• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links
No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

No products in the cart.

No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
No Result
View All Result

Site of the Week 2/5/16: Vincennes, Washington and Princeton, IN

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
February 5, 2016
in Free Content, Indiana, Tower Site of the Week
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

There are still some parts of Indiana we’ve never explored, believe it or not – but in August 2015, we chipped away at one significant corner of the Hoosier State by spending an afternoon visiting several small station groups along the US 41 corridor that links Terre Haute to Evansville.

The Original Co. in Vincennes
The Original Co. in Vincennes

Stairwell at WAOV
Stairwell at WAOV
Front room
Front room
Racks
Racks

We’d driven past Vincennes before, but this time we made some time to stop and take the scenery in this pretty college town that sits alongside the Wabash River, which also forms the state line between Indiana and neighboring Illinois.

The big local radio owner is the Original Company, which makes its home in a lovely Victorian house, the Brevoort Mansion, across the street from the police headquarters.

From here, Mark Lange and his staff program three stations: news-talk WAOV (1450), the oldest signal in town, along with AC “Wisdom” WZDM (92.1) and country WUZR (105.7 Bicknell). Their studios, along with a rack room, are all up on the second floor of the home, which Lange and The Original Company have put through an extensive restoration. (Among the surprises: unexpected concrete floors upstairs, which made for quite a bit of extra work getting wiring from room to room!)

WZDM 92.1
WZDM 92.1

WUZR 105.7
WUZR 105.7

Wisdom is the big local AC here, and while we’re in the studio, there are local people coming in and out to promote community events and do all the things that make small-city radio so special. WUZR, down the hall, is mostly automated (including Bob & Tom from Indianapolis in the morning), and WAOV is the news-talker in town, heard on two FM translators along with its AM signal.

There are some station offices downstairs, with more Original Company offices in a newer building that was added on next door a few years ago to hold a growing staff.

WAOV 1450
WAOV 1450

WAOV, close up
WAOV, close up

Oh, and what about those calls? When WAOV signed on in 1940, Vincennes was still crazy about a novel that had come out four decades earlier. “Alice of Old Vincennes” was a best-seller in 1900, and everything from the radio station to the local high school’s sports teams was named after the heroine of the Revolutionary War novel. So now you know.

WWBL 106.5
WWBL 106.5

Old WAMW building
Old WAMW building

About 20 miles east of Vincennes along US 150, we come to Washington, Indiana, whose radio history began on FM in 1948 with the debut of WFML (106.5). Daytimer WAMW (1580) came along in 1955, and within months the FM owners, who also had the local paper, had acquired the AM signal.

In the 1980s, the stations split: 106.5 became WWBL, doing country as “The Bullet,” while WAMW spawned a new FM sister, a class A signal at 107.9 that signed on in 1989 as WAMW-FM.

Today, WWBL is owned by the Original Company, with a small local studio downtown. Its tower is still in the original location up on the hill just east of downtown, where its 50 kW class B signal is relatively low down at only 300 feet or so.

WAMW/WFML
WAMW/WFML

WAMW studios
WAMW studios

As for WAMW and WAMW-FM, they moved a few years ago from their downtown studio location to a former bank building on old US 50 west of downtown. It’s offices in the front, studios in the back in an unusual configuration that finds “Memories” WAMW-FM behind sliding glass doors, with another set of glass doors separating that studio from the adjacent studio for “The General,” WAMW(AM) and its FM translator at 95.9.

WAMW-FM 107.9
WAMW-FM 107.9

WAMW 1580
WAMW 1580

In an interesting bit of irony, the DLC Communications cluster here also handles sales for the Vincennes University-owned commercial station at 96.7 over in Vincennes, which now bears the WFML calls that spent so long over here in Washington. (It does the syndicated version of the “Jack” format from studios near the university. Vincennes U. also has noncommercial FM and TV stations, WVUB 91.1 and WVUT 20, but we didn’t get there this time around.)

WWBL 106.5
WWBL 106.5

WAMW FM/AM
WAMW FM/AM

Cool sign
Cool sign

It’s not at all hard to find where WAMW’s transmitters are – you can’t miss them just off the south side of US 50 on the west side of town, where the new bypass splits off from the old road through downtown.

WAMW 1580 transmitter
WAMW 1580 transmitter

WAMW-FM 107.9
WAMW-FM 107.9 and 95.9 translator

WAMW(AM) moved up here from the 106.5 site in 1991, going directional from a 500-watt daytime signal that uses part of the big FM tower and the shorter tower next to it. That short AM tower is neatly decorated with the WAMW calls and frequency at the top, which is pretty darned cool if we do say so ourselves.

WRAY in Princeton
WRAY in Princeton

History
History
WRAY AM-FM
WRAY AM-FM

Out on the east side of Washington, what used to be wide-open farmland along US 150 has started to get built up with the arrival of I-69, the new superhighway that angles north and east from Evansville up, eventually, to Indianapolis. We head southwest on the largely empty new road to make one more stop before we pull into Evansville, and it’s a neat one.

30 miles or so southwest of Washington, US 41 and the new I-69 flank Princeton, Indiana, where the Lankford family just marked 65 years of local broadcast ownership at WRAY (1250) and WRAY-FM (98.1).

