Fw: Small Cities With Class A Signal

[Dan.Strassberg]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan.Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>
To: "Jim Hall" <aerie.ma@comcast.net>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: Small Cities With Class A Signal


>I think the smallest city with a Class A AM is Little Rock AR (KAAY).
> If I'm not mistaken, Little Rock was also the last city in the 48
> contiguous states to be granted a Class A. (Actually, at the time of
> the grant, the AR station's class became I-B.) I believe the grant 
> was
> due to the intercession of Arkansas Senator Fulbright, a very
> influential and very conservative, old-style southern Democrat
> (strongly pro-segregation). What is now KAAY, had been Class II KTHS
> and was licensed to Hot Springs AR. It was moved to Little Rock and
> upgraded to Class I-B sometime in the '50s, I believe. Around the 
> same
> time, WQXR in New York City was granted Class I-B status. There 
> might
> have been some tit-for-tat horse trading with Sen Fulbright to pull
> that off. New York State already had WKBW, WHAM, WGY, WEAF, WOR, 
> WJZ,
> the old WABC (880), and WNEW, although, at the time of the grant, 
> some
> of those probably already had had newer calls than the ones I 
> listed.
>
> Interestingly, KAAY and WNEW initially were the only Class I-Bs that
> were on channels that already were home to two other North American
> Class I-Bs: 1090 had WBAL and XEPRS; 1130 had KWKH and CKWX.
>
> -----
> Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
> eFax 1-707-215-6367
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Jim Hall" <aerie.ma@comcast.net>
> To: "'Boston Radio Interest'"
> <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 25, 2011 8:36 AM
> Subject: Small Cities With Class A Signal
>
>
>>A friend and I were talking the other day about how the "clear
>>channels"
>> were distributed around the country in the 1920s. Some very small
>> cities
>> ended up with Class A stations. For example, Schenectady NY has a
>> population
>> of 66 k (metro population < 1000 k) and has WGY; Waterloo, IA has a
>> population of 68 k (metro population < 200 k) and they have KXEL
>> (Class A,
>> but directional at night). Schenectady obviously owes its good
>> fortune to
>> the fact that General Electric was located there, but how did small
>> cities
>> such as Waterloo IA, Hartford, Des Moines IA, Shreveport LA,
>> Wheeling WV,
>> etc. end up with the Class A's? Was it just because they were 
>> first?
>> Or was
>> there a plan to distribute the frequencies so as to cover the
>> country?
>>
>