NorthEast Radio Watch 3/4/2024: 1560 Fades Away

In this week’s issue… Family abandons WFME plans – Big new antenna in Canada – Mets, Giants add FM signals

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

*It was never supposed to be a NEW YORK radio station when it started in 1929. When engineer John V.L. Hogan put experimental station W2XR on the air 95 years ago from his lab in Queens, the broadcast signal was intended to try out the nascent technology of television, back when it was mechanical and decidedly low-resolution.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the TV era: Hogan’s low-res images at 2100 kc on the shortwave dial were silent, so he applied for a second transmitter at 1550 (then above the top of the standard broadcast band) to supply a soundtrack to his video. When there wasn’t programming, which was most of the time, Hogan’s engineers played classical music over the audio signal – and because that audio signal was designed to be high-fidelity by the standards of the day, music buffs around New York City began to listen to W2XR as a radio station.

By the mid-1930s, Hogan had pivoted away from TV, instead using W2XR as one of the new hi-fi AM stations then being licensed experimentally by the new FCC. When the AM band was expanded to 1600 in 1941, W2XR moved to 1560, became WQXR, and the rest, as you likely know, is history – purchased in 1944 by the New York Times, WQXR became a classical music institution for decades, raised its power to 50,000 watts and spawned an FM signal that survives today as part of the WNYC public radio empire.

AM 1560, however, didn’t come along for all of that ride. By the 1990s, with the classical audience shifted entirely to FM, 1560 went to standards as WQEW, then was sold to Disney, finally ending up with Family Stations as WFME, the AM replacement for its former WFME(FM) on 94.7.

And that, it now appears, is where the history of AM 1560 will end. On Monday, Family announced that it’s unable to find a permanent new transmitter site for 1560 and signed off the station’s low-power interim signal, likely for good.