• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
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 12/16/2016: Parkersburg, WV

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
December 16, 2016
in Ohio, Tower Site of the Week, West Virginia
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

If I told you that the house in the picture just below was where we stayed while visiting Parkersburg, West Virginia in late June, you’d believe me, right? In fact, we stayed around the corner in a house that looked a lot like this one…but this “house” on Rosemar Road in Vienna, WV, just north of Parkersburg, is actually a radio station – to be exact, Seven Ranges Radio’s WVVV (96.9 Williamstown).

At home with WVVV
At home with WVVV

Bedroom... er, studio hallway
Bedroom… er, studio hallway

In last week’s installment (click here if you missed it!), owner Tom Taggart was showing us his stations over in St. Marys, 20 miles or so east of Parkersburg. But V96.9 is his showplace, in part because of how cleverly Tom converted a house into a full-fledged radio station. From the office in the front living room to the full kitchen in back to the studios in bedrooms down the hall, he’s built out a nifty local station here.

WVVV air studio
WVVV air studio

WVVV production room
WVVV production room
WVVV tower
WVVV tower
WDMX/WNUS
WDMX/WNUS

There’s even plenty of room to spare downstairs, in what used to be a garage and is now storage space for WVVV’s remote gear.

The V96.9 transmitter site is a little over a mile to the northeast, up off Summit Road, where Tom put up a new tower next to what had been a big garage.

WVVV’s transmitter sits quietly in one room in front; the old garage bays, meanwhile, provide even more expansion space for future use. The site sits next to another older tower that belongs to iHeart’s WDMX (100.1 Vienna) and WNUS (107.1 Belpre OH).

WVVV's transmitter
WVVV’s transmitter

WVVV's transmitter building
WVVV’s transmitter building

Text goes here

WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR
WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR

WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR
WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR

“Got time to see more?,” Tom asked us – and of course we did, so we headed off east of Parkersburg on US 50 to the tower site of Burbach Broadcasting’s WXIL (95.1 Elizabeth), WHBR (103.1 Parkersburg) and WRZZ (106.1 Parkersburg). These three signals are tightly packed into a block building up a steep driveway; if I recall right, that’s WXIL on the old Collins at left, WHBR on the Harris next to it and WRZZ on the QEI on the right.

WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR
WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR

WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR
WRZZ/WXIL/WHBR

Forever's building
Forever’s building

From top to bottom, that’s WXIL’s big class B signal on the five-bay ERI at top, then WRZZ and WHBR’s four-bay antennas below that for their class A signals.

Burbach is part of the larger Forever group, and their studios are at the south end of Rosemar Road where it meets Emerson Ave/WV 68.

Studio hallway at Forever
Studio hallway at Forever

WXIL 95.1
WXIL 95.1

The executive offices are on the upper floor of this two-story office building, with studios laid out in a neat line downstairs, starting with the top-40 WXIL “My 95” studio.

WHBR 103.1
WHBR 103.1

`WVNT 1340/WADC 1050
WVNT 1340/WADC 1050

Continuing down the hall brings us to rocker WHBR (103.1 the Bear), the mostly-automated talker WVNT (1340) and standards WADC (1050), classic rock “Z106” WRZZ and the other big FM here, country WGGE (Froggy 99.1), which has its transmitter on the Ohio side of the river west of town.

WVNT 1340
WVNT 1340

WRZZ 106.1
WRZZ 106.1

There’s one TV station in town, WTAP (Channel 15), which has been an NBC affiliate for decades. We didn’t get to tour its studios by the wall along the river at the southern tip of downtown Parkersburg, but we did watch its local newscasts, which are now also seen on subchannels that carry CBS and Fox. (CBS also airs on WIYE-LD 47 and Fox on WOVA-LD 22; for ABC, West Virginia cable homes get Charleston’s WCHS-TV 8 and Ohio gets Columbus’ WSYX-TV 6.)

WTAP-TV
WTAP-TV

WPJY 88.7
WPJY 88.7

Moving east on a hot Saturday morning (toward our ultimate goal for this trip, a Cincinnati Reds game at Great American Ball Park), we make a couple of stops off Ohio 32, the new highway that links the southern parts of the state. About 20 miles west of Parkersburg, religious WPJY (88.7 Blennerhassett) sits just off the south side of the highway next to a water tower.

WOUB 1340
WOUB 1340

WOUB studios
WOUB studios

Another half hour or so and we’re making a too-quick stop in the college town of Athens, home to Ohio University (not to be confused with The Ohio State University up north in Columbus). Ohio University’s public broadcasting empire includes WOUB-TV (Channel 20) and its satellite WOUC-TV (Channel 44) in Cambridge to the east, as well as public radio WOUB-FM (91.3) and five FM satellites, plus a nifty little AM sister, WOUB (1340).

WOUB’s studios are in the Radio-TV Building on campus, which we’ll have to come back and see in depth at some point, while the AM is near sports fields southeast of the main campus.

Thanks to Tom Taggart for the tours!

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 West Virginia and southern Ohio IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: Just West of Cleveland

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
Tags: WADCWGGEWHBRWOUBWOUB-FMWRZZWTAPWVNTWVVVWXIL
Previous Post

NERW 12/12/2016: North Country Mourning

Next Post

NERW 12/19/2016: NBC Boston Adds Third Signal

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

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

Related Posts

Site of the Week 4/4/2025: From the Poconos to Scranton
Free Content

Site of the Week 4/4/2025: From the Poconos to Scranton

A visit to many of the sites in Pennsylvania's Poconos, plus Bold Gold's stations in Scranton

by Scott Fybush
April 5, 2025
Site of the Week 3/28/2025: A Day in Northwest New Jersey
Free Content

Site of the Week 3/28/2025: A Day in Northwest New Jersey

Tower Site goes Jeeping (and fixing a flat tire!) up in the mountains of northwest New Jersey

by Scott Fybush
March 29, 2025
Site of the Week 3/21/2025: VOA Remembered
Florida

Site of the Week 3/21/2025: VOA Remembered

A look at two of the Voice of America facilities that were abruptly shuttered this month

by Scott Fybush
March 21, 2025
WHGL's van
Free Content

Site of the Week 6/30/2023: On the Edges of Elmira/Corning

Up in the hills and down in the valleys of north central Pennsylvania, checking out some small signals in small towns

by Scott Fybush
June 30, 2023
Next Post
NERW 12/19/2016: NBC Boston Adds Third Signal

NERW 12/19/2016: NBC Boston Adds Third Signal

Log In

Join Now | Lost Password?

Get Fybush.com Updates

Get Fybush.com updates emailed directly to your inbox!

© 2025 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

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.