got another clock radio - Zenith L516W (1962)

[Sandy G]

Doc Brinkley's "Border Blasters" right over the Rio Grande supposedly cranked out a million watts...So did Powel Crosley's WLW in Cincinnati...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Doc Brinkley's "Border Blasters" right over the Rio Grande supposedly cranked out a million watts...So did Powel Crosley's WLW in Cincinnati...

Funny you should mention Doc Brinkley, Sandy. Your mention of his name reminded me of an article I read years ago in an old issue of the (now defunct) Electronics Illustrated magazine. The article told of how Doc Brinkley had a radio station in Kansas with the call sign KFKB -- Kansas First Kansas Best -- in the late '20s through about 1935. However, the station ran into very hard times in the early '30s (after all, this was during the Great Depression, when everyone had it tough) and eventually Doc Brinkley lost it. That's how the EI article's description of the station ended: " . . . In 1935 (Brinkley) lost KFKB. . . ."

The "Border Blasters" are still alive and well out West. For example, station XERB -- which actually had its studios in Los Angeles, California -- was heard very well in the Los Angeles area in the 1960s; it often carried the old Wolfman Jack radio show. Arizona has more than its share of these high-power propaganda machines as well; my friend Nolan Woodbury (a member of A/VK) once posted here that the AM radio dial in the Phoenix area is all but unlistenable after dark (Mountain Standard Time) due to the sheer numbers of border-blasters on the air in border towns between Phoenix and Mexico.

I do not think Canada has ever had "border blasters", at least none like the ones in California, Arizona and Texas, et al. Station CKLW ("The Big 8") in Windsor, Ontario -- which for years pumped out 50kW of the best top-40 radio I ever heard as a teenager growing up in the late '60s-'70s (aside from Cleveland's 50kW music machines, which I listened to as well) -- was heard well all along the southern shore of Lake Erie, from Toledo, Ohio to Buffalo, New York, and in the Detroit area, and who can ever forget WKBW-AM in Buffalo, KB-1520? That was also a 50kW station that reached southwestern Ontario, Canada and northeastern Ohio exceedingly well after dark, and had for quite a while excellent oldies music programming. The station even had a former Cleveland radio personality by the name of "Big Jack" Armstrong for a short time; then, the station switched to all talk.

Jack Armstrong passed away recently, as was reported in the Cleveland news media last year, IIRC. I don't know how old he was when he died, but I do know he was living somewhere in North Carolina (probably worked at one of the local AM stations if there were any that weren't automated, which I doubt) after leaving Buffalo and WKBW in the late 1990s.