Ray, enjoyed your post. Growing up in very rural Eastern Oregon, I could receive good old KSL from here, KGO from the Bay area, and of course, XERB "The Voice of the West" with Wolfman Jack. Being just across the Mexican border in Rosarita Beach?, it was infamous for it's tremendous power output. No FCC to deal with. Also, on a side note, it furnished the music in the movie American Graffiti... I had a Zenith (not the Trans- oceanic--Drool), but a step down, and I listened to stations all over the West, but those (Clear Channel) above stick out, along w/KFBK from my home town of Sacramento. KFBK was similiar to WGN in that I sometimes went to sleep with the radio on, and it shut down around 1A or 2A and would make me sit up in bed at 5A when a cheery voice would announce "Good Morning, this is your farm report". But, anyway, that was about the time Dad would come in to get me up to do the milking. 73 On 5/21/2013 11:54 AM, Ray Druian wrote:
Just to confuse everyone further, all this reminds me of the time when I was a little kid and, on those rare occasions when I arose early enough to get to school on time, I heard the early morning broadcasts on WGN, the Chicago Tribune radio station. WGN was always bragging about how they were a "clear channel" station. In those days before Clear Channel Communications company was formed to buy up as many radio stations in the nation as they could, "clear channel" meant that the FCC had granted a particular frequency (WGN was at 780kc) to a single station, so that, when atmospheric conditions warranted, there would be no crosstalk between that station and another sharing the same frequency. For people living in rural America, this was most important because radio was the most important means of getting major news out to the hinterlands.