[BC] Dead air or no air...

[WBRadiolists at aol.com]

In a message dated 03/11/2009 4:06:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
areed21774 at aol.com writes:

>  WARE got hundreds of entries, 
>  and the winner got every song, except one, right. WDEW received NO 
>  entries.  If someone had signed their name to a postcard and sent it in, 
>  they would have won.  On another occasion, the WDEW transmitter failed 
>  at sign on.  I didn't get there until 8:15AM, nearly two hours later.  
>  In that time span, no one called the station (weekday morning drive) to 
>  ask why they were off the air.

I found WARE in Radio-Locator, but not WDEW. I see that WARE is an AM, so 
what was with WDEW that it got no calls for a rather valuable prize? That's sad. 
:(

It reminds me of the tale of the 1600 in Long Island. (Is this true, or Urban 
Legend?) I heard that the transmitter had failed, and they were off the air 
for a week. Apparently nobody even noticed. At one point, the owner was 
considering turning in the license, when he got a significant offer from a NYC 
station seeking to upgrade. He accepted and laughed all the way to the bank.

At least at WFIF, we did get calls when we went off the air for whatever 
reason. Having what was a somewhat popular morning music program (that solicited 
calls) was helpful, in that it was the first thing on the air at sign-on. If 
something went wrong and we couldn't sign-on, it wasn't long before the phone 
rang. A delayed sign-on in winter, though, (when said music program was not on 
the air) sometimes took a while to get a call.

Thankfully, after I got the Harris Gates 5 installed around 1997, the 
reliability of the station went up an order of magnitude or better. :) For about a 
year, I fired-up O'l Bessie into the dummy load once a month. When it stopped 
working altogether, and I couldn't find the problem (without taking major 
overtime), we gave up on it and donated it to a University in NY. Good bye, Ol' 
Bessie.

Willie...