Abandoned Radio Stations

Radio stations are a unique breed. Some of them sign on the air and gain instant success, some never amount to much. Or until they are bought and transformed by another entity. And there are those that just simply fall by the wayside.

Every major city has a few AM radio stations that were once popular 40-50 years ago that have gone through countless ownership/call letter/format changes and now languish as unknown ethnic, religious, Radio Disney, sports or fourth string talk formats. The intentions of the owners were good. A new and untried format. Or a stab at competing with the heritage local station with a different spin on their format. But somehow, fate had other plans.

Let's look at a few of those who somehow just fell apart and their remains still stand.......

WHOW 1520 AM Clinton, IL 

Probably the very best (and rare) example of a radio station that has gone to hell.....and BACK to tell about it.

Photo by Tim Messer -  http://photos.tmesser.com/v/radio/whow/

I don't know what the hell happened in here. But Casey Kasem never did it this way. Note the ashtray on the console and dig that Radio Shack mixing board .......

Please note the station had signed off in 2002, about the time these pictures were taken. Note the lack of computer equipment in the WHOW on-air studio. Virtually ALL radio stations in 2002 - including most of the smallest, had fully digital computer controlled automation by that time.) Not WHOW.

There is what appears to be an elderly computer mouse on top of that 1970's vintage automatic record changer you see in the first picture and it's quite possible all the computer equipment was taken out from it. But how many stations played their programming off cassette tapes in 2002? There a LOT of those you can see there, including cassette player - an ancient 1990s ghetto blaster! Most small stations like WHOW rarely, if ever played cassettes in 2002. It just wasn't a suitable quality medium for radio programming 

In fact, cassettes were rarely used in most commercial radio stations beyond recording news bites, occasional public service/religious programs (usually speech), and for DJs to record "airchecks" (a kind of live sampling of how they sound over the air to play for radio stations that hire them....or not., with all the music cut out and just the DJ's monologues and some commercials recorded.) Even THAT had gone to CD-Rs by the early 2000s in most parts of the country, as they were recorded onto hard disk and edited digitally by then.

Today, WHOW is back with modern facilities and runs a News/Talk format with an emphasis on farming news.

There's more....

WISL 1480 AM, Shamokin, PA

Photo by Jim Treese

There's an old gutted tape automation system back there and what appears to be a cart recorder deck and a reel to reel tape deck.


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82847&id=660789285&l=f9c85fd27a

WISL was an Oldies station in central Pennsylvania. It left the air in 2003 after it was sold to Clear Channel and a subsequent sale to another broadcaster who could not afford to keep the station on the air and the station's license expired in 2006. The station was officially deleted from the FCC database in 2008. However WISL remains online as a tribute internet radio station  - http://www.wisl1480.com/

KOME 1300 AM Tulsa, OK

Photos by Jim Hartz - Tulsa TV Memories http://www.flickr.com/photos/tulsatv/sets/72157621986456279/

KOME in Tulsa was off the air by 1965 (although the Stetson Hats poster in the studio here looks oddly '80s vintage), the KOME call letters were used a few years later for a rock station in San Jose, CA. However the remains of the KOME station building in Tulsa remain. AM 1300 in Tulsa is now KAKC, an all sports station.

WCHR 94.5 FM Trenton, NJ

WCHR is a religious radio station in Trenton, NJ which currently broadcasts on 920 AM.  WCHR originally broadcast on 94.5 FM. But left the FM dial in 1998 and after a number of call letter/format changes 94.5 is now WPST an Adult Contemporary radio station. This is the former WCHR station building.

KSVY 1550 AM, Opportunity, WA

Photo by Bill Harms

KSVY was an Oldies (later Classical) music station located in the Spokane suburb of Opportunity, WA. The photo above is the remains of the trailer that held their transmitter.

http://radiotowers.info/wa/spok/ksvy/ (You can hear samples of KSVY here.)

Here's the remains of one station in Alabama:

http://rural-ruin.livejournal.com/815925.html

More:

Take 10 Minutes To Learn The Metric Way!

