WNLC New London began operations in the latter half of September, 1936. The studios were in the Mohican (or Mohegan) Hotel, 281 State Street and the transmitter was located on City Pier on the Thames River. The 1936 CT State Register lists the owner as Thames Broadcasting, Inc.
WNLC was a daytime only operation on a frequency of 1500 kc. with 100 watts power and was the first station in Connecticut east of the Connecticut River.
The studios at first may have been on one of the upper floors of the hotel, but early on were moved to a suite of rooms on second floor. By 1951, there were two studios - one blind from the control room, news room, technical area and offices.
WNLC's transmitter suffered severe damage in the 1938 hurricane. WTHT engineer Roland LaLanne reported that one of its engineers went to New London with a 160-meter amateur transmitter, which was re-tuned to WNLC's frequency. Mr. LaLanne also related that he understood the station may have operated from the lower end of State Street, near the railroad station, during the hurricane. There is no known information about this.
In the 1930s and 1940s, WNLC was affiliated with Colonial and Mutual and later, the Yankee network.
WNLC moved to 1490 KHz on March 29, 1941, in accordance with the NARBA frequency shift.
On December 8 or 9, 1941, an enemy attack warning was issued for the East Coast. The Eastern Connecticut defense command was headquartered at the New London Sub Base, and area military authorities activated defense plans. Official information and orders were disseminated over WNLC.
The 1950 issue of Broadcasting Yearbook shows the following key personnel: Roderick L. Morey, President; Gerald J. Morey, Gen. & Commercial Manager and Chief Engineer (he was Paul Morey's father); Leo Keegan, Commercial Manager' and J. Patricia Morley, Promotion Manager.
In the early 1960s, WNLC moved operations to Foster Road in Waterford. The building housed offices, studios, news operations and transmitter. An eight tower arrangement was installed and the station operated on 1510 kHz with 10 kw daytime and 5 kw nighttime power. A bomb shelter-operations bunker was built in a hillside about a football field-length from the rear door.
The original WNLC tower still stands. When WNLC
abandoned 1490 for higher power on 1510, its original tower was sold and placed on the ferry to Orient, Long Island, and sent to Sag Harbor, where it was used for WLNG-AM 1600 when it signed on in 1963.
By 1969, WNLC was affiliated with the ABC Information Network and later carried CBS.
WNLC has a massive antenna system consisting of eight towers!
Additional historical information:
WNLC was the second most powerful station in the state with 10,000 watts (only WTIC had more and all of the rest of the AMers in the state had 5,000 watts or less). It required a directional antenna (DA) system consisting of no less than 8 towers, 6 in line and 2 in line, in order to prevent this powerful signal from causing interference to other stations in the area. The only problem was that the signal was focused into a thin beam pointing out to sea (rumor has it that the station served as an unofficial "get me home" navigation aid to submarines stationed at the nearby Groton submarine base, and we've heard more than one report that the station's signal could he heard as far a the Azores!)
Legendary CT broadcast engineer Hillis Holt told us years ago that back in the sixties he approached the management of WNLC offering to redesign their system for free to provide much better coverage with half as many towers and 2,500 watts. Hillis just hated the waste of all that power being sent out to see. He was turned down. The 10,000 watts gave the station bragging rights, and "Second Most Powerful Station In The State" was printed at the top of the coverage maps they gave to potential advertisers.
In the late seventies the station was faced with financial difficulties due perhaps to the high cost of running the powerful transmitter, the cost of upkeep on the eight towers and the decline in AM listenership.
The station suffered a fire under tower 3 in the doghouse in June 1997 and operated non directional with 100 Watts a while.
On April 01, 1998, Hall Communications changed the call sign to WWJY and notified the FCC it was surrendering its nighttime authority and removing five of the eight towers, leaving it as a 10 kilowatt, 3-tower day timer...if it ever returned to the air.
The station signed off for the last time in November, 1998 and the FCC canceled license as of 11/03/98.
Contributor Robert Paine recalls the Foster Road studio building:
"As I can recall, the building was somewhat L-shaped. The front door was to the right side, as were the business offices. There were two doors Along the corridor to the rear was, on the left was a rectangular room that housed the WTYD-FM automation when it signed on. I'm not sure what was behind that but the next room was, I believe, the record library. The next room was the production studio, followed by a small, narrow news studio, the control room and transmitter room. Opposite the latter were audio racks, at the end of which was a small table for the engineer. Behind the racks was the workshop. Ahead of that may have been a closet or small room, the men's room and a wall that extended to the main corridor. On the other side was the news room with a small closet (I think), near the outside wall, for the AP machine. I don't recall what came after the news room but I'm certain the ladies room was in that area. At the end of the hallway, approximately across from the FM automation, was a lounge with one or two vending machines."
Mr. Paine continues:
"...I went to the Mohican Hotel at 281 State Street, around 1971. The suite that WNLC had occupied was being renovated but I