July 24 - August 14, 2002
Booth Hill, Trumbull, Connecticut
What's the most historic FM site in the state of Connecticut?
No question about it, that would be West Peak in Meriden, one
of the sites where FM radio in the U.S. began more than sixty
years ago.
But what's the second most historic FM and TVsite in
the state? An excellent case can be made for the site shown at
right, the "Hi-Ho Tower" on Booth Hill Road in Trumbull,
Connecticut.
Booth Hill went on the air in 1953, carrying one of the first
commercial UHF stations in the country: WICC-TV, channel 43,
licensed to nearby Bridgeport. In an era when the TV signals
from New York, New Haven and Hartford weren't as strong as they
are now (and receivers far less sensitive), broadcasters hoped
that UHF might allow for the creation of new TV markets in places
like Bridgeport.
So it was that WICC-TV first took to the airwaves in March
1953. It was the second UHF station in the state, just behind
WKNB-TV (Channel 30) up in New Britain. WICC-TV affiliated with
ABC and DuMont,
and took advantage of the programming already running on WICC
(600), its sister radio station, including popular variety show
host Bob Crane. (Yep - the same Bob Crane who would later star
in Hogan's Heroes...)
WICC-TV spared little expense getting on the air from Booth
Hill; in addition to ordering a nice tall tower from Blaw-Knox
in Pittsburgh, the station built a new studio facility for both
TV and radio at the base of the tower. Surviving blueprints show
that the TV transmitter and master control took up about a third
of the building, filling the northwest corner, closest to the
tower. A studio to be shared by radio and TV, as well as a smaller
radio booth, lined the east side of the building (facing the
parking lot), with sales and general offices at the south end
of the building near the entrance.
WICC-TV was listed in the New York TV Guide, and it
tried hard to promote itself, even sending one announcer to the
streets of Manhattan with a robot (the robot was arrested, according
to the WICC-TV history at Peter George's excellent UHF
Morgue site); alas, in those early days of UHF, almost nobody
knew the station existed, even if they had a UHF antenna and
converter for their TV sets.
How
few people were watching? In 1960, the station announced, on
the air, that it would pay $100 to the first person who called
to say they were watching. The phone rather conspicuously failed
to ring, and by December 1960, WICC-TV was history. A fire a
few months later severely damaged the building, and WICC radio
moved its studios elsewhere.
(An interesting bit of trivia, though: while WICC's studios
were still up on the hill, a young would-be DJ named Dan Ingram
came here for a job interview and, soon, his first big radio
gig. The rest was history.)
Booth Hill didn't go silent after the end of Channel 43, though,
for in October 1960 the owners of WICC put a new FM facility
on the air from this tower. WJZZ, at 99.9, played nothing but
jazz, under the more than able guidance of music director Dave
Brubeck and his staff. WJZZ kept playing jazz until 1969, when
new owners Nassau Broadcasting flipped it to an adult contemporary
format as WPSB; a decade later, 99.9 would become WEZN, the same
calls it uses today (albeit with a "-FM" suffix since
the late nineties.) Today, WEZN-FM is better known to southern
Connecticut and Long Island listeners as "Star 99.9,"
a hot AC station that's perenially a market leader.
99.9
soon had company up on Booth Hill, too; in 1963, the University
of Bridgeport put WPKN on the air at 89.5, and today the station
survives as an independent community radio station, having outlasted
its parent institution. Sacred Heart University in Fairfield
put its WSHU on the air at 91.1, licensed to Fairfield, in 1964.
And UHF television returned to Booth Hill in 1967, with the
debut of Connecticut Public Television's WEDW (Channel 49), licensed
to Bridgeport and transmitting from the same spot on the "Hi-Ho"
tower (named for the local construction company that ended up
owning it) that WICC-TV had used a decade earlier.
Those same four stations are still to be found here at Booth
Hill, albeit with a very different building configuration from
the WICC days. All three FM stations share a common transmitter
room at the back of the building - in space that, the original
blueprints show, was once the men's room! WSHU and WEZN-FM both
use modern Continental transmitters (with a Harris auxiliary
for 99.9); WPKN chugs along on the old Gates shown at right in
the photo above. That transmitter, it turns out, used to belong
to WTFM (103.5 Lake Success NY, now WKTU), back in the days when
it transmitted from the Horace Harding Expressway in Fresh Meadows,
Queens.
WEDW-TV has its transmitter
in a separate room at the front of the building, in roughly the
spot where the WICC-TV studios were once found. And like any
good tall tower these days, the venerable old Blaw-Knox is now
festooned with dozens of two-way antennas serving everyone from
the FBI to several cellular carriers.
So what ever happened to channel 43? The allocation remained
in Bridgeport, and in 1987 it returned to the air under local
ownership as WBCT, transmitting from a cable tower in nearby
Shelton. Several callsigns later, it's known as WSAH and is the
New York market flagship for the Shop at Home television network.
Special thanks to WEZN morning man John Harper, PD Steve Marcus
and CE Dom Bordonaro for arranging this look inside this historic
site!
And before we go, we're happy to pass along a special offer
from our friends at M Street. They've just released the 11th
edition of the M Street Radio Directory, the most
comprehensive guide to radio in the U.S. and Canada today. Calls,
frequency, power, address, key personnel, ownership, ratings
- it's all in the nearly 900 pages of the latest edition, and
Tower Site of the Week/NorthEast Radio Watch readers can get
it at a special discount. If you're traveling this summer, you
want this book!
List price on the M Street directory is $79 - but we're pleased
to offer it to you for $69, a $10 savings. (You'll also pay $7
for shipping and handling via UPS.) You can order in two ways:
by credit card at 1-800-248-4242. Ask for Irene, and tell
her you want the "NorthEast Radio Watch" discount.
Or, send a check/money order for $76 (payable to Scott Fybush)
to 92 Bonnie Brae Avenue, Rochester NY 14618. It's a great resource,
and something that should be in the library of anyone who needs
to keep track of the radio industry today!
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