WCOP circa 1961 aircheck

[Eli Polonsky]

> > From: "Joseph Pappalardo" <joepappalardo2001@yahoo.com>
> > To: <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
> Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 02:22:37 -0500
> Subject: WCOP circa 1961 aircheck
> 
> Right now when I listen to 1150AM in downtown Boston at night, I
> can
> sometimes hear another station battling it in the background...and
> this is in downtown Boston!)
> 
> Was the signal always bad?

The 5 KW transmitter is off of Route 2 in Lexington, at least ten
miles out from downtown, with a lot of background interference on
the channel from other stations at night.

When I worked there as Greater Media's oldies WMEX in the mid 80's,
the nighttime monitor reception at their Stuart St. studios was
very noisy. The station broadcast in AM stereo at the time, but
the monitor receiver was switched to mono due to oscillation from
interfering stations causing side-to-side "platform motion". There
was a lot of 10k heterodyne noise as well.

However, it came in like a ton of bricks day and night where I grew
up in Newton, about five miles south-southeast of the transmitter.

Outside metro-Boston, the directional signal doesn't go very much
outside Route 128 southwest, west, or north at night. The pattern
at night is southeast over Boston and the South Shore. It can be
heard, though weakly, on Cape Cod.

> I suppose the call letters 'COP had to do with COPley Square?
> 
> Did they ever have a studio there?

The original studios were in the Copley Plaza Hotel.

Eli Polonsky