Oldest religious broadcast?

[Dan.Strassberg]

You didn't mention the logisitically bizarre, if not outright
impossible, manner in which WFAA and WBAP divided the time on
the two frequencies. Given the intense and long-standing rivalry
between Dallas (to which WFAA is licensed) and Fort Worth (to which
WBAP is licensed), I suppose that such a stupid arrangement was
inevitable, but it's amazing that the two stations didn't have to cart
a new GM and PD off to padded cells every six months or so.

If I've got this striaght, each station got exactly 84 hours of air
time each week. (Don't ask how they managed the 167- and 169-hour
weeks at the beginning and end of Daylight Saving Time; I don't know
how they accomplished that.) Moreover, over a two-week span, each
station got every hour of every day exactly once. So, for example, if
WFAA had Sunday evening from 8:00 to 9:00 this week, WBAP would have
that same time period next week. I don't know how many hours at a time
each station was on each frequency, but I think the air staffs stayed
with the frequencies NOT with the call letters, so aside from the call
letters changing at the handoff (which must have confused many
listeners), the programming appeared continuous to the listeners. To
minimize listener confusion, perhaps they avoided mentioning call
letters except at the legal IDs and, whenever possible, mentioned only
the frequency.

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>
To: "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com>
Cc: "boston Radio Interest Board"
<boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 12:52 PM
Subject: Re: Oldest religious broadcast?


> 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