ive always wondered

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Mon, 15 Oct 2001 16:08:00 -0400, <Patriotsrule417@prodigy.net> said:

> why dont Boston FMs transmit from where WAAF does? They could get more
> listeners

Actually, no, they would lose many listeners.  Eastern Massachusetts
is far more densely populated than Westa Wistah.  Also, having a small
ratings presence in several markets is not nearly as commercially
valuable as having large ratings in a major market -- which is why
WAAF has applied to move from Paxton to the channel 27 tower in
Boylston.  Finally, the sort of music that WAAF plays has enough
distortion to mask the noise in fringe reception areas; that would not
be tolerable in many other formats.

When the Yankee Network first built out in Paxton, it was expected
that VHF-FM stations would operate at huge powers, comparable to
VHF-TV stations.  W1XER (43.9 Mount Washington) and W1XOJ (44.3
Paxton) were considered to be Boston stations.  When the FCC later
realized that this was not necessary and dropped the limits
significantly, it became impractical to serve a city like Boston from
such a distance.  (That's even ignoring the multipath which must have
been substantial even then.)  When the original FM band was first set
up, much of what we know now was not at all obvious to the FCC or even
to Major Armstrong; in New York City, for example, there were stations
assigned on first-adjacent channels.

W1XTG (the other station on Asnebumskit Hill in Paxton) was in 1943
operating at 43.4 MHz; what would become WBZA-FM was on 48.1, the
future WTIC-FM was on 45.3, and WDRC's FM was on 46.5.  It seems from
Norm Gagnon's table that the experimental stations operated on
``even'' frequencies, and commercial stations operated on ``odd''
frequencies.  Today's WNSN was then W71SB, and WMBI-FM was W75C.  The
table shows only one station west of the Mississippi: Don Lee's K45LA.

-GAWollman

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