[BC] The cause of Gates Radio's slide

[Mark Humphrey]

On 2/6/07, radioranger at comcast.net <radioranger at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Maybe I missed this, but I remember seeing the Hi-Watter tag on a Gates Dualux console and wondering what the phrase meant....  Was increased power consumption considered to be a good thing back in the day?

My Sta-Level doesn't have the decal --  but IIRC, Gates' tagline in
those days (late '50s) was something like "Hi-Watter -- More watts per
dollar".

I guess the marketing people had hoped to convince small market
station owners that 1 or maybe 5 kW might be attainable with a Gates
package, where the competition (RCA or Collins) would have offered
only a 250 or 500 watt transmitter in a comparably-priced equipment
ensemble.

There were several Hi-Watter stations in upstate New York -- for
example WMNS 1360 in Olean, which was built in 1957 from a BC-1J, the
little 51CS Studioette console, a pair of 16 inch (CB-11?)turntables,
Gates mod monitor, frequency monitor, Gates remote control, etc.  BTW,
their original callsign stood for "Weather, Music, News, and Sports"
but now it's WOEN, ho-hum.

WLSV, Wellsville, in the neighboring county, had nearly the same
package, along with WACK "The Station with a Punch" in Newark, NY and
the original 1380 in Bath.

Larry Cervone (later the head of BE), who was then based in the Gates
NYC office, worked that region and was apparently an excellent
salesman.

Might be fun to compile a list of stations originally built with "mic
to antenna" packages of each of the major full-line manufacturers.
RCA -- All The Way, man...

Mark