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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.


Wavescan 360, November 18, 2001

Update on New York Radio

The latest editions of three American radio magazines give a further picture of radio and TV events in New York City in the aftermath of the tragic happenings on September 11. These magazines are:

This is what these magazines report:

A total of 18 broadcast stations, analog TV, digital TV and FM radio, were on the air from the high 360 ft. antenna on top of the North Building of the World Trade Center in New York City. In addition, there were also numerous communication antennas on the top of these two buildings, numbering, as one report states, "several thousand".

The New York station WCBS was the only TV station that was able to give a full-power TV service to the city in the aftermath of the attacks by transferring to its back-up facility on the top of the nearby Empire State Building. TV station WABC returned to the air from alternate locations with the use of three UHF transmitters at reduced power.

Three of these New York TV stations scrambled to get on the air again from a new location at the Alpine Tower near Alpine in neighboring New Jersey. This tower is located on the summit of a hill which is almost the same height as the Empire State Building.

The Alpine Tower was built just prior to World War II by Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of Frequency Modulation. He gave his first FM demonstrations from this Alpine Tower on an experimental basis back in 1937.

This tower is the home to numerous communication facilities, and also to FM radio station WFDU operated by a local university. The three TV stations that moved out to this tower were WNBC-4, WABC-7, WPIX-11 and WNET-13.