WHMP-AM 1400/WHMQ-AM 1240/WHNQ-1600/W245BK-FM 96.9

[M.Casey]

Originally (up to about 1965 or so) it was sited right on the CT/MA line 
and, after a short stint as early rocker WJKO, was successful through the 
60's as Beautiful Music WTYM, they moved about 3-4 miles north to the 
current site within a 1/2 mile of the Springfield city line. When that move 
happened , and with the DA, they lost the Enfield, Ct audience but greatly 
gained signal strength in Springfield/Chicopee/Holyoke. They added the night 
service at some point.  Even with 2500w at night, It was a DA tight enough 
so that listeners near the original tower site (in the same town of East 
Longmeadow), and many in the next town of Longmeadow had interference!  I 
remember coming home late at night from Holyoke where night signal was 
super, then down I-91 then turning due East, the signal would get really 
rough at the point of the pattern null only a little over a mile SSW of the 
station. Then it would come back up with a not-too-bad night signal here in 
Hampden. The DA pattern may have been designed to protect WWRL-NYC, the 1590 
in Waterbury, CT , the 1600 in Brookline, MA, and maybe WLNG-Sag Harbor, LI.

Now here's another big reason for the downsize: There's an adjacent shopping 
center that needed to expand into the area of the towers. I can't remember 
if Wacky-AM was 2 tower or 4 towers. Not sure if WAQY owned the tower site 
or leased it, but it was going down to 1 tower to satisfy the needs of the 
expanding shopping center.

Interestingly enough, when they went back to ND, they probably got a few 
Enfield, CT listeners back---after waiting 30 years or so-ha!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Garrett Wollman
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2014 12:24 AM
To: Dale H. Cook
Cc: boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org
Subject: Re: WHMP-AM 1400/WHMQ-AM 1240/WHNQ-1600/W245BK-FM 96.9


> >That, then, is what happened. Why? I cannot say

>The old facility was a four-tower DA, if I recall correctly, and they
>dropped facilities to the maximum they could run after dropping three
>of the towers.  At that time, it was a simulcast of WAQY-FM with
>essentially zero audience.

Yes--almost Zero!  But there may have been one or two happy listeners to 
WAQY-AM.  The local radio joke at the time was that there was at least one 
16 or 17 year old high school kid driving around in his junky car with the 
radio in it that the FM side had quit working. So he could still listen to 
"ROCK 102" on the AM side. And there was probably one old hippie whose old 
car had an AM-only radio--and he was happy too.

Mark Casey
K1MAP
Hampden, Mass.






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