WEIM call letter change

[Dan.Strassberg]

When I arrived in Boston in May of 1956, I'm pretty sure that WNAC was
IDing as Boston-Lawrence. I can believe that immediately after General
bought it (and before I arrived), it IDed as Lawrence-Boston (or maybe
Lawrence AND Boston). It's possible that the ciy of license part of
the ID initially remained unchanged from what it had been when the
station was WLAW and was owned by Hildreth and Rogers. But maybe not,
because I'm not by any means sure that Boston was ever a part of
WLAW's legal IDs, notwithstanding that WLAW maintaned a studio in
Boston and may have originated more programming from Boston than from
Lawrence. Not having Boston in its legal ID would mean that before it
became WNAC, the station was never licensed to Boston in any way. When
I think about it, that seems likely. However, at some point not too
long after my arrival in Boston, WNAC obtained the FCC's blessing for
closing the Lawrence studio and dropping Lawrence from the legal ID.

It would be interesting to know how WLAW got control of the 680
frequency. Between its intitial sign-on (in 1937, I think) and its
move to Burlington and increase to 50 kW, it went though quite a
series of facility improvments, going from (I believe) 500W-D to 5
kW-U in a series of steps that included (IIRC) 1 kW-D, 1-kW-D/500W-N,
maybe 5 kW-D/1 kW-N, and 5 kW-U. All that time, it was licensed to
Lawrence and I believe that the transmitter remained in Andover.
Finally, after World War II, in 1947, the transmitter was moved to
Burlington and the power was increased to 50 kW DA-1. I forget the
year when it changed from DA-1 to DA-2, but it was very shortly before
the calls were changed to WRKO and the format went from talk/variety
to top-40.

Anyhow, it must have been obvious to the owners long before the move
to Burlington that the station could be relicensed to Boston. I'd be
surprised if Hildreth and Rogers hadn't been approached by owners of
Boston stations that wanted to swap frequencies in much the way that
WNAC ultimately did. In fact, didn't CBS have the idea of swapping 680
with 590 so that the old WEEI would move to 680 in Boston and WLAW
would move to 590 in Lawrence? Or was what became WGIR already on 610
in Manchester, which might have been too close to Lawrence for a
second-adjacent under the tighter rules that existed in those days?

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>
To: "Martin Waters" <martinjwaters@yahoo.com>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: WEIM call letter change
>
> The FCC wasn't assigning facility ID numbers back in 1953, but I'm
> pretty sure the license records followed the frequencies back then,
> too: General Tire & Radio sold the facility on 1260, which changed
> calls from WNAC to WVDA, and purchased the facility on 680, which
> changed calls from WLAW to WNAC. Wasn't WNAC 680 initially licensed
> "Lawrence-Boston" after the sale?
>