The importance of local talk radio

[SteveOrdinetz]

At 08:57 PM 11/21/2008, Dan.Strassberg wrote:
>If you look into it, though, I think you will find that, almost
>coincident with the call letter and format flips, WNAC/WRKO changed
>its day pattern. It had been DA-1 with the same pattern that WLAW had
>used full-time before RKO-General bought the 680 license. It became
>DA-2 with different day and night patterns. The new day pattern (still
>in use) has a minor lobe to the west-southwest (equivalent to maybe 8
>kW ND if memory serves), which greatly improved the daytime signal in
>what is now known as MetroWest and should also have made a noticeable
>improvement back then in daytime reception in Fitchburg and
>Leominster.

In the early 70s I worked in Littleton (Mass.), and WRKO had a pretty 
good daytime signal there.  As you said, once they switched to their 
night pattern, they were gone.  In those days when AM was king, there 
wasn't much else that was listenable after dark.



>  Doug Drown wrote:
>
>  Even WEIM, which had a brief stint as a Top 40 station (and a
>pretty good one at that) during the late '60s - early '70s, didn't 
>reach into our neck of the woods very well at night, nor did WORC or WAAB.



WEIM was Top 40 into the late 70s anyway, I have a handful of surveys 
from them, mostly from the summer of '77 and they were definitely top 40 then.


At 01:27 AM 11/22/2008, Don A wrote:


>In the Merrimack Valley, people couldn't get WMEX after dark, but 
>they had WLLH as a secondary Top 40 station.


I would imagine that WFEA also had a pretty good signal too (at least 
in Nashua & Lowell) since their pattern at the time was a fairly 
tight N-S figure 8.