• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Saturday, June 21, 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 12/23/2016: West (and South) of Cleveland

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
December 23, 2016
in Free Content, Ohio, Tower Site of the Week
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

When you’ve spent 26 summers driving back and forth across northern Ohio, as we have, it’s hard to believe that there are still towers and stations still unseen – and yet, remarkably, there are still some big chunks of northern Ohio we’ve still never managed to make a detour to visit.

WOBL 1320
WOBL 1320

WOBL
WOBL

But as 2016 draws to a close, we can at least say that we’ve started to make a dent in that list here and there.

One of the most glaring entries on our “kept driving by without stopping” list has been Lorain County, just west of Cleveland.

WEOL/WNWV
WEOL/WNWV

The end of the West Virginia/Ohio trip we’ve been chronicling the last two weeks brought us back north by way of the southwesternmost of those Lorain County sites, the seven-tower array of WOBL (1320 Oberlin) on US 20, just east of Ohio 58. In addition to being the studio and transmitter site for WOBL and its classic country format, this is also the studio for oldies WDLW (1380 Lorain), and we’ll catch up with it in a moment.

WNWV 107.3
WNWV 107.3

WOBL uses four towers by day, four at night, with one tower in common; it’s a fairly recent addition to the airwaves, having signed on in 1971 on 1570 and then moved to its current 1320 home five years later. (Its birthday, by the way, is Christmas Eve – so a happy 45th birthday, a day early, to WOBL!)

WOBL’s more established competition in Lorain County makes its transmitter home a few miles east, near Grafton, Ohio. WEOL (930 Elyria) signed on in 1948, along with an FM sister at 107.3 that was later known as WBEA and today as smooth jazz WNWV. While the FM has changed owners (now part of the Akron-based Rubber City Radio Group), the AM remains in the hands of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, doing a news-talk format. The stations continue to share the Grafton transmitter site, where WEOL uses the four original AM towers with 1000 watts day and night, while WNWV has the newer tall tower in the middle.

WEOL/WNWV transmitter building
WEOL/WNWV transmitter building

WDLW 1380
WDLW 1380

Our trip westward to Indiana this particular August took us not only past WEOL/WNWV but also up to WDLW (1380 Lorain), where we found engineer Tracey Liston on site at the transmitter plant in Sheffield, just north of the I-80/I-90 merge. This 500-watter started in 1958 as WWIZ, lost its license a decade later, then returned in 1969 as WLRO. It recently added a translator on 98.9, and that’s what Tracey was tweaking when we stopped by.

WDLW and translator
WDLW and translator

WAPS main air studio
WAPS main air studio

Our return trip from Indiana brought us south of Cleveland to Akron, a city we frequently visit – but until now, we’d never made it to WAPS (91.3), the station owned by the Akron Public Schools and operated with a fantastic AAA format as “The Summit.”

WAPS' building
WAPS’ building

WAPS racks
WAPS racks

TARDIS!
TARDIS!

Our friend Brad Savage had taken over a little while earlier as PD here, and he was on the air when the Fybush crew dropped by the turn-of-the-last-century school building south of Akron that houses the WAPS studio. (The tower next to the building was the old WAPS 89.1 transmitter site; it’s now the STL to the 91.3 site out in Copley.)

“The Summit” occupies one corner of the first floor of the building, adjacent to a magnificent wood-paneled library/atrium; there are two rooms of offices, one of them adjoining the building’s studio core. The main air studio is at one end of the line of the studios – and just outside that is a voicebooth that’s disguised as Doctor Who’s TARDIS, much to the amusement of the Fybush kids.

WAPS studio B
WAPS studio B

Performance studio control room
Performance studio control room

To the left of the TARDIS is a small rack where the Summit gang can program the automation system and handle the switch-offs to simulcast WKTL (90.7 Struthers) over in the Youngstown market. Two more studios are around the corner, along with the rack room.

Performance studio
Performance studio

Performance studio
Performance studio

Any good AAA station does a lot of live music, and the Summit is no exception. Downstairs, in the tile-walled basement, a former utility room is now a cozy performance studio where local and national artists make regular appearances, often with video coverage from Western Reserve PBS, the local public television station. “Studio C” features gear from sponsor Audio-Technica, and the performances recorded here show up not only on WAPS’ main channel but also on its three distinctive HD subchannels: local music on “The 330,” “KIDJAM! Radio” on HD3 and “Rock & Recovery” on HD4.

Thanks to WDLW/WOBL’s Tracey Liston and WAPS’ Brad Savage 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 Ohio IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids – the 2016 Medium Trip, part 1

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: WAPSWDLWWEOLWKTLWNWVWOBL
Previous Post

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

Next Post

NERW Year in Review 2016: The Year in Sales

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

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

Related Posts

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/16/2025: Townsquare, Corus Cut Deeper
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/16/2025: Townsquare, Corus Cut Deeper

In this week’s issue… Oneonta signals go dark - Whiteoaks takes over in Niagara - Corus empties Ottawa studios - CBS-FM shuffles talent - Armstrong anniversary to be honored

by Scott Fybush
June 16, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 6/9/2025: Urgency Grows for Public Media
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/9/2025: Urgency Grows for Public Media

In this week’s issue… Public broadcasters plead for help - Connoisseur restructures leadership - Pennsylvania AM goes dark - Succession plan for veteran college radio manager

by Scott Fybush
June 9, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 6/2/2025: A WOW Moment for WATR
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/2/2025: A WOW Moment for WATR

In this week’s issue… Car dealership goes terrestrial - Lawsuit uncovers Connoisseur's attempted bids for Audacy, Cox - New newsroom for WNBC, WNJU - Remembering Buffalo's Deeb, Batavia's Platt

by Scott Fybush
June 4, 2025
Top of the Tower Podcast #064: Talking Canada with Broadcast Dialogue’s Connie Thiessen
Free Content

Top of the Tower Podcast #064: Talking Canada with Broadcast Dialogue’s Connie Thiessen

In this week's episode - It was a longer hiatus than we intended, but Top of the Tower is back with a new spring season of conversations with some of the most interesting people in radio. This week, we move north...

by Scott Fybush
May 28, 2025
Next Post
NERW Year in Review 2016: The Year in Sales

NERW Year in Review 2016: The Year in Sales

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.