Its been nice knowing you all

[Scott Fybush]

At 05:18 PM 1/19/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Well, all stations were SUPPOSED to move on March 29. I've heard that it
>took several weeks longer, but in New York. where I was a kid not quite six
>years old, it SEEMED as if all stations moved on that day. I suspect that in
>crowded areas like New York, everyone HAD to move at the same time to avoid
>chaos. In less populous areas, a simultaneous move was less
>imperative--unless stations that couldn't move just went dark until they
>were ready to move.

That may have been true in daylight hours - but the FCC back then really 
did care about skywave interference at night. It's hard to imagine, for 
instance, that WSAY in Rochester would have been able to keep operating on 
its old graveyard channel of 1210 for even one night once Philadelphia's 
WCAU had moved to 1210 from 1170.

I wasn't around then, of course, but from what I've read in contemporary 
newspaper accounts (with whatever level of accuracy they may or may not 
have had), the moves really did go off all at once in the overnight hours 
of March 28-29. I believe that was a weekend, which would have made it a 
little easier, and given the rarity of all-night operation in that era 
there would have been plenty of overnight periods BEFORE the "Big Switch" 
in which to test out the new crystals and tune up the antenna. Many 
stations of that era just kept using the old antenna without significant 
modification, even though the frequency shuffle meant that many of them 
ended up with towers that were slightly taller than quarter- or half-wave 
as a result.

DAs were even rarer than Dan suggests; the first DA (WSUN-WDAE 620 in 
Tampa) was only nine years old at that point, and many of the stations on 
regional channels were still running ND and dropping power at night. (In 
Rochester, for instance, WHEC 1430/1460 was still 1kw ND-U; it wouldn't go 
5 kw DA-N until 1947 when it built a new site.)

Oh, and to answer the earlier question about which channel was "lost" in 
the gap between stations like KDKA 980, WBZ 990 and WHO 1000 moving up 40 
kHz and the entire "regional/graveyard" spectrum moving up only 30 kHz, the 
answer is the Canadian clear channel on 1030. Here, from the Archives 
themselves, is how it played out:

·       540: new Canadian clear
·       old 550-680: unchanged
·       old 690: mostly unchanged, except CFRB to 860
·       old 700-730: unchanged
·       740: new Canadian clear
·       old 740-780: moved up 10 kHz to 750-790
·       800: new Canadian clear
·       old 790-830: moved up 20 kHz to 810-850
·       860: new Canadian clear
·       old 850-870: moved up 20 kHz to 870-890
·       900: new Canadian clear
·       old 880-970: moved up 30 kHz to 910-1000
·       1010: new Canadian clear
·       old 980: KDKA to 1020
·       old 990: WBZ to 1030
·       old 1000: WHO to 1040
·       old 1010: KQW [KCBS] to 740 (but not right away)
·       old 1020: KYW to 1060
·       old 1030: CFCN to 1010, CKLW to 800
·       old 1040: WTIC, KRLD, KWJJ all to 1080
·       old 1050: to 1070
·       old 1060: WBAL to 1090, WJAG to 1110 (later traded for 780 with KFAB)
·       old 1070-1150: moved up 30 kHz to 1100-1180
·       old 1160: WOWO to 1190, WWVA to 1170
·       old 1170: WCAU [WGMP] to 1210
·       old 1180: KEX to 1190, KOB [KKOB] to 770, WDGY [KFAN] to 1130, WINS 
to 1010
·       old 1190: WOAI to 1200, WSAZ to 930, WATR to 1320
·       old 1200-1450: moved up 30 kHz to 1230-1480
·       old 1460: KSTP, WSJV [WTOP] to 1500
·       old 1470: KGA, WLAC, WMEX [WWZN] to 1510
·       old 1480: KOMA, WKBW [WWKB] to 1520
·       old 1490: KFBK, WCKY [WSAI] to 1530
·       old 1500: to 1490
·       old 1510: CFRC to 1490
·       old 1530: W1XBS to WBRY [WQQW;dark] 1590, W9XBY to KITE [dark] 1550
·       old 1550: W2XR to WQXR [WQEW] 1560, W6XAI to KPMC [KNZR] 1560
·       1580: new Canadian clear

That's from the article in the Archives at 
http://www.bostonradio.org/radio/narba.html; I realize in re-reading it 
that I left out two VERY confusing pieces of the NYC puzzle.

WHN, which had been on 1010, moved to 1050, a Canadian/Mexican clear 
channel where it had the right by treaty to go to 50kW as long as it used a 
directional array to protect the borders. WHN upgraded from 5 to 50 kW in 
December of 1941. WINS moved from 1180 to 1000 on March 29, still as a 
daytimer but with 10 kW instead of 1 kW. "The Airwaves of New York" reports 
that the move caused intermod problems between WINS on 1000 in Carlstadt NJ 
(I believe that site is now under Giants Stadium, keeping Jimmy Hoffa 
company) and WHN on 1050 just half a mile away in East Rutherford. So WHN 
let WINS use the old WHN site in Astoria, Queens until it could get a new 
site built at the current WINS site in Lyndhurst. In 1943, WINS was allowed 
to go full-time and to move up the dial one notch to its present 1010, 
initially at 10 kW but eventually at 50 kW.

As complex as THAT was, it had nothing on the 1100/1130 mess. Until 1940, 
WOV was a daytimer on 1130 with 1 kW, while sister station WBIL (earlier, 
WLWL) was on at night and on Friday and Sunday daytime on 1100 with 5 kW, 
sharing time with WPG in Atlantic City, which operated during the day on 
1100 with 5 kW Monday-Thursday and Saturday. In 1938, Arde Bulova, who 
owned WOV and WBIL, bought WPG from the City of Atlantic City, and on 
January 3, 1940, WBIL, WPG and WOV were consolidated into a "new" WOV. The 
way "Airwaves" portrays the consolidation, the WBIL license was the one 
that survived, but - according to the book - it was moved to WOV's old 1130 
frequency with 1 kW full-time and took the WOV call letters. I have my 
doubts about this, and my suspicion is that WOV in fact operated full-time 
from Jan. 1940 until Mar. 29, 1941 full-time at *1100*, which WAS 
authorized for fulltime use in New York City, unlike 1130, which was KSL's 
clear channel and had one other US occupant, WJJD Chicago, with 20,000 
watts L-KSL. (The pre-NARBA 1130 channel went by the table method to 1160, 
and the New York area eventually got another station there in 1993, when 
WVNJ Oakland NJ signed on with 20 kW day/2500 W night.)

In either case, WOV was definitely on 1130 as of 3/29/41 - but that didn't 
last long either, since on Dec. 1, 1941 WOV traded dial positions with 
WNEW, which was operating six days a week on 1280 (share-timer WHBI Newark 
NJ had Sundays). Thus was born WNEW 1130, which went from 1 kW to 10 kW in 
Jan. 1942 and then to 50 kW in 1949. WOV 1280 changed calls to WADO in 1959 
and absorbed WHBI three years later, and itself finally went to 50 kW a few 
years ago.

Whew!

s