Quote:
Originally Posted by dieseljeep
The US was just recovering from of the Great Depression!
It's amazing what the various radio manufacturers were coming up with!
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It was a good thing WLW was eventually forced by FCC rules to reduce its power output to 50kW from 500kW. That station's "flamethrower" signal probably caused more trouble (illuminating light bulbs not in sockets, not to mention bulbs in unplugged floor and table lamps, etc., being received on bedsprings, electric range burner coils, tooth fillings . . .) than it should have; people who lived anywhere near WLW's towers when the station was running 500kW...well, I would imagine a lot of folks left Cincinnati at that time, since the radio station's incredibly powerful signal may well have come close to irking them, if not driving them nuts.
Today's WLW runs 50kW; the signal doesn't (I don't think) cause the same problems its predecessor did, although, as I said, anyone living very close (within a mile or less) from the station's towers are probably having the same problems, on a much smaller scale, of course, than did folks who lived that close (!) to the original WLW's transmitter towers.
I live catty-corner upstate from Cincinnati, near Cleveland in northeastern Ohio, so I can hear WLW here only at night (when I listen to AM radio, which isn't often these days, given the fact that most if not all AM stations are running talk formats). However (more years ago than I care to remember), I formerly lived very close to a 27.5-kW (ERP) FM radio station that came in on just about everything (in fact, I could see the station's tower lights from the third-floor bedroom window of the house in which I lived at the time, in the early 1970s), so I have at least a very small idea what those folks in Cincy must have been going through when WLW had its 500kW signal.
I'm sure folks in Cincy won't forget the flamethrower 500kW signal of WLW, and I know darn well I will never forget the troubles that nearly 3-kW signal from the local station in suburban Cleveland caused me in the early 1970s. It may have been 27,500 watts effective radiated power, but it might as well have been much higher, given the problems that signal caused me in the three years I lived in the Cleveland suburb the station was in. I don't know or care what format that station has anymore; for all I care, it could have gone off the air for good last night.
Goodness knows I do not miss it. That station has since moved its transmitter and tower 20-some miles away from its former location in Cleveland Heights; I bet many folks who lived near the station's tower breathed a sigh of relief when that happened, saying, no doubt, "Good-bye and good riddance!" Goodness knows that is exactly how I felt when I left Cleveland Heights for the last time in 1975, and not just because of the local radio station (very long story and OT).