AM in Boston after WW II was: WBZ-AM Allston backup is no more

[Kevin Vahey]

When you look at Boston radio history it is fascinating how signals
evolved on AM - I am excluding the daytimers from this

590 WEEI - Covered the market well plus the Merrimack Valley and South
Shore - Only 5kw but at 590 that wasn't an issue - The weakness was in
what would become Metro West because of WTAG at 580
680 WLAW/WNAC/WRKO - The owners of WLAW obviously found an excellent
engineering consultant to pull off the upgrade to 50kw and moving the
transmitter to Burlington.
850 WHDH - Same playbook as WLAW with the upgrade to 50kw and building
the transmitter in what was rural Needham. They became a player thanks
to sports and Bob and Ray
1030 WBZ - Moving to Hull from Millis before WWII solved most issues
in the city and while they were a true 1-A clear channel they became
directional by choice and thus had the strongest nighttime signal in
the Northeast.
1150 WCOP -  Transmitter moved from Allston to Lexington in 1947 and
their 5kw signal was very strong downtown but very weak on the North
Shore which doomed them in their Top 40 years,
1260 WNAC/WVDA/WEZE - A solid 5kw signal and as WEZE they were the
top-rated station in the city in the mid-'60s.
1510 WMEX - A decent 5kw signal by day - at night if you were only a
few miles from the coast not so much







On Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 11:29 PM Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> wrote:
>
> A couple of years ago, iHeart sold its tower portfolio to Vertical Bridge,
> which is now one of the big national players in the tower rental business,
> alongside American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA.
>
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2020, 9:27 PM Shawn Mamros <mamros@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > Scott wrote:
> > >I doubt they'll invest in a new off-site AM backup. Those are becoming
> > >exceedingly rare, and especially now that iHeart doesn't own its own tower
> > >sites, it becomes harder (or at least more expensive) for them to, say,
> > >diplex a 10 kW WBZ signal into one WRKO tower.
> >
> > I may have missed this, but... who owns the towers in Hull now, if iHeart
> > doesn't?
> >
> > -Shawn
> >