Unconfirmed report silent WDTW (AM 1310) heard testing

Oscar Madison said:

There is a "tri-county" area if you're from the area. That's the frame of reference locals use. Maybe not in Schaumburg, IL but around Detroit.

Maybe 1270 would be better off, if they'd kept the stick at Broadcast House.

Click to expand...

Perhaps they could have kept their daytime operation at Broadcast House (Southfield, MI, for readers outside the Detroit area), even possibly adding a tower or two to their daytime array to run significantly more power during the day (then again, that magic "50,000 watts" figure may have been unattainable from there, and the Tigers management may have refused any solution without that 50,000 figure, even if it were to result in better coverage.
The death knell was the very deep night hours null they needed to protect WHBF, Rock Island, IL:
http://fccinfo.com/CMDProEngine.php...abSearchType=Appl&sAppIDNumber=69496&sHours=N
When WXYZ moved from Detroit's west side (Greenfield & Joy) to Broadcast House (10 Mile Rd. & Lahser, Southfield, I think about 1959 - correction most welcome), not many people lived west of their array, but that would change over the following years, with the westward advance eventually extending into Livingston County. The area in that null just happens to have desirable demographics. No power increase or pattern change would be able to fix the problem as long at they had their TL at at that site and had to have that deep null at 263.5 degrees to protect WHBF/WKBF.

They left Broadcast House with the change in ownership away from ABC in 1985. By the time CBS acquired the station that location was well in the past for the station.

The upgrade to 50,000 watts was a requirement of getting the Tigers broadcast rights. Clearly those who negotiated it for Mr. Illitch didn't understand the vagaries of coverage and that it would be impaired, even with the power increase.

This was rendered moot when they moved The Ticket to FM where it's been at or near the top of the ratings since.

WXYZ's (1270 AM) was in Southfield before Broadcast House, which was built on the transmitter property. Dick Osgood in "Wixie Wonderland" wrote that on weekends in the early-mid 50s, station operations moved from the Mendelssohn Mansion on East Jefferson to the transmitter in Southfield.

umfan said:

They left Broadcast House with the change in ownership away from ABC in 1985. By the time CBS acquired the station that location was well in the past for the station.

The upgrade to 50,000 watts was a requirement of getting the Tigers broadcast rights. Clearly those who negotiated it for Mr. Illitch didn't understand the vagaries of coverage and that it would be impaired, even with the power increase.

This was rendered moot when they moved The Ticket to FM where it's been at or near the top of the ratings since.

Click to expand...

Though the office and studio were moved after Fritz Brothers bought the station, they continued to transmit 5kw U DA-N (or U2, if you prefer) from the WXYZ property for many more years.

Google Earth views of the Ash Twp. Site show unimproved acreage on 3/27/1999 and array completed by 6/16/2003.

The old two-tower array in Southfield was still standing on 6/28/2003, but the towers were gone by 3/30/2005

After moving the TL from the Maccabees Building, they moved out to 15505 Joy Road near Greenfield. They increased to 5000/1000 U1 and then 5000 U2 there. The first two tower DA was built there. Once again, those old database files would be interesting to look at. I don't think the WXYZ history card is on CDBS yet. I use the WRTH designation because it is more "efficient" and quick to type on a tablet, Android, or iPhone.

Interesting. I've seen an aerial photo from 1951 that shows their array on the northwest corner of the intersection, in which case a Joy Road address should have been even.

I'm guessing that their time at Joy Road was quite brief.

I think it was from the late 1930s to the late 1950s. Is the even odd convention the same within the City Limits as outside? It seems like the numbering system changed and when I put the address in, their were two 15000 blocks several miles apart. It was around 1940-1942 when they built the second tower. Originally it was designed for 1240 kHz with 135 degree spacing, which became 138 degrees when they moved to 1270 kHz. This convention persisited when they moved to Southfield. There were only about 40 directional antennas in the country that were authorized during the prewar and World War II era, and early postwar era. They stopped authorizing changes, and materials were hard to get or impossible to get during the war. There was a boom after the war. It seems like WOOD or WKZO weren't completed until after the war began, so apparently the towers and other material had already been delivered. It seems like final licensure for WXYZ, WFDF, WOOD, and WKZO DAs were after World War II began. WWJ was the only one licensed before the war I believe. The first postwar DA authorized was Trendle and Campbell's WTCB/WTAC, now WSNL. Except for WKZO, which had a tower collapse recently, they have all been relocated and replaced.

I just searched for it again. It looks like most sources showed the address as 15500 Joy Road. But there still may be another 15000 block further out. 15505 may be the closest address google found on current maps.

The decline and fall of Wixie began when Chuck Fritz became GM. It was accelerated when ABC let him buy the station.
The station of the Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, Sergeant Preston, Mickey Schorr, Ed McKenzie, Fred Wolf, Joel Sebastian, Joey Reynolds... and one arrogant, incompetent SOB destroyed it.

DavidEduardo said:

WXYZ was pretty dead when Chuck bought it from ABC in 1984 for $3 million. He sold it exactly 10 years later to Infinity for $23 million, so he must have done something right. That does not sound like the dictionary definition of "incompetent".

