A fire Sunday afternoon destroyed the former WMTW-TV (Channel 8) transmitter building atop the Northeast's highest peak, more than 6200 feet above sea level. While channel 8 left Mount Washington almost exactly a year ago (NERW, 2/4/2002) for a new tall tower in Baldwin, Maine, its transmitter building remained behind on the mountaintop, home to generators supplying power to the entire mountaintop. The building also continued to house the transmitter of WHOM (94.9 Mount Washington).
The fire broke out around 4 PM, cutting off power to the Mount Washington Observatory nearby. Four observatory staffers were in the Sherman Adams Building that sits a few dozen yards from the WMTW building; they were evacuated Sunday night amidst concern that worsening weather over the next few days could leave them stranded for several days without heat or power.
Sources tell NERW that by the time a snow tractor reached the summit Sunday evening, the WMTW building was "burnt to a crisp," with only the entranceway still remaining. No damage was reported to the nearby Yankee Building (home to the transmitter and antenna of WPKQ 103.7 North Conway NH), or to the Sherman Adams Building. It's not clear at press time whether the WHOM antenna suffered any damage.
The WMTW building was built in 1954 for the start of TV service on the mountain, which had already become an important broadcast facility thanks to Edwin Armstrong's FM experiments there in conjunction with the Yankee Network, which lasted from 1938 until 1948.
WHOM's presence on the mountain dates to 1958, when 94.9 signed on as WMTW-FM. Its two transmitters sat near the door that connected the TV/FM transmitter room in the WMTW building to the living quarters there. Until last summer, when WMTW-TV removed the last of its equipment, channel 8 staffers were stationed on the mountain all year long, working rotating shifts and living at the transmitter building for weeks at a time. (NERW wonders whether an on-site engineer would have caught the fire before it could have done any damage; we may never know.)
With its transmitters destroyed, it will likely be late into spring or early summer before WHOM can resume its broadcasts from the mountain, which reached listeners about a hundred miles radius -- south to Boston, north well into Quebec, east to central Maine and west to Lake Champlain and beyond. In the meantime, Citadel, which owns WHOM and WPKQ, has moved WHOM's soft AC format to WCYI (93.9 Lewiston), breaking the modern rock "CYY" simulcast with WCYY (94.3 Biddeford) for the duration. We're told WHOM will apply for special temporary authority to use the licensed auxiliary facility of Citadel's WBLM (102.9 Portland), running 100 kilowatts at 150 meters from a site in New Gloucester, Maine.
As for WPKQ, its transmitter and antenna are intact at the mountaintop but lack any source of power. The observatory, which took over responsibility for power generation on the mountain when WMTW left, plans to attempt to get a generator to the top of the mountain on Monday, so WPKQ's broadcasts could be restored this week, if weather permits -- a big "if" on a peak known for having some of the worst weather in the country. (At the time the fire started, Mount Washington was reporting temperatures of 1 degree Fahrenheit, 54 MPH winds, blowing snow and freezing fog -- and that's a good weather day up there!)
LATE UPDATE: As of Monday afternoon, at least one Observatory staffer has returned to the top of the mountain, and we're hearing reports that WHOM has a signal back on 94.9 at low power. Much more to come, throughout the week, here on fybush.com....
TUESDAY UPDATE: The first pictures from the summit since the fire are now posted on www.mountwashington.org -- and what a sight! The fire not only destroyed the WMTW building but also appears to have gutted the adjacent Yankee Power Building. It appears from the photos that the WHOM tower next to the power building is standing, but there is no word on damage to that structure or the transmission lines on it.
A 30 kW diesel generator made it to the summit Monday, but the power it provides is mainly for the observatory; an added complication is that the fuel tanks, which are located further down the slope of the mountain and survived the fire, contain not diesel fuel (which would congeal in the mountain's extreme conditions) but kerosene.
The word from investigators, meanwhile, is that the fire was discovered quite early by an observatory intern and, once started, was impossible to put out in the 50 MPH winds that day on the summit. So even if an engineer had been there, not much would have changed, alas.
On the dial, WPKQ at 103.7 remains silent; WHOM's programming continues to be heard via WCYI (93.9 Lewiston) -- and we're hearing interesting rumors from up north that it was that very 93.9 transmitter that may have found its way over to 94.9 for a few hours on Monday. In any case, 94.9 is silent now.
Also silent, as it turns out, is WLOB-FM (96.3 Rumford); J.J. Jeffrey's talk station used Mount Washington as a relay point to get its signal from its Portland studios to its transmitter high above Rumford. Jeffrey says he hopes to have an alternate STL path going by Friday.
And we hear the cable feed of CKSH (Channel 9) in Sherbrooke, Quebec is missing from the systems in Maine and southern New Hampshire that carried it; apparently the microwave path for the Radio-Canada outlet's signal also used Mount Washington.
While we're down on the Cape, we note petitions to deny against three LPFM applications on Martha's Vineyard: "Assembleia de Deus" apps for 93.7 in Menemsha and Oak Bluffs and "M&M Community Development" apps for 93.7 Oak Bluff. We wonder if the latter has anything to do with the accusations that are surfacing on several industry mailing lists about LPFM stations violating both the letter and the spirit of the local programming rules such stations are supposed to follow (and what of the one-to-an-owner rule, for that matter?)
Heading back toward Boston, we note a call change at WVXN-CA (Channel 24), which becomes WFXZ-CA for reasons I can't fathom; it's still running MTV2, as far as we can tell.
There's a new newscast coming to Boston April 1, and it should be welcome news to the Spanish-speaking community. Entravision's WUNI (Channel 27 Worcester) is hiring staff right now for the new 6 PM show, which will apparently be simulcast on sister station WUVN (Channel 18) down in Hartford. There's already local news in Spanish on WCEA-LP (Channel 58), but the WUNI show should have a much bigger budget and a more professional look, we'd expect.
Out in Greenfield, Phil Drumheller checked in to tell us all about his new acquisition out there. The former WGAM (WPOE for those with very long memories) is now WIZZ (1520), running what Phil describes as "a unique blend of nostalgia with a mid-road pop-rock sound, spanning six decades." Phil, better known as "Phil D." from Springfield's WHYN, will start on the 6-9 AM shift next week. Other voices heard on WIZZ include WHYN veteran Gary James and the rapidly-becoming-ubiquitous (and we mean that in a good way!) Dennis Jackson. WIZZ will also carry AP news at the top of the hour.
Springfield's WWLP-DT (Channel 11) will begin carrying NBC's high-definition programming this week, if all goes well.
And lest there be any question about which market the new channel 51 in Pittsfield will target, the new station applied for calls last week: WNYA(TV), which can only stand for New York -- Albany....
NERW wonders whether Entercom will fill the void in WGR's night schedule with the AAA Buffalo Bisons, currently heard on WGR sister station WWKB (1520). Such a move would certainly please fans of "KB" legend Jackson Armstrong, whose 6-10 PM shift stands to be pre-empted for much of the summer by Bisons games otherwise.
Over at Infinity, urban WBLK (93.7 Depew) has a new PD: he's Chris Reynolds, inbound from WDZZ (92.7) in Flint, Michigan.
A Syracuse translator is changing hands: W267AL (101.3), which relays rocker WKRL (100.9 North Syracuse), is being sold by WKRL owner Galaxy to "M&D Translators Inc.", whoever that is.
On the DTV front, we hear WCNY-DT (Channel 25), which has already been doing some testing from its new Sentinel Heights tower, has next Monday as its target date for regular programming, at which point it will be joined by WCNY-TV's analog channel 24 signal, moving from the WIXT (Channel 9) tower a few miles away.
Down in Port Jervis, Venture Technologies has been granted a new LPTV. W64CW will operate with a whopping 30 watts. It'll operate from a site just west of "downtown" Port Jervis, at the triangle where New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania all come together.
We can't leave New York without mentioning two New York radio veterans. Peter King, the upstate native whose resume includes stops in Ithaca, Rochester and Syracuse, deserves special mention this week for his major role in CBS Radio News coverage of the Columbia disaster. He's rapidly become one of the most knowledgeable reporters in the business when it comes to space (he's based in central Florida, after all), and it showed last week. And the death Wednesday (Feb. 5) of Larry LeSueur was truly the end of an era; at 93, the CBS veteran (1939-1963, after which he worked for the Voice of America) was the last of "Murrow's boys," that team of reporters who invented radio journalism as we know it while bringing the sounds of World War II to America.
Speaking of religious formats, WAWZ (99.1 Zarephath) relaunched last week with a full-fledged commercial contemporary Christian format. The renamed "Star 99.1" is aiming all its imaging 40 miles away at New York City, even though its signal there is spotty at best; will the format find an audience there, despite the signal? We'll bet there are some listeners in the number one market who will seek out the station's new sound....
Imus offended pretty much the entire community back in May 2000, when he threw a temper tantrum during what was supposed to be a remote broadcast from Scranton. A hotel operator failed to put a late-night phone call through to the I-Man's room, and so Imus packed up at 3 AM and headed back to New York to do his show from there, spending most of it insulting Scranton.
WARM pulled the show that day, replacing it with local news, then with oldies, then with local talk and most recently with Indiana's Bob and Tom. As of last week, though, Imus is back on board the revolving door that is WARM; we'll see whether listeners there are ready to forgive him.
Meanwhile at the Entercom cluster, a strange little application from WGGY (101.3 Scranton): it wants to raise the listed height above average terrain of its antenna by about 27 meters (from 338 to 365 meters), while keeping its power at 7 kilowatts. It seems that the height of the antenna site was never recorded properly on the original 1949 application for what was then WGBI-FM -- and a 1963 modification to the 1949 application then contained a typo that lowered the reported height still more. Now WGGY wants to correct the error and remain licensed with the parameters it's been using for more than half a century anyway....
A Monday flip in Pittsburgh: Infinity re-imaged its CHR WBZZ (93.7) today, dropping the longtime "B94" moniker in favor of "93.7 BZZ-FM." Our ears in the Steel City say the music mix hasn't changed; expect this to be the first salvo in what promises to be a reinvigorated CHR war with Clear Channel's WKST-FM (Kiss 96.1)....
Also in the Pittsburgh market, Alex Langer was granted his move of WFJY from 1470 in Portage (near Johnstown) to 660 in Wilkinsburg, a move of some 80 miles. The new WFJY facility on 660 will run 270 watts daytime only from one tower of the WWNL (1080 Pittsburgh) array up north of town.
Down in Belleville, CJOJ (95.5) made a format change on Friday, moving from "Hits of the 80s, 90s and today" to classic hits. The Stones' "Start Me Up" kicked off the new format there, we're told.
Just up the road in Peterborough, CJLF (Life 100.3) from Barrie was granted a 500-watt transmitter on 89.3 to bring its contemporary Christian sounds to the market. CJLF also holds a grant to put a transmitter on in Owen Sound, at 90.1.
And Milkman Unlimited reports that "Tarzan Dan" is out as afternoon jock at Toronto's CISS (Kiss 92.5); weekender Kid Carson is filling that shift for now.