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![]() September 9, 2005 WATD, Marshfield MABy SCOTT FYBUSH We have an affinity in this space for good local radio in small communities. And for years, we'd been promising to visit a station not far from our old stomping grounds in eastern Massachusetts that's often held up as an ideal small local station. We finally made it to WATD (95.9 Marshfield) in June 2005, and we're delighted to show you what we saw during an extensive tour from station owner Ed Perry.
That's a DuMont TV set, if memory serves, and the old phonograph next to it is in working condition. There certainly aren't many station lobbies with this many stuffed animals, and it's hard to imagine any with quite so many news awards on the wall.
The opposite wall of the lobby includes a framed display of two letters - one, from Ed's teenage years in Natick, from the FCC warning his father of the consequences if young Ed was allowed to continue operating an unlicensed station from the Perry family home (it was quickly shut down), and another, many years later, from a local congressman praising the work that WATD does for the community. We'll head upstairs to the WATD studios in a moment, but first we head to the back of the building. Past Ed's office just off the lobby, we enter the facilities of the Talking Information Center, the reading service for the blind that Ed helped to found. From these studios (including that big room shown above, with two small voice booths dropped in for extra studio space), TIC reaches listeners around New England, including over WATD's subcarrier.
A tidy line of studios stretches from there across the back of the building; that's the air studio at left above, and next to it is a studio that can be used for talk programming, with a production studio next to that and the tech center down at the far end of the hall, near the record library. (Records? Yes...they still play LPs here.)
WATD's two towers (one for the main antenna, an older one that's now used as an auxiliary) indeed sit in a large clearing that adjoins the Marshfield town dump, the only site where local officials would allow a tower to be built when Ed put the station on the air in 1978. (The 95.9 frequency had been used on Martha's Vineyard, but that station - WVOI - went dark, and Ed was able to persuade the FCC to reallot 92.7 to the Vineyard, allowing 95.9 to be dropped in on the South Shore.) There's some neat history out here, too, with lots of old WATD gear in storage in the original transmitter building. The current building a few feet away houses a Harris transmitter - plus Ed's extensive record collection, as well as some interesting old radios. We'll be back for another visit, sooner, we promise! JUST RELEASED - it's your very first chance to order the 2006 Tower Site Calendar! Click here for ordering information!
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