WSM Radio's tower, in Brentwood, is a Middle Tennessee landmark. There is only one other tower in the United States with the same design. The "other" tower can be found in Mason, Ohio at the home of Cincinnati's premier radio station, WLW. Not only are the WSM and WLW towers similar in appearance, their origins are identical. In March 1922, the Federal Radio Commission issued the call letters WLW to the Cincinnati radio station, which had begun as a hobby by its founder, Powell Crosely, Jr. In the beginning WLW was transmitted by the Standard Precision Instrument Company of Cincinnati. Then, on October 4, 1928, WLW began operating from its new transmitter site in Mason, northeast of Cincinnati. Everett Lawson served as a long-time WSM engineer, working at the radio station's transmitter site until his death in August 1997. During a June interview prior to his death, Everett shared the story of the two towers. Everett continued, "Upon completion, the WLW tower stood 831 feet and the WSM tower was 884 feet; however, they are not that tall now. Height was known to be important, but back then the engineers didn't know exactly how to calculate the correct height. They didn't know how to calculate the diameter/width of the tower versus the height, which has a lot to do with it electrically and in turn affects its transmitting ability. They could only guess. Well, low and behold, when the tower was completed, and it broadcast its first signal on August 12, 1932, the engineers discovered the tower was a little too high. In 1948, it was lowered to its present height of 804 feet." When WLW began broadcasting from their new tower on April 17, 1934, they also found problems with the height of their tower. According to Ed Dooley, the retired Chief Engineer of WLWT (television), "The radio broadcasts during the day are carried via ground waves, and at night AM stations also use sky waves. When the ground wave and sky wave signals become equal, an interference zone, where radio reception is distorted, develops. The height of the WLW tower caused this equality to occur in the metropolitan area of Indianapolis, Indiana. Around 1935, to change the interference zone to a more rural and less populated area, a flag pole section atop the tower was removed. This brought the height of the tower down to 708 feet. Then almost 40 years later, to accommodate FM broadcasting, a portion of the flag pole was reattached. Now the WLW antenna reaches 747 feet." |
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