Tower Collapse

Working in small and medium market radio has had its foibles. For instance,  budget restraints in the technical department. I may not know what I am talking about but I believe that all of my chief engineers were moonlighting away from their main gig. My first chief, Dennis, was employed by the number one station in the market and retained by my station part time. At my second radio home Richard was another fine engineer on call to us but yet again his allegiance was to a big Atlanta FM. I had a great rapport with these guys and tried to learn as much about their craft as I could. I knew their hands were tied by our smaller budgets so a lot of maintenance was differed. Still, it was no less frustrating when something major got screwed up.

My first radio station had numerous technical issues although I believe our owners had very deep pockets. One DJ in our FM department once commented that, “Someone could pee down the street and knock us off the air”. Crass but true, he was almost right because it only took a mild thunderstorm to kick both AM and FM off the air.  The FM’s signal was almost always monaural not the clear stereo of our competition. Lightning once fried a transmitter making us sound no better than a citizens band (CB) radio. I was advised to switch it off and go home an hour early.

Around Saint Patrick’s day of 1985 some water craft on the Savannah River severed our STL (Studio Transmitter Link) line. All the air staff were moved out to the remote transmitter site to broadcast directly. The FM had emergency equipment there but we in AM were stuck with two Marantz Superscope portable cassette recorders and one patch cord directly wired to the transmitter. In an earlier post, Beam Me Up Scottie, I described the poor audio experience. It  lasted two days but seemed much longer. Bell South dropped us a new line in short order.

Five years later at my new radio home, WSPZ-AM, located just west of Atlanta, a tornado blew down our broadcast tower. This time I was off the air for two weeks without the luxury of a back up plan. Luckily for the staff, we reported for work and were paid. The station was awaiting FCC approval of transfer of ownership and feared the collapse would hinder the sale.

Station number two was the opposite of my first. WSPZ was owned by a smallish local church. The owners had spent an obscene amount of money on all new professional studio equipment and had for its size the best AM audio this DJ has ever herd. I feel that the owners were overextended when we first learned the station was for sale, 2 1/2 years prior to the tornado. A sizable investment was wasted on a 1Kw signal with 500 watts critical hours. The power was increased in about 1988 which meant another wad of cash for a new transmitter for only an increase to two and a half thousand watts. You may think that’s more than double the power but remember engineers tell us that to actually double your output on AM there has to be a ten fold increase in wattage. So, obviously, an allowance of 10,000 watts would have actually paid off.

what’s ironic about SPZ, the station’s listed price of $750,000 in 1987 was lowered numerous times and actually sold for a mere $70,000 a tenth in 1990. That’s what I call poor return on investment. For three years I was basically babysitting. I made a decent living doing something I loved and do not regret a thing. It is funny that my original radio home was owned by tightwads who refused a lot of the basics on stations with enormous potential while my second place was owned by free spenders beating a dead horse. I guess you can’t have it all.

Stay tuned.