This building on Outer West Broadway, now a busy commercial strip connecting to US 41, has been home to WRAY(AM) since the very beginning in 1950, though you’d never know it from several renovations and expansions through the years that now give the building a much more modern appearance.

Walk in the front door now, and you’re in a spacious lobby adorned with Lankford family photos (including former station manager Ray Lankford, who gave his name to the station’s calls) and looking into the big WRAY-FM studio, which in turn looks back into the transmitter room (or would, if not for the “Country 98.1 WRAY” banner in the window.)

Back here, it’s all Harris transmitters for the FM and the AM, but there’s something else, too – the ghost of a TV station that came and went here in the 1950s.

WRAY studio
WRAY studio

WRAY transmitter room
WRAY transmitter room

wraytv-articlesBack in that era, nobody really knew yet whether TV was going to be viable in towns the size of Princeton – and so when the FCC opened up UHF channels, WRAY wasn’t alone in jumping in to see what the new medium would bring.

WRAY-TV made it to air Dec. 6, 1953, per the indispensable UHFTelevision.com. By then, early adopters in the area had already erected tall antennas to reach for faint signals from more established VHF stations in Bloomington, Indianapolis, Champaign and elsewhere. It didn’t leave much room for a little local UHF station operating from one little studio and control room, and on July 27, 1954, WRAY-TV suspended operations for good. The Lankfords settled back into AM-only operation for a few years, then put WRAY-FM on the air in 1960.

Old WRAY-TV control room
Old WRAY-TV control room

WRAY-TV studio, now garage
WRAY-TV studio, now garage

Unlike most of the ghost UHF stations that came and went more than 60 years ago, a little bit of WRAY-TV has, miraculously, survived. Several articles about WRAY’s brief moment in the TV sun are nicely framed in the hallway leading back to the transmitter room where channel 52’s transmitter once sat. (Along with other WRAY-TV equipment, it was donated to Vincennes University and was supposedly used for the launch of WVUT in the 1960s.)

On the west side of the building, another Lankford family business now operates from a small suite of offices in what was once the WRAY-TV control room – and a door from those offices leads into the WRAY garage, which was once, briefly, the WRAY-TV studio. Wouldn’t you love to see some of the programming that came from that small space in 1953 and 1954?

Thanks to Original Company’s Mark Lange, WAMW’s Dave Crooks and WRAY’s Stephen Lankford for the tours!

WE’RE FIRMLY IN 2023

And if you don’t have your 2023 Tower Site Calendar yet, now is the perfect time to get it. Because we have lowered the price to just $14.

The calendar has great photos of broadcast sites near and far (everywhere from Navajo Nation on the cover to Boston to Toronto to Texas, and beyond), plus a lovely “centerfold” you can keep on your wall for 2024.

It’s still shipping regularly, and you can have yours in just a couple of days!

Order your copy and you’ll see what we mean.

If you have already ordered your calendar, make sure you check out the other items in the store, too!

And don’t miss a big batch of Indiana IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: Evansville, Indiana

Share this:

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Pocket
  • Email
  • Print
  • More
  • Facebook
Tags: WAMWWAMW-FMWAOVWRAYWRAY-FMWWBL
Previous Post

NERW Extra: Translator Applicants Line Up

Next Post

NERW 2/8/2016: WCVB Bulks Up Against New Competition

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

Related Posts

NorthEast Radio Watch 1/30/2023: FCC Picks Noncomm FM Winners
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 1/30/2023: FCC Picks Noncomm FM Winners

In this week’s issue… FCC picks noncom FM window winners - Audacy shifts NYC talent - ATSC 3 launches in Boston - Corus finishes Toronto morning shuffle - New FM in Quebec?

by Scott Fybush
January 31, 2023
NorthEast Radio Watch 1/23/2023: Remembering Philly’s Geator
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 1/23/2023: Remembering Philly’s Geator

In this week’s issue… Jerry Blavat, RIP - New leader at WMHT - Holy Family adds three - New morning shows in Toronto

by Scott Fybush
January 23, 2023
NorthEast Radio Watch 1/16/2023: Townsquare Silences More AMs
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 1/16/2023: Townsquare Silences More AMs

In this week’s issue… More AMs silenced - Remembering CT's Thompson, NYC's Gary Kline - WEEI completes new lineup - "Moose" roams NH lakes - New signals on Canada's Bruce Peninsula - CRTC considers revoking licenses 

by Scott Fybush
January 16, 2023
NorthEast Radio Watch 1/9/2023: Beleaguered Bills Lose Radio Voice, Too
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 1/9/2023: Beleaguered Bills Lose Radio Voice, Too

In this week’s issue… Bills' Murph suffers stroke - Belmonte moves to public radio - Remembering Brian DeMay - Quebec radio newsman killed 

by Scott Fybush
January 9, 2023
Next Post
NERW 2/8/2016: WCVB Bulks Up Against New Competition

NERW 2/8/2016: WCVB Bulks Up Against New Competition

Log In


Join Now | Lost Password?

Get Fybush.com Updates

Get Fybush.com updates emailed directly to your inbox!

Fybush.com Twitter List

My Tweets

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

© 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.