Blaw-Knox towers and Nashville

[Paul Hopfgarten]

Why is it that most National Chains fail to make in-roads in to good old 
parochial New England? Now of course Waffle Houses are pretty lame places to 
eat, I will admit, and only used on my trips to Texas last summer as a quick 
meal while on the road...

The DFW Metroplex seems to be the HOME of national chain restaurants from 
what I saw when I was down there last summer (Although I did like their 
variety of Radio Stations...and I met WBAP's Mark Davis, asked if he was the 
WTIC Mark Davis, was not...said he had been asked that before.......but you 
audiophiles probably already knew that.....)

-Paul Hopfgarten

(Waffle House, new location 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC) I think 
even some of the Uber-Libs would agree with me on this.......<G>

-----Original Message----- 
From: Kevin Vahey
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 2:36 PM
To: Scott Fybush
Cc: Boston-Radio-Interest
Subject: Re: Blaw-Knox towers and Nashville

I it a tossup for me which was more impressive - WSM or WLW ( edge to the
latter because of the calls on the tower )

However there was a Waffle House near WSM :)

WLW however seems to have a better signal as even in Nashville it is quite
strong.

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> wrote:

> Doug Drown wrote:
>
>> The WLW tower is the one seen on "WKRP in Cincinnati." It's immense. Back
>> in the '60s, when I saw it, it dominated the whole city skyline. Probably
>> still does.
>>
>
> A little clarification: the tower on Chickasaw Street that was seen in the
> WKRP opening sequence belonged to WLWT (or "WLW-T," if you prefer), the
> erstwhile TV sister station to WLW. It was indeed a dominant presence on 
> the
> city's skyline...until WLWT built a taller tower right in front of it. The
> old tower was torn down a couple of years ago.
>
> There are three TV towers in close proximity on that ridge just north of
> downtown: WKRC-TV 12, WLWT and WCPO-TV 9.
>
> The WLW radio tower cannot be seen from downtown Cincinnati; it's in 
> Mason,
> about 25 miles to the north, and it does dominate the skyline out there,
> such as it is.
>
> The engineering principles of the time dictated that "high-power" stations
> (anything above a kilowatt!) be located at a considerable distance from
> population centers to avoid overloading the very non-selective receivers 
> of
> the time. That's why WBZ built its high-power facility out in Millis in
> 1931, and why the initial NBC and CBS New York high-power AMs were built 
> far
> out of town, CBS at Wayne, NJ and NBC at Bound Brook NJ (WJZ) and 
> Bellmore,
> Long Island (WEAF).
>
> I think Dan may have somewhat overestimated the number of Blaw-Knox
> "diamond" towers that ever existed. There were certainly several prominent
> examples that no longer stand, including CBS' WABC tower at Wayne and the
> WCAU tower in Newtown Square, PA, outside Philadelphia. But those were all
> very, very early in the history of vertical AM radiators, and the
> diamond-shaped tower proved to be very expensive to build and maintain, 
> with
> no particular technical advantage over the simpler square- or
> triangular-cross-section guyed or self-supporting towers that became the
> industry standards.
>
> And the adoption of the vertical radiator was by no means immediate; as
> late as 1947, there were still prominent network O&O 50 kW stations using
> T-type longwire radiators. (KPO/KNBC in San Francisco may have been the 
> last
> to convert; WEAF was also quite late in the game.)
>
> I don't believe, in the end, that there were ever more than perhaps a
> couple of dozen Blaw-Knox "diamond" towers.
>
>
>  Blaw-Knox is still in active existence as a heavy equipment manufacturer.
>> I
>> saw a fairly new Blaw-Knox bulldozer just a short time ago. It took me by
>> surprise.  -Doug
>>
>
> The nameplate was sold several times over the years, and now apparently
> belongs to Volvo Heavy Equipment.
>
> s
>