[BC] Dead air or no air...

[Rich Wood]

------ At 09:35 PM 3/11/2009, WBRadiolists at aol.com wrote: -------

>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.
>:(

WDEW is where I started. The call letters went away a long time ago. 
It's now WNNZ. When I worked there it was 1Kw at 1570 and was 
seriously signal-challenged. It's now 50Kw at 640. I drove by their 
old studio/transmitter site and found the grass mowed nicely outside 
the tower's fence. What was stranger were the trees growing inside the fence.

I'd say the no calls thing was an aberration. When I was in High 
School I was interviewed because I won first prize in a science fair. 
I got a lot of comments from people who heard it. When I worked there 
I did a special talk show to round up support for a youth center. We 
got plenty of calls. My Dad ran a car dealership in town and 
advertising on WDEW helped him sell a lot of cars. I'd say it was 
your typical small city station that focused on Westfield. We had 
lots of competition from Springfield and Hartford and had little hope 
of covering those cities, so we didn't try. However, we did make one 
Arbitron book in the Hartford-Springfield survey.  Someone must have 
been listening.

>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.

The buyer probably wanted to take the station dark to increase its NY 
power. At 1600 that would have been WWRL, New York. If he was 
laughing to the bank it was wasted because the buyer probably got 
more out of the deal than the seller over the years. Several New York 
stations did similar things. WINS bought a small station in Arkansas, 
I believe, and took it dark to improve its pattern. WLIB bought WOWO 
and reduced its power to allow WLIB to increase theirs. You probably 
remember the fuss on this list over that deal. At 9.8Kw, WOWO still 
seems to cover their market nicely. They then found a buyer who was 
satisfied with the station's reduced power. For a "crippled" station 
they're doing quite well. They're #1 12+ with and 11.9. The next 
closest is WQHK-FM with an 8.0. This is the Fall 2008 book. The 
Winter book should be out soon. I'll bet they'll still dominate the 
market. The sky was supposed to fall. It didn't.

Rich