Ahhh......the metric system. To this day the US, Burma (Myanmar) and Liberia are the only nations in the world who have not formally adopted the metric system.

While the US has authorized the use of the metric system since 1866, outside of science and a few other places, it was largely ignored. In 1975, Congress authorized a ten year plan for national conversion. Which seemed like a good idea.  Canada and Mexico already adopted it

And PSAs like this began appearing. (I remember watching this - my elementary school teachers were (quite reluctantly) trying to teach it and I tried to explain it to my mom and how nearly every country in the world uses it and now the US was changing over. She rolled her eyes and said with deadpan sarcasm "Wow. And all this time, I thought we won the war.....")

Today you find some uses of the metric system. Namely this:

 

And along the borders for our Canadian and Mexican friends

Speed limit sign in Blaine, WA.....just a few meters over the border.......

 

 And virtually all retail food/drink and household products in America have both standard (or imperial) and metric measurements listed on their containers. Wine and spirit bottles are also metrically portioned. And it's ubiquitous in the illegal drug trade. Foreign imported bikes also use metric nuts and bolts (I found this out with my old Peugeot 10 speed.)

So what happened?

Simple, for the most part, we Americans resisted. In fact, the government gave up around 1982 and closed the metric conversion office when then President Reagan made the first sweeping wave of government cutbacks, ending all funding for a national conversion.

However there are still a few hopeful holdouts. But it's doubtful Americans will ever convert.   

The Oobi

It seemed like a cute idea....

Message on top "I'm Oobi. I contain a message to another human being. Please further my journey an inch, a foot, or a mile. Add a note, if you wish. Then help me to the next nice person like yourself!" 

A strange little toy came on the market in 1971.

A little plastic thing that looked like a giant M&M with eyes. It was for kids to transport written messages to each other using the kindness of strangers. The kids would write the address of their receiving friend on the bottom of an Oobi and leave it out anyplace someone would find it. And, assuming that person had nothing else to do, would presumably take it directly to the kid who was to receive it.
 

That was the idea at least behind the Oobi.

They were sold in packs of three, so they were probably weren't reuseable.

 

"oobi is a message center for conveying your written thoughts to other human beings. oobi has no home, no owner, but is forever going somewhere, on his way, in transit, never dying. oobi counts on the kindness of strangers to journey him towards his destination, but only the person to whom oobi is addressed may open him. When he is finally broken open, it is only to free oobi's spirit.

          You may buy oobi, but you never "own" oobi. You buy oobi to make him free.

oobi is love"

Parents however weren't as nice to Oobi. And this weirdo hippie 'love' babble only made them extremely nervous (or seriously pissed them off.) And you can't really blame them. They had every reason in the world not to like them. Even in that more innocent age, the very last thing you want is some pervert or creep knowing you and your child's address. The slits that held the notes were also big enough and useful for making your kids unsuspecting drug mules as well. So cops were naturally suspicious of these things as well.

It was the biggest toy failure in Parker Brother's history. And they were off the shelves within months.....

More on the Oobi here:

http://www.deuceofclubs.com/oobi/index.html

One Weird Trick

Have you ever spotted these web ads and asked yourself "Who do these people think they're fooling?"

"One Weird Trick"....or some variant in ads for everything from mortgage reduction to testosterone building. Nothing screams SCAM louder.

They began appearing around 2008. And became ubiquitous by 2010.

In copy writing, one major no-no is overused superlatives. The reason is simple - They get old. And cliche.

And apparently, I'm not the only one who notices it. 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-09/just-1-weird-trick-to-get-you-to-read-this-article.html

The Town That Time Forgot

Welcome to Kitsault, BC Canada.

Ninety-four homes,

Two hundred apartments,

A library

A shopping mall,

A restaurant, movie theater, sports center, a bank and a hospital.

It's a town with everything.

Everything but people.

More below......

http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/09/04/the-time-capsule-ghost-town-waiting-to-be-brought-back-to-life/