Re: The Colonial Network

["Kevin Vahey" <k-vahey@attbi.com>]

Any idea on how the signals of WNAC and WAAB compared back then?


On Sun, 30 Mar 2003 10:25PM -0500, Donna Halper wrote:
>
>> about WAAB, Steve wrote--
>> Ed Brouder's book "Granite & Ether" gives the impression the move took 
>> place in late 1940/early 1941.
>
> Not exactly.  WAAB moved out of Boston in late September 1942, and it 
> came back on the air as a Worcester station on 13 December 1942.  
> (Ironically, Shepard had tried to move the old WLEX out to Worcester 
> back in 1929 but the FRC (later known as the FCC) wouldn't let him.)
>
> As for other recollections and queries from list-members, the Colonial 
> Network officially got started on 5 August 1936.  There is a wonderful 
> media historian up in Maine named Liz McLeod whom some of you may 
> know-- she has an excellent collection of rare transcriptions of early 
> broadcasts-- and she wrote this about why the Colonial Network got 
> started (she and I were exchanging info a while back):  "Shepard had 
> contracted with AT&T for 16 hours per day of broadcast line service, 
> but the Yankee Network was only using an average of five hours a day. 
> Rather than waste his money, Shepard inaugurated Colonial in August 
> 1936."
>
> I do know that as Shepard's health declined, his interest in Colonial 
> did too-- and he began sharing it with Mutual, a network he also had 
> some involvement with.  By 1940, many of the programs on Colonial were 
> from the Mutual Network.  I believe Colonial was discontinued the year 
> Shepard resigned from day to day operations at Yankee-- sometime in 
> 1943.