[BC] True Radio Confessions

[brew@theMode.com]

Last month somebody asked on the list if anybody knew of any cases of
stations with 'lapses of judgement'.  Here's one that I only heard rumors
about, followed by one that I was guilty of committing.

I remember hearing in the seventies or early eighties that WETT, Ocean
City, MD., 1 kW Day, 250 W. (?) night, a two pattern DA on 1590, got
caught not switching to night power and pattern.  The story was that the
FCC Inspector (out of Washington or Laurel, MD.?) was using his FIM as a
radio while vacationing there.  When the station switched patterns the
carrier went off for a few seconds, but when it returned the Field
Intensity was exactly the same!

That made him curious enough to inspect the station.  When he asked them
to switch to the night pattern the tower base current ammeter readings
changed, but his FIM revealed the monitor point field strength stayed the
same.  They'd jimmied the meters everywhere to change, but not the actual
transmitter or phasor.

Don't know if this was true or not, but that's how the story went.  I note
that WETT is now WKHZ and they received a NAL for $1700 about 1999 for
operating at night with the day pattern, but I'm pretty sure I heard about
the faked meters inspection long before that.

My True Radio Confession Follows.....

At the first commercial station I worked at (1970-72), WJJZ, 1460 in Mount
Holly, NJ (not related to either the current WJJZ [a jazz FM in Philly] or
the current 1460 [Religion] near Mount Holly) the transmitter was on
Burlington Island in the Delaware River with no bridge access.  The
station was a 5 kW daytimer with a 500 W PSA.  I took the station 'yacht',
a metal boat with a 9.8 horsepower outboard over to the island to run the
transmitter, check the base current and do the station inspection every
morning from 6 to 8 AM before I went to the studio for my air shift from
11 AM to 3 PM.

When winter came (December sign off at 4:45 PM) the station laid off the
PD and kept me, because I was the one who went to the island.  BUT, my air
shift was now 1 PM to 4:45 PM.  I told the owner that I didn't want to
hang around for 5 hours every day doing nothing and not getting paid.  (I
lived forty miles away, to far to go home during the lay over).

The owner pointed out that nobody would ever know if I didn't go to the
island every morning, how could the Commission ever find out?  I could
just go there every Friday and drop the logs off so the Chief Engineer who
worked weekends wouldn't know.  I asked if he would still pay me for the
two hours a day, he hemmed and hawed for a while and finally said that
yes, he would.

Now, I didn't realize the seriousness of committing deliberate fraud, and
in a Federal jurisdiction, too, so I quickly agreed.

I spend the rest of the winter sleeping in every morning until 11 AM while
getting paid $2.75 an hour, for ten hours a week, to do the station
'inspection'.

This is the life!!!!!!!  Until............

In April of '71 I walked up to the station to do my air shift and the
manager came running down the front steps of the station, 'The FCC's
here!!!!'.

I just turned and walked away, thinking that was the end of my broadcast
career, but the manager called me back, telling me they'd gone to the book
keeper's office in the next town.  I quickly locked myself in the upstairs
room where the remote equipment was stored and brought the rest of the
logs up to date, then went on the air, taking the meter readings on
exactly the hour and the half hour, to the second!!!!

Finally the two inspectors from the Philadelphia FCC office, Vernon Wilson
and his sidekick, told me to put on an LP and come into the manager's
office.  I told them how I'd just happened to have brought the logs that
very morning in from the transmitter, wasn't that a co-incidence?

They asked if I'd been to the island transmitter site that morning.  Now,
the owner had collared me earlier that day and said whatever I did, don't
tell them that I hadn't been to the transmitter.

They asked if I'd been there, "Yes, I was there."  Would I sign a
statement that I'd been there?  "Yes," I told them, "I already had, the
station log which they had in their hands."  They said that was true.

Then they said they were prepared to prove that I wasn't there, nor had I
been there on March 16th.  The owner sat up in his chair, looking smug,
"Just how do you propose to do that?".

"Simple.  We had the Coast Guard take my assistant here to the island, and
he waited at the transmitter, but you never showed up!"

"Hey", I countered, "I WAS THERE, it's YOU who NEVER showed up!!!!.

They both shrugged and sent me back to finish my air shift.

WJJZ's Washington attorney wrote me a very nice letter which basically
pleaded that I was young, inexperienced, and naive and ended with the
sentence "... and I promise I will never do it again."

I sometimes work this into a sort of an Arlo Guthrie story at parties as I
play guitar, about how this kept me from being drafted and getting sent to
Vietnam - "Keeddd, have you ever committed Federal Fraud?", but that's not
true, it was actually my bum knee what kept me out.

My violation was one of eighteen.  No recent audio proof, no recent RF
proof, operation without a First Phone operator on duty, etc., etc.  The
station eventually lost it's license for an issue unrelated to this
inspection, lack of candor.  Apparently the station had been changing
ownership partners without telling the FCC or the IRS.

Thank goodness the Philadelphia FCC saved me from a life of crime and put
me back on the straight and narrow path to a lifetime career in the
broadcasting business!

brew - Bruce Schiller at CBS-TV, NY Master Control Maintenance and WA2ZST