...and speaking of anniversaries...

[Matthew Osborne]

Just a couple clarifications from a local...

WTRY did indeed have an FM partner again well before the 1990s.  Although I don't know the exact date, WTRY-FM 106.5 signed on the air sometime in the 1960s or 70s, probably from the same Helderberg Mountain transmit site.  If anyone here is more clear on this history, please correct me - it started out as mainly a simulcast of the AM, until the FCC cracked down on this.  They then gradually became a Beautiful Music - Easy Listening station in the 70s, changing call letters to WHSH (personal side note - one of my first clear memories of hearing anything on the radio was of my grandfather listening to WHSH, and hearing an announcer give those call letters).  This lasted until 1980, when they switched to rock and became WPYX (PYX 106).  Until just the last couple years, their studios were still at the AM 980 transmitter site on WTRY Rd just off Route 7 in Niskayuna (known by some as 'the bunker').

Dave, I am originally from Broadalbin, and have always wondered exactly where the old WCDB tower was located (nobody I ever talked to there even knew what I was talking about when I would ask them about it).  Would you be able to tell me where exactly that was?

                                           Matt Osborne
                                           Schenectady, NY


--- On Wed, 6/10/09, Dave Doherty <dave@skywaves.net> wrote:

> My Dad worked for a short time in the late 40's at WTRI-FM,
> which was co-owned with WTRY (980, now WOFX)) and spawned
> WTRI-TV, which I think was a UHF that eventually morphed
> into channel 13. WTRI-FM went off the air in the early 50's,
> and AFAIK WTRY didn't have an FM partner again until the
> consolidation movement in the 90's. In the late 1950's, I
> went to the WTRI-FM site on Heldeberg Mountain with my Dad,
> and I recall the tower sections stacked on the ground with
> the weeds growing up over them.
>