70 years ago today...

[Scott Fybush]

Dan.Strassberg wrote:
> I thought it was March 31. And also, I read that a large number of
> stations did not make the transition right away. I assume that they
> were granted STAs to continue using their old facilities for several
> weeks, or even months until new equipment (when necessary) could be
> delivered and the necessary work could be done.

3 AM ET, March 29, was the transition point. I highly recommend a visit 
to David Gleason's americanradiohistory.com to look at the 3/31/41 issue 
of Broadcasting, which contains several articles about the transition. 
Page 11 describes some of the temporary frequencies and power levels 
granted to several stations during the transition.

In most cases, though, the work was indeed completed overnight March 28-29.

> As for WROL Boston, it was not a thing of the past; it was still a
> thing of the future--for several decades to come. In 1941, was the
> station already WORL (NOT WROL) or was it still WBSO Wellesley (AFAIK,
> unrelated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra; the calls stood for Babson
> Statistical Organization, a progenitor of today's Babson College). And
> where was the transmitter? Wellesley? By 1941, I imagine that WHDH was
> using the site on Lynn Marsh Rd (Rt 107) in Saugus. But was the
> antenna a long-wire or had it already been replaced by self-supporting
> vertical towers? Did WHDH go full-time concurrent with NARBA or did it
> remain a daytimer until sometime later? If the latter, then there
> might have been, nevertheless, two towers at the Saugus site, because
> the station knew that it would have to protect KOA when it eventually
> went full-time. Had someone been prescient enough to place the two
> towers, which very likely initially supported a long-wire, on an
> east-west line (required to protect KOA) and were the towers tall
> enough and spaced properly to become a DA with the required pattern?
> Inquiring minds...

Correction already noted on the WORL/WROL calls. WORL replaced WBSO in 
1935, still from the Wellesley site. 950 didn't move to Saugus until 
about 1950. And page 10 of the 3/31/41 Broadcasting tells us that the 
FCC had just granted WHDH's application for fulltime operation on 
830/850, over strong protests from KOA.

> The WROL calls did not grace 950 until the '60s or '70s. WORL first
> became WRYT and then WROL. At the time of NARBA, the WROL calls might
> have been on the AM 620 in Knoxville TN, if that station even existed
> in March 1941.

It did, and they were.

s