Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Some Amplification on Color TV and FM History Message-ID: Date: 26 Feb 91 03:02:00 GMT Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News) Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 120 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 159, Message 8 of 8 Originator: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: hub.eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu In commenting on my original post (Digest v11, iss156), our Moderator wrote: > [Moderator's Note: Thanks for another excellent article, which all of > us have come to expect from your terminal. Golly, thanks, Patrick. You should have seen the rosy blush my little T-1000 laptop emanated when it displayed that line. But please don't do that too much. It got so coy the rest of the day that I spent too much time coaxing it back out so I could tickle its keys some more! More along the thread, our Moderator continued (about Chicago's WEFM having been the *first* FM broadcast station): > ...Was the station in New York on the air continuously on a regular > schedule in the 1935 => 1941 period? Zenith's claim was they were the > first on the air with regularly scheduled, commercial programming on > the FM band. Armstrong's 'station" was purely an experimental one, and Zenith's claim that WEFM was the first regular station was certainly correct. My original remark was taking issue with a broad claim phrased in a way implying that Zenith was the first ever, thus perhaps creating the impression that Zenith was the developer of FM. In radio engineering education, the frist reference is always to Armstrong's 1935 experiments and his landmark paper read to the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1936. In New York, CBS also jumped on the FM bandwagon, but I do not have a date to compare to Zenith's Chicago operation. I do have in my own history book collection a 1942 engineering text that describes FM broadcast trnsmitters made by Armstrong, GE, RCA and Western Electric, all of which operated in the 42-50 mHz range, the original "FM band." On a different vein, our Moderator mentions how the FCC involved itself in the sale of WEFM concerning programming, saying: > ... the FCC approved the sale, but did not approve the change in > format for another year. The FCC required them to give a week's > notice to the listeners. A disclaimer was played hourly for a week > advising that the FCC had given permission to change the format, > and " ... for continued listening to classical music, we suggest you > tune to WNIB or WFMT ..." Ah, yes, the good old, bad old days of close regulation. The WEFM sale must have been the last of the era in which the FCC concerned itself with what kind of programs the public had access to in each market. In that time, each broadcaster had to propose to the FCC how much of each type of programming ... news, sports, education, music (by type), religion, and such it would air, brokne down into commercial and non-commercial amounts. Then, at triennial license renewal time, do an analysis from sample program log dates set by the FCC, showing how well the proposal was complied with, explaining any significant deviation. The "deregulation" of broadcasting preceded that of telecom by quite a few years. Many believe it led to the destruction of radio as an important information medium in America. One last note about the balky apparatus of early FM: My radio "Alma Mater: had one of the Western Electric 10 kilowatt FM trans- mitters, that had as a "feature" a motor-driven automatic frequency control circuit. It worked rather well, except that if there was a sustained low-frequency note, the darned thing would decide one of the large sidebands was the carrier frequency, and crank itself over there. When the note stopped, it lost track of where it should be, and the motor would just run off to one end of its track. The old WECo transmitter's power amplifiers were so broadly tuned, it would wander a full two megaHertz up the band, and park on top of one of the other stations in town, still putting out its full 10 kilowatts. At the same time, our fine Hewlett-Packard frequency monitor had circuitry such that it indicated zero deviation from assigned frequency every 3500 Hertz up the band, so its needle would settle with the appearance that we were just in fine shape. Our "alarm" would be some combination of the studio calling to say we "went off the air," and relaying calls from listeners who said they heard us on top of the other station! That other station had a GE transmitter using different circuitry with its own annoying version of the same habit, but a tendency to go clear off into Lord-knew-where in the radio spectrum. They had a subcarrier with the local Muzak on it, so their "alarm" would be the guy from Muzak calling up to say his customers lost their music. Somehow, life was a lot more adventuresome in those days.... [Moderator's Note: But I don't recall WJJD (1160 AM here) or WLS (890 AM) going through such efforts to change their format. WJJD went from a classical format to Country and Western overnight with no notice at all. And WLS: what a switch that was! It was 1959 or 1960. After years of ownership by Sears, Roebuck (the orld's argest tore, after all!) WLS had become just what their nickname implied: The Prairie Farmer Station. From early in the morning with a farm show and someone discussing the condition of the crops to late at night with the Old Barn Dance program from Nashville, TN, they spent the day with soap operas from the Mutual Network and Country/Western music. The exception was Sunday: From 6 AM until midnight, it was one preacher after another; thirty or sixty minute slots brokered to every crackpot with a post office box in Pasadena, CA. When WLS decided to go with rock music, they brought in several good DJ's, and switched the format at 6 AM one morning while everyone was still asleep. They bought off all the Sunday preachers who still had time left on their contracts and dumped them all the same week ... all but one ... a local guy here in Chicago named Preston Bradley, whose church services had been on WLS for umpteen years. They couldn't buy him off, and he still had two years to go ... so for two years following the change in format from Prairie Farmer / soap opera / peculiar religious stuff to a hard rock format, every Sunday they stopped the music at 10:58 AM and the DJ would say "It's time for Doctor Bradley ... I'm going out for breakfast ... we'll be back at noon." And at exactly noon they would cut him off the air, as often as not in mid-sentence and start the rock music again. I'm sure it pained them no end to have to suspend for an hour. The only time I heard any complaints from the FCC about them was when a DJ (remember, this was early sixties) said a naughty word on the radio one night. The FCC made them go off the air a few minutes later; they got (I think) a three day suspension of their license. PAT]