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Great Blue Hill radio station gets even greater

So have you noticed WGBH-FM coming in even feistier than usual? The station reports it finished replacing its 36-year-old antenna on top of the hill that gave it its call letters a couple weeks ago. The new antenna now

Broadcasts at 100,000-watt power and provides a stronger signal to downtown Boston and reaches more Massachusetts communities and all six New England states.

Photos of the antenna being topped off.

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Comments

No headline about "THIS radio STATION IS FULLY OPERATIONAL!!!"?

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"Until this radio station is fully operational, we are vulnerable. 'BUR is too well equipped, they're more dangerous than you realize."

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Whence these quotations? I am lacking context, I guess.

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Return of the Jedi reference.

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Do you listen to Bob Oakes?!?! The man can't get though a sentence without flubbing some sentence. I listen to WBUR every morning just for the comedic effect of the endless mis-speaks. Bob Oakes isn't suitable to record a voicemail message.

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Dolores Handy set the bar for mispronunciations and mangled sentences. Bob is just carrying the torch.

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I thought I was the only one who enjoyed listening to see what he would botch. News and laughs, can't beat that for morning radio, since rock music has disappeared.

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Radio radio: Let's hope that the signal isn't so strong that it interferes with the reception of other stations by being heard at frequencies other than the designated one. (Is that phenomenon called ghosting?)

Curious to hear whether this boost will have any adverse effects on the local pirate (read: ILLEGAL) radio stations.

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I think we were already there before. I drive under that antenna twice a day, and each time my car radio wigs out on the channel due to what appears to be "intermodulation products" of the frequency converter. This is just like what happens in Needham.

I don't think this is going to have a large impact on other channels, however. I understood broadcast radio to have quite stringent requirements on out of band emissions.

The other week, I was driving up I-95 and convinced myself the tower was falling over. Once I got closer, I realized it was a big *ss crane reaching for the top. Man, I have no idea how they got that crane up there.

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Great. I love to listen to WGBH's afternoon classical programming and then when Eric comes on at 8pm I'm good for the rest of the evening. I'm so glad WGBH didn't switch to a stupid "all news" style like many of the other NPRs. Besides, Boston has WBUR if you want news; WGBH is for the "arts".

Oh wait. It's 2014. WGBH stopped giving a shit about us low-rent music people years ago.

Wake me when WHRB is granted a 100kw license and WGBH is limited to Boston and Cambridge. The radio spectrum is too narrow to justify getting rid of jazz and classical in favor or yet another mostly syndicated talk station. (And don't tell me about WCRB -- not nearly as good as the "old" WGBH. Now WHRB is all that's left.)

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WCRB became terrible in the later years when it would repeat the same dozen or so pieces of music 24/7.

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+1
WHRB plays decent classical and I hopefully they'll stick to it.
I miss WFNX Sunday morning jazz -- even though their selection wasn't the greatest, at least there was more jazz on the dial.

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Wow - I have lived here for 20+ years and never made the connection between the call letters and the location of the antenna! (Can I go home now?)

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WEEI - from the days it was owned by the Edison Electric and Illuminating Co. (I guess today's equivalent would be something like WNST).

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The call sign was for their large beneficiary early on:

W God Bless Havard

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I think it was when they took over WCRB, and the transmitter is somewhere in Lowell. At the open meetings, the response to the question about "How can I listen to the station if we can't get the station in Boston" was to buy and internet radio. Yeah, that's going to work for someone on a fixed income or in a nursing home.

Needless to say, they haven't gotten a dime out of me since.

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**"How can I listen to the station if we can't get the station in Boston" was to buy and internet radio.**

No...the answer was to buy an "HD Radio". (You can pick up the Classical station on 89.7-HD2)

**Yeah, that's going to work for someone on a fixed income or in a nursing home.**

Why wouldn't having an HD radio work for someone in a nursing home?

**Needless to say, they haven't gotten a dime out of me since**

If it wasn't for WGBH...there would be NO classical format on the air....at all!

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New HD Hybrid Digital AM-FM-HD radio for subcarriers/subchannels most Boston radio stations are broadcasting on HD-1, HD-2, HD-3, HD-4 with display for song names/artist names/album art/weather/traffic in addition to the analog broadcasts
http://www.sparcradio.com

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How many people actually have an HD radio? I've never even seen one.

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It's heyday has long since passed. Internet radio and podcasts offer infinite variety including on demand and podcasts. I don't know how terrestrial radio competes with that.

And demographically speaking, how many young people in 2014 listen to terrestrial radio, fm or am? Same as the number who read newspapers. Both mediums are too restricted, too conforming. This won't fly for young and old alike in 2014.

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Someone makes this suposition every time there's an article about radio here. The (sad?) truth for such techno-hipsters is that not only are more people listening to radio than ever before, but the number and percentage of the population that listens to radio on a daily/weekly basis dwarfs that listening to either sat or net delivered programming.

And no, the curves are not converging all that much. They may in the future, but they aren't right now. Terrestrial radio broadcast is actually an exceptionally inexpensive, democratic and robust method of communications.

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Check out the HD Hybrid Digital subcarriers/subchannels HD-2, HD-3 of WGBH radio stations WGBH-FM 90.9 and WCRB-FM 99.9
http://www.universalhub.com/2014/wbur-bostons-npr-glasshole-station#comm...

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