Meadowlands AM's Fight Encroachment
Nov 28, 2005 18:43:55 GMT -5
Post by musicradio77 on Nov 28, 2005 18:43:55 GMT -5
From this week Northeast Radio Watch by Scott Fybush:
There was a time - and it wasn't that long ago - when the NEW JERSEY Meadowlands were an undesirable place for just about anything other than an AM radio transmitter facility. From the 1920s, when stations like WOR and WLWL first built sites there, to the present day, the swamps just across the Hudson River from New York City have been the preferred spot for AM broadcasters in the nation's largest market.
With the construction of Giants Stadium in the 1970s, the Meadowlands began to become desirable for other uses, too, and in recent years, the area south of the stadium complex has become a hotbed of development. WOR, as you'll recall, is losing its current site in Lyndhurst to the massive EnCap golf course/housing development that's being planned for 800 acres in East Rutherford, North Arlington and Lyndhurst - and now two other AM stations in the neighborhood are crying foul about what they say will be detrimental effects to their signals from the EnCap project.
WINS (1010) and WLIB (1190) tried to prevent the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission from granting its approval for Phase I of the project, arguing that planned 15-story apartment buildings would disrupt the stations' directional patterns, making their transmitter sites unusable.
The matter will now go to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where WINS and WLIB hope to get an injunction to keep construction from starting on the housing portion of the project. It promises to be an interesting fight, and we'll be keeping tabs on it - stay tuned!
There was a time - and it wasn't that long ago - when the NEW JERSEY Meadowlands were an undesirable place for just about anything other than an AM radio transmitter facility. From the 1920s, when stations like WOR and WLWL first built sites there, to the present day, the swamps just across the Hudson River from New York City have been the preferred spot for AM broadcasters in the nation's largest market.
With the construction of Giants Stadium in the 1970s, the Meadowlands began to become desirable for other uses, too, and in recent years, the area south of the stadium complex has become a hotbed of development. WOR, as you'll recall, is losing its current site in Lyndhurst to the massive EnCap golf course/housing development that's being planned for 800 acres in East Rutherford, North Arlington and Lyndhurst - and now two other AM stations in the neighborhood are crying foul about what they say will be detrimental effects to their signals from the EnCap project.
WINS (1010) and WLIB (1190) tried to prevent the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission from granting its approval for Phase I of the project, arguing that planned 15-story apartment buildings would disrupt the stations' directional patterns, making their transmitter sites unusable.
The matter will now go to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where WINS and WLIB hope to get an injunction to keep construction from starting on the housing portion of the project. It promises to be an interesting fight, and we'll be keeping tabs on it - stay tuned!