NY Times Story on NYC Transmitters on City Island (Registration Required)

["Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@lycos.com>]

Today's (12/01) New York Times has an interesting piece on the experiences of people living
on City Island, New York (apparently part of the Bronx) where WNYC-AM 660 and WCBS-AM 880
operate a duplexed main tower and an auxiliary tower.  (I must go there some day.)  Viacom wants
to add height to its auxiliary tower, but must get the approval of the denizens.  The story details
some humorous drawbacks about living cheek-by-jowl with such powerful  RF emitters.  The story is at:
www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/nyregion/01RADI.html.
(Registration required for nytimes.com)
After I read it, I thought about some of the people living close by the WRKO-AM towers in Burlington, MA
and the WWZN-AM towers in Belmont, MA (I'm using Belmont because they're just in "front"
of the towers which are near the Waltham-Beford line.)  The 'FAN/'CBS tower is non-directional so
it puts out somewhat less signal than a directional array.  I checked www.radiostation.com for
the stations' RMS figures: For WFAN it's 379.81; for WCBS, it's 426.48.  Meanwhile, WRKO
generates 2059.96 days and 2355.76 nights.  There are dwellings  on the south side of  Rt
128 where WRKO must really overwhelm residents with RF intereference.  WWZN-AM 1510 transmits
from an office park very close to homes over the line in Belmont.  That station's day RMS is
2875.09, and 2909.69 at night.  People there probably don't have to choose between Ordway or
McDonough!  WBZ-AM beats all these numbers except WWZN at night, but it's a few miles removed
(but over salt water) from a residential area.  I'm glad WCCM is licensed for only 1KW, and 
I've been told only uses about 600 watts because when WCGY-FM 93.7 was upgraded to 50KW
at 400 feet, the antenna was so efficient for AM that WCCM had to reduce its transmitter output
to prevent interference with WEAN-AM 790 in Providence(now WSKO or something like that).

Laurence Glavin
Methuen, MA