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Voice Of America Museum Highlights Broadcast - & World - History
Anyone who ever tuned into shortwave knows about The Voice of America. I just never knew there was an actual museum devoted to it in the place where it all started - Cincinatti. Turns out the guy who was responsible for providing the facilities for the first station, used to fight Nazi propaganda during WWII, was also the founder of WLW. Hence, the Ohio location for the museum.
What's really interesting about the place is that is contains some of the original equipment, including the control room board and a million-watt transmitter. I'll probably never find myself in Cincinatti, but if I do, this is definitely one of the places I'd love to check out.
Voice heard 'round the world: Voice of America museum near Cincinnati a historical marvel
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Re: Voice Of America Museum Highlights Broadcast - & World - History
By the way, the article mentions something I'd heard before and always wondered about - WLW's original power was an astounding 500,000 watts. It didn't last long and it's now a maximum of 50K.
But would their signal at that strength have been receivable in Toronto during the daytime? I know it's a long way during less-than-optimal reception conditions, but 500K is a lot of wattage.
Maybe some tech types who lurk here would know the answer.
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Thread Starter- mace
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Re: Voice Of America Museum Highlights Broadcast - & World - History
WLW started broadcasting at 500K in Jan 1934 after midnight. In mid spring of 1934, the 500K signal boomed out 24/7. CFRB operated on 690 from 1931-41. WJR puts a somewhat listenable daytime signal into the GTA with 50,000 watts. Detroit is about 242 miles from Toronto. Cincinnati is 411 miles from Toronto. I don't know if a 500,000 watt daytime signal would travel the roughly 170 extra miles to be heard in these parts.
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Re: Voice Of America Museum Highlights Broadcast - & World - History
CFRB certainly has an interesting history, frequency-wise. As you noted, they were on 690 for a while and had something of a war with WLW and its 500K transmitter, worried about nighttime interference. They solved that by moving to 860, but the peace didn't last long.
There was no CRTC in those days and broadcast rules were mostly up to the CBC. So when that network announced it wanted to move its then-English language CJBC to the superior 860 frequency from 1010, and kick RB elsewhere, the latter station balked. It argued such a move would just confuse listeners and the new frequency wouldn't come in as well. 
But the CBC wouldn't take no for an answer and CJBC has been in its 860 perch ever since the swap. The only real question left was where would CFRB go? Incredibly, that station was offered a number of choices and you can only imagine that it could have been NewsTalk 640 or NewsTalk 1550. In this report from Sept. 1946, it was clear 'RB was not interested in 1010. But what might have happened to the Big 8? 
Nonetheless, the change happened on Sept. 1, 1948 and soon it was CFRB 1010 - and for their trouble, they became the first independent station in Canada to be boosted to 50,000 watts.
CFRB made sure everyone knew about the change.
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