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The "Air Castle of the South"


 

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.

WSM began broadcasting on October 5, 1925. Both WLW and WSM's early broadcasts were transmitted via a horizontal longwire antenna stretched between two vertical supports. In the 1930's both stations, each unaware of the other's decision, made plans to erect what was considered the advance technological breakthrough of its time, the Blaw-Knox vertical diamond-shaped guyed radiator (another word for antenna) which would reach almost 900 feet. The WSM tower was constructed in 1932 and the WLW tower was constructed in 1933.

 

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.

"Our towers are brothers. The crew from Columbia, South Carolina. who constructed the towers, was sent to Nashville first. When the crew completed their work here, their next stop was in Ohio to erect the WLW tower." Added Everett, "There was a third tower built from this same pattern in Philadelphia, but it was disassembled when the station moved.

I think there may have also been one sent overseas. We have no definite proof that there were anymore than that, and as far as I know, the WLW and the WSM towers are the only ones left. If somebody finds another one, we'll acknowledge it. The reason there were so few is because shortly after our towers were built, they decided they could build a uniform cross section tower a lot cheaper, for about half as much."

 

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."

In a closing thought about the two unique diamond-shaped towers, WSM's Everett Lawson interjected with a sly grin and slight chuckle, "Now I'm not saying that we were the first to broadcast from this new configuration, 'cause being first isn't what's important, it's who's last that counts... who can stay around the longest!"

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