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Site of the Week 4/22/2022: Lightner Communications, Altoona PA

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
April 22, 2022
in Free Content, Pennsylvania, Tower Site of the Week
0

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

What brought us to Altoona, Pennsylvania in the spring of 2021? Plenty of reasons – a minor-league ball team (the Curve) we’d never seen in person before, a radio dial we hadn’t checked out in a while, the world headquarters of the mighty Sheetz convenience store chain… and some friends who have built one radio station into a growing cluster that’s expanding across western Pennsylvania, too.

Lightner building
Lightner building
Lightner studios
Lightner studios

We’d known Matt Lightner for years as an engineer, building and maintaining facilities all over Pennsylvania and beyond, but a few years ago he began making a move into station ownership. In 2017, he bought WTRN (1340) up in Tyrone, north of Altoona, from Cary Simpson’s estate, growing it into Altoona via an FM translator.

Lightner rack room
Lightner rack room
WRTA
WRTA

In 2018, Lightner added a signal west of Altoona, now WYUP (1400 Loretto), again augmenting it with a translator to become Altoona’s “Jack FM.”

And then in 2019 came a big addition – four stations from Handsome Brothers, Inc., along with a studio building on Sixth Avenue south of downtown Altoona.

WRTA
WRTA
WKMC
WKMC

What happens when an engineer buys radio stations? Everything gets tweaked and improved, and that’s what we found when we stopped by after the Curve game for a late-night tour with Matt.

The front of the building is one big bullpen area for salespeople, facing the busy corner of Sixth and Union. There are lots of station logos in the windows and a van on the side for WBXQ (Q94), the classic rock station that’s been an Altoona staple since the 1980s.

WBXQ
WBXQ
WBRX
WBRX

Lightner’s 2019 purchases included not only WBXQ and sister hot AC station WBRX (Mix 94.7) but also news-talk WRTA (1240) and, to the south, WKMC (1370 Roaring Springs). Lightner has augmented both AMs with translators, and he’s flipped WKMC to classic country as “Hank 96.1.”

WKMC
WKMC
Lightner rack room
Lightner rack room

The studios for all of Lightner’s stations are along a long hallway that runs off the back of the building, mostly one room to a station (except for WYUP, whose Jack format is completely automated.)

WBRX van
WBRX van

There’s a rack room that was undergoing some reconstruction at one end of the studio hallway, tying all of these signals together and sending them out to transmitter sites all over the region.

All the way in back, there’s a big garage, too, where more station vans can stay out of the weather.

Matt’s still in growth mode here – he was also feeding a soft AC format to Johnstown’s WCRO (1230), he’s acquired an AM and translator in Kittanning, north of Pittsburgh, and recently he struck a deal to bring his Jack format to Johnstown, too, over a translator he’s acquiring from WKGE (850) down there.

It’s exciting to see a good engineer move into ownership, and one of these days we’ll get back to Altoona for another Curve game and a look at some of Matt’s transmitter sites.

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 Pennsylvania IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: More from Altoona

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Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

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

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