the WKOX facility on Mt Wayte Ave in Framingham 
attests to the fact that Langer has some pretty talented 
engineers under contract. Maybe they know something that 
all those who went before them don't know. But if Langer 
is trying to resurrect the Sewell St site as a home for 
WMEX's night operation, the more likely outcome is that 
he will pour a fortune into a bottomless pit and never 
get a nighttime signal on the air that is audible as far 
as Wellesley.

That would be a shame because it would spell the end of 
Langer's ambitions to field a locally owned and locally 
programmed talk station in a market that, like most 
major markets, is almost completely controlled by a few 
large corporate broadcasting companies.