Click to expand...

Chuck was manager of the station for almost a quarter century before that.

If a station's selling price is your absolute standard for the quality of radio, then radio really is in the crapper today.

Oscar Madison said:

The decline and fall of Wixie began when Chuck Fritz became GM. It was accelerated when ABC let him buy the station.
The station of the Lone Ranger, Green Hornet, Sergeant Preston, Mickey Schorr, Ed McKenzie, Fred Wolf, Joel Sebastian, Joey Reynolds... and one arrogant, incompetent SOB destroyed it.

Click to expand...

I can't say anything regarding Chuck Fritz because I never met the man and never heard any stories. But Ed McKenzie had a fascinating and PAINFUL introduction to radio in the 1920s, when WJR was still WCX.

https://books.google.com/books?id=5...CgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=ed mckenzie wcx&f=false

Actually, WJR and WCX shared time.

I guess the rise of FM and a lot of things outside of the control of the station manager played no role. He was the one who shifted the station to news/talk and it had a resurgence from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, so I think, on balance, he did all right.

umfan said:

I guess the rise of FM and a lot of things outside of the control of the station manager played no role. He was the one who shifted the station to news/talk and it had a resurgence from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, so I think, on balance, he did all right.

Click to expand...

And before the rise of FM, as GM, Wixie got its butt kicked by a weak stick in Dearborn (which had previously served as Wixie's "farm station"). In response, he let a previously fired DJ clutter up the station with every bit of garbage he could rip-off or copy from other stations. He flipped to MOR and over-paid for outside and out of market talent and got his butt kicked even worse. It's amazing ABC sold him the station; they should have fired him long before. Flipping to talk was not a burst of creativity; like 1500, he'd done everything else. Or maybe ABC's new owners, Cap Cities, with THE established talker of their own, were counting on him to fail - and he failed to make a dent in talk radio, too.

Oscar Madison said:

Actually, WJR and WCX shared time.

Click to expand...

The WJR calls were used exclusively by 1925. Given the additional fact that Ira Sayre died in 1926, Ed McKenzie's first painful exposure to radio happened somewhere between 1922 and 1925. The radio used had three tubes. The TL for WJR was is Sylvan Lake at that time. I think you could have received WCX/WJR in Flushing even on a crystal radio with a long enough antenna. As WEAA/WFDF was on a channel with more stations, and used 100 watts with a T antenna, WCX/WJR was probably the clearest daytime station, if not the strongest, in Ed McKenzie's hometown.

Interesting thing I saw while looking through old aerial views.

A Detroit radio history fact I never knew. WJBK 1500 from Lincoln Park with eight towers in 1961:

http://claslinux.clas.wayne.edu/photos/part2/wayne/1961/fm-22-101.pdf

I had always thought that they had nine towers when they moved to LP in 1954, had to add a column of three more on the west when nine couldn't protect KSTP in the Minnesota Arrowhead, and took away three from the East to cash in on their Dixie Hwy. frontage land

Now I guess they started with two rows of four, added another row of four on the South, and then took out the Eastern column in 1989.

I also had thought they had gone to twelve towers much earlier than 1961.

If they went from a 4X2 with the broadside axis E-W, to a 4X3 with the broadside E-W, it would considerably reduce high angle radiation, especially if there is a null from the 3 tower endfire component close to an E-W direction. That would considerably reduce fading, as effectively as going to much higher towers. That also adds to pattern gain, allowing the 2500 watt input to have a 5000 watt 392 mV/m @ 1 MILE RMS.

....Back to 1310. Surprise! Their application for the six tower ungrounded array was GRANTED on May 29 by FCC, Saving Mr . Zamora the big expense of a ground system.

The CP does show that the theoretical RMS figures will be very slightly less than the licensed parameters.

I'm thinking Charlie doesn't want to be thought of as the "bad guy", denying the community a station "of their own", and this may be a silent acceptance that there is more interference on 1310 at night than official records would have it and that CIWW is the 800 pound gorilla on the channel, not WIBA or WTLC.

Funny thing is, if the array doesn't work to specs, all the better for La Trece Diez - it may be heard in SW Detroit.

I still think it would have been better off diplexed somewhere. I realized there was another array that could have been used where they "wouldn't even need to diplex". Towers 6-10 of WCHB (Radio One) are not used for the day operations of WCHB, and could have given a nice signal to 1310.

update: looking at their new authorization, I see the obvious error of a 28.98 mV/m limit at 308¤ day. Obviously 228.98 (pattern is symmetrical). Would they try to meet that errant figure?

That 23.49 limit at 310.5¤ night makes no sense. WCCW already gets plastered by WIBA at night, they don't need that much protection from WDTW.

110 kHz is kind of close for diplexing, but like you say, it's not a diplex. Two of the E-W towers might work, but the orientation and spacing might not be ideal. And you might need at least four towers in the daytime to reduce the radiation to the South toward WOBL. The advantage of the existing site and licensed parameters is that you don't have to reduce overlap or radiation toward cochannel stations at night. The day pattern nulls are the equivalent of the 1000 watt nondirectional operation when they moved from 1540 to 1310.