Licensed to non-actual locations

[Dan.Strassberg]

Back in the 40s and maybe the 50s, WBNX 1380 (now, I think, WKDM) IDed
as WBNX Bronx. Before that, WBYN Brooklyn 1430 (replaced by WNJR
Newark (now WNSW) after WBYN lost its license for broadcasting
horse-race results), IDed as WBYN Brooklyn. Also in the 40s--and
surely earlier, WBBR, a 1330 share-timer owned by the Watchtower Bible
and Tract Society (Jehovah's Witnesses) and completely unrelated to
today's WBBR, broadcast from Watchtower's worldwide headquarters in
Brooklyn and IDed as WBBR Brooklyn. In the same era, WWRL, then a 250W
Class IV on the 1600 kc Class III channel, IDed as WWRL Woodside. WWRL
was located in what looked like a former two-family house with a tower
in its back yard in the Woodside neighborhood of the New York City
borough of Queens. AFAIK, WWRL was licensed to Woodside, not Queens,
and certainly not to New York City, which with that power, on that
frequency, with that soil conductivity, it most certainly could not
have hoped to serve. After a power increase to 5 kW-U DA-2 and Tx move
to the Jersey Meadowlands, WWRL applied for relicensing to New York
City. Only after modification of its license did it start to ID as
WWRL New York.

In the 20s and 30s there were literally scores of tiny AMs (nearly all
of them share-timers) that served only part of one or another New York
City borough. I believe that only a few of those low-power share-time
stations were audacious enough to ID as Wxxx New York. There were,
however, other stations whose signals were so poor that they reached
only a fraction of  New York's (geographically large) area but
neverthless did ID as Wxxx New York. One such was the station then
owned by the City of New York, WNYC 830. WNYC's transmitter was in
Queens or Brooklyn (I don't know which) across the East River from
~33rd St in Manhattan. The 1 kW signal was always unlistenable in the
northwest Bronx where I lived. At the same time, WLIB 1190 ran 1 kW
from somewhere in Queens (maybe not far from the Queens end of the
Bronx-Whitestone Bridge). Where I lived, WLIB's signal was only
marginally better than WNYC's. As did WNYC, WLIB used a New York ID.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <kvahey@comcast.net>
To: <paul@derrynh.net>
Cc: "Dan.Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>;
<boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 9:13 PM
Subject: Re: Licensed to non-actual locations


> Has anybody in New York IDed themselves as Brooklyn or Queens and
> not
> NYC itself? Could they use a boro name istead of New York?