Licensed to non-actual locations

[A. Joseph Ross]

On 30 Jan 2008 at 14:05, Dan.Strassberg wrote:

> The guy who built WUPY (later WUPI) 105.3 was named Harvey Sheldon,
> right? If I'm not mistaken, he was a vegetarian long before it was
> fashionable to be a vegetarian, and I remember him touting on the air
> herbal cures for various and sundry maladies (pretty much like the
> infomercials on WBIX do today). I gather that Sheldon or his companies
> filed for and emerged from bankruptcy a couple of times before he went
> under for the full count. I guess the WUPY/I transmitter was in
> Peabody, but wasn't the station licensed to Lynn? I think so. Sheldon
> also had a station in Miami, IIRC--a full Class B (on 95.7, I
> believe). In fact, when he received the CP for the Miami station,
> didn't he move the WUPY calls there and rename the Lynn station WUPI?
> I think that, after a relatively short period on the air, he lost the
> Miami license for some transgression, but I can't recall what. Can
> you?
 
I don't know much about that.  What I remember is the station coming 
on, sometime in the early 1960s, when I was avidly following every 
new FM station.  It then went off the air, and at some time I called 
the FCC to ask about it.  I was told that the call had been changed 
to WUPI and that it had permission to be silent, but would return 
soon.  I remember hearing it after its return, Harvey Sheldon doing 
the announcing.  They were jazz 24/7, and for awhile, Anthony's 
restaurants were a major sponsor.

I remember hearing a live broadcast from one of Anthony's restaurants 
on a Saturday evening, shortly after WUPY first came on, with Harvey 
Sheldon, rambling on and on and not sounding professional at all.  By 
the time I heard him doing a morning show on WUPI, he was sounding 
much better.  At that point, he was calling it "Woopie Radio."

Then the station disappeared again.  And when I got to UMass and 
joined WMUA, someone there told me some background dirt.  According 
to him, Sheldon was mainly a con artist, and he conned Anthony into 
thinking he was going to own his own radio station.  Whether that was 
true or not, Harvey Sheldon's house of cards eventually fell down, 
and the FCC killed the channel assignment, apparently because of too 
much interference with another station somewhere.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                           617.367.0468
 92 State Street, Suite 700                   Fax 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004           	         http://www.attorneyross.com