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Site of the Week 9/30/16: A Day in Erie, PA

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
September 30, 2016
in Free Content, New York, Pennsylvania, Tower Site of the Week
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

WCOM-FM 89.3
WCOM-FM 89.3

Let me tell you a little something about my good friend Mike Fitzpatrick, proprietor of that “other” tower picture site, NECRAT.us.

The man is madly in love with a certain small city in northwestern Pennsylvania, so much so that whenever he comes up my way to western New York, it’s a given that we’ll be making the not-quite-three-hour drive westward to spend some quality time in Erie.

And so it was this past May, when Mike had a few free days and so we hit the road to spend one night and one full day in and around Erie. (With just enough daylight on the way there, I’d note, to grab one site we’d never seen before in western New York – that sunset shot above is Family Life Ministries’ WCOM-FM Silver Creek, south of Buffalo.)

WERG's new campus home
WERG’s new campus home

Welcome to WERG!
Welcome to WERG!

The next morning found us making a semi-return visit – we’d seen Gannon University’s WERG (90.5) before, but our last visit was to the station’s old home at 705 Peach Street, and since then the station has moved across the street to the second floor of the new college communications center at 700 Peach Street.

WERG main studio
WERG main studio

WERG production room
WERG production room

This is a spiffy facility indeed, with a big Wheatstone-equipped main studio overlooking Peach Street, an office space just outside, and in that office a voice booth that doubles as a very useful little production space. Gannon does TV production, too, and that’s in a virtual-studio-equipped space downstairs.

WERG's production booth
WERG’s production booth

Gannon's TV studio
Gannon’s TV studio
WEHP's tower
WEHP’s tower
Happi's downtown studio
Happi’s downtown studio

On our last Erie visit, veteran station owner Rick Rambaldo was just starting to build out his new FM allotment, WEHP (92.7 Lawrence Park).

This visit gave us a chance to see what Rick had built – the tower and four-bay antenna atop a lakeshore condo building just west of downtown, and the new storefront studio space at State Street and 13th Street on the south end of downtown. This was once a plate glass window company, and the ERIE Radio Company has made neat use of the old space.

Front studio at WEHP
Front studio at WEHP

Looking down on the WEHP offices
Looking down on the WEHP offices

There’s a studio in the front window that’s used mainly for voicetracking. It sits next to the front door, which opens into a sales and promotions office area with a double-height ceiling. And that, in turn, looks up to the main “Happi 92.7” studio, up in a loft area that overlooks the offices and out to the street. There’s a small rack room up here, and a production studio as well, all painted in a distinct “Happi” shade of green.

Happi main studio
Happi main studio

Happi production booth
Happi production booth
WBTB-LP 107.9
WBTB-LP 107.9

How about some LPFM action? We make a quick stop on the south side of Erie to find the tiny little antenna of WBTB-LP (107.9), tucked away on the back side of the roof of the church that owns the station.

WFSE 88.9
WFSE 88.9

After another quick stop nearby to say hi to “Captain” Dan Geary and his great oldies station, WMCE-FM (88.5)/WMCE (1530) at Mercyhurst University, we point Mike’s Jeep southward to pay a call on some friends in the greater Meadville area, 45 minutes or so below Erie along I-79.

WCOB 89.9
WCOB 89.9

There are some neat sites along the way that Mike had never seen, and so we pull off at the Edinboro exit to see the unusual transmitter site of Edinboro University’s WFSE (88.9), a three-bay Shively mounted on the side of a rusty old H-shaped signpost that once announced a gas station or maybe a truck stop along the highway on-ramp.

There’s also a Family Life Ministries station here, easily seen on the east side of I-79: WCGF (89.9 Cambridge Springs) had just changed calls to WCOB, part of FLN’s plan to give “WCO-” calls to all its western stations and “WCI-” calls to its eastern outlets.

Welcome to WMVL!
Welcome to WMVL!

WMVL front studio
WMVL front studio

And then, at day’s end, we made it to Meadville, where a quick turn to the right on US 6 took us up the hill to the strip mall where WMVL (101.7 Lineville) makes its studio home.

WMVL back studio
WMVL back studio

Joe in his studio
Joe in his studio
WMVL's racks
WMVL’s racks
WMVL's tower
WMVL’s tower

Joe Vilkie’s hometown radio operation includes a front office (where we admire the antique radio and shoot the breeze with Joe’s dad while waiting for Joe to come back from checking on the local college station that uses him as a contract engineer), as well as two back studios that service oldies “Cool 101.7” and its AM sisters, WGRP (940 Greenville) and WLOA (1470 Farrell). (Look carefully to the left of Joe in the photo above and you can see the AM stations’ board and automation system.)

From here, we head west with Joe to see the WMVL tower, up on a hill a dozen or so miles out of town on the way to the Ohio state line. And then it’s back north, catching some triple atomic wings at Erie’s Quaker Steak (um, thanks, Mike!) before returning to Rochester to get ready for another day of radio and TV – which we’ll show you in next week’s installment.

Thanks to WERG’s Chet LaPrice, (then-)WEHP’s Cooper Fox and WMVL’s Joe Vilkie for the tours (and NECRAT’s Mike Fitzpatrick for driving!)

SPRING IS HERE…

And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!

If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!

This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.

And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future. 

Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).

We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.

The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?) 

Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too! 

 

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

Next week: A Day in Utica

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Tags: WBTB-LPWCGFWCOBWCOM-FMWEHPWERGWFSEWGRPWLOAWMVL
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Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

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

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