The Godzilla of home raddios

[Jeffhs]

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if anyone working for Crosley in the 1930s would ever forget the problems WLW's 500-kw signal caused, not only in the Cincinnati area, but in other parts of the United States as well. Five hundred thousand watts is a tremendous amount of signal which can create no end of trouble, especially for people living anywhere near such powerful transmitter and broadcast towers.

Crosley should have moved WLW-AM's broadcast towers to an area some distance from greater Cincinnati so that the area would not be bombarded by the signals. These high-powered signals were wreaking havoc in areas besides Cincinnati, not to mention causing real problems for people living near the towers. WLW-AM probably received complaints by the dozens (!) from folks who were receiving the station's 500-kW signal on such unlikely devices as burner coils on electric stoves, tooth fillings, bedsprings, and so on; as well, the company which now owns WLW-AM probably still gets complaints left and right from folks who are reporting hearing the station's now-50kW signal on the same devices the 500kW signal was being heard on.

This is not unusual for residents of an area very close to one or more AM or FM stations. In the early 1970s, I lived in a Cleveland suburb which had a local FM station, 27,500 watts ERP, on 92.3 MHz. I had a bedroom on the third floor of the house in which I was living at the time (long story and OT), from which I could see the station's single broadcast tower. Boy, did that signal cause me problems! I was hearing it on channel 6 of an old color TV I had at the time, the station was coming in between local stations on an AM-FM stereo radio I owned, and the list goes on.

I left that area in 1975 after graduating high school (the entire story is OT for this thread), and returned to my home town, twenty miles or so from the FM station which had been giving me grief (boy, did it ever!). I have since moved to another area which has no such interference problems, for which I am eternally grateful. There is a small AM radio station about five miles from here but, thankfully, its signals do not cause me any trouble whatsoever.

I have never forgotten all the problems that station (then WLYT-FM, 92.3 MHz) had caused me during my short time in the suburb (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) in which it was located; however, I did read in the local newspaper not long ago that the station had since moved its transmitter and tower from its former location to another town about 20-25 miles from its original transmitter site.

I know very little about the station's new location and, frankly, I don't care. As I said, I now live in a village about 30 miles from Cleveland and 40 miles or so from the area's radio and television stations' towers, so I have been trying my darnedest to forget all the problems that 27,500-watt FM station in Cleveland Heights had caused me in the early 1970s, to say nothing of forgetting about other problems, not related to radio, I had while living in that city.