Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire anybody old enough to remember the 50,000 watt clear channel stations?

Living in eastern MT. and would get OK city and Del Rio TX after sundown or some hour of the night. At that time they turned the antenna to the north and you could listen all night.

No reception during the day.

WAPE out of Jax. Directional north/south. The Grease Man.

Back in the 60's & 70's you could usually get stuff like WLS Chicago, and WABC New York City, in western NY state up along Lake Ontario. Once in a while when conditions were just right I could pick up that New Orleans station and stuff like WHO from Iowa. Also occasionally WOWO Ft. Wayne, Ind.. plus a few more that I can't recall at the moment.

yes! WOWO in ft wayne. that was a good'un. right up there with WLS and the art roberts show.

Sure Gus, remember them well. Now were did I put that wrench?

In bed too late at night with a toy crystal set, marveling at the distant stations I could get after adding extra wire that I found someplace to the antenna.

I think I first heard this on WLS.

I had a little AM FM radio when I was little. I would put it under my pillow and listen to WLS after my bedtime.

WNOE in New Orleans.

Not necessarily during the 60's but I lived in Chicago from 1978 to 1981 and every day I had to listen to WLS with Larry Lujack and his "Animal Stories" . Always good for a laugh. I went to High School in Northeast Nebraska during the mid 60's. We listened to KOMA and if the atmosphere was correct, we could pick up the Little Rock station. Porsche73

I'm old enough, but the only radio I had needed to be close to pick any thing up. If I couldn't see the lights on the tower, I couldn't hear it....

Wolfman Jack worked at a radio station just over the Mexican border that had 250,000 watts, XERF 5 times what was allowed in the USA.

"WBAP, News Talk 820, serves the Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas area with news, sports, traffic and weather. The radio station signed on the air in 1922 with 10 watts of power, which amounted to the 1920's version of electronic string and coffee-can communication. WBAP soon became a more powerful station, becoming one of the few 50,000 watt, clear-channel stations in the United States. Today, according to an independent study, WBAP has the greatest daytime coverage of any radio station in America and as much coverage at night as any other U.S. radio station. In early 1923 the station became the first ever to broadcast a rodeo, the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. Other WBAP firsts include: the first radio station in the southwest to broadcast a baseball game and a football game, the first radio station in America with regularly scheduled newscasts, the first station to remote broadcasts by shortwave radio and the first individual station to send a war correspondent to Europe in the early days of World War II. Music was a major part of WBAP's programming from the beginning. Live, in-studio broadcasts were scheduled which featured musicians on WBAP such as The Light Crust Doughboys, The Sunshine Boys and Bewley's Chuck Wagon Gang. News has been a major WBAP commitment from the early years, and WBAP has been home to some of the best newsmen in America including regionally and nationally known journalists."

How's about Detroit's "the great voice of the Great Lakes" WJR 760?

405wcf

850 KOA, out of Denver. "The 50,000 watt blowtorch of the west!"

Hell, somebody musta put out the 'blowtorch'. Can't get it anymore where I used to.....

Many of the stations have gone to "Talk radio".

absolutely. when the FM phenomenon entered the mktplace the whole venue began to shift.

talk radio now, not the rapid-fire DJ's of old.

I also remember "WLS, in Chicago!" and the songs played by Dick Biondi.......

Gus, when we get this old, we need to think it.