Oldest religious broadcast?

[Scott Fybush]

A. Joseph Ross wrote:
> On 29 Mar 2009 at 20:22, Doug Drown wrote:
> 
>> A somewhat-but-not-entirely irrelevant question, since we're on this
>> subject: Are there still any communities in the U.S. with radio
>> stations that share time?  WBAP and WFAA in Fort Worth/Dallas used to
>> share 570 and 820; they were the last two I knew of.  
> 
> When did that time-share end?

I believe it was in 1970, possibly 1971.

That was indeed a unique situation, in which both stations were on the 
air full-time, but trading occupancy of the regional 570 channel and the 
clear channel 820 from daypart to daypart.

IIRC, 820 was always the NBC affiliate, regardless of which station was 
operating on that frequency, and 570 was always the ABC.

Each station had its own FM simulcast, and those weren't sharetime, so 
97.9 was always WFAA-FM, but was sometimes an NBC affiliate // 820 and 
sometimes an ABC affiliate // 570 - and vice versa on WBAP-FM 96.3.

There was *almost* a similar situation on TV here in Rochester, where 
WHEC-TV and WVET-TV shared channel 10 from 1953 until 1962. They 
operated channel 10 as a primary CBS affiliate, with some secondary ABC 
programming - but in the mid-fifties, they considered the possibility of 
applying for vacant UHF channel 27.

Channel 27, if it had come on the air, would have been a primary ABC 
affiliate, also shared between WHEC-TV and WVET-TV. Whichever station 
wasn't operating the CBS affiliate on channel 10 at any given time would 
have been operating ABC on 27.

The project never saw reality, since the FCC shuffled TV allotments in 
the meantime, creating a new channel 13 allotment in town that was 
ticketed to become the ABC station. (Still is, as a matter of fact.)

The channel 10 sharetime ended when WVET's owners bought the NBC 
station, WROC-TV, and sold their half of channel 10 to WHEC-TV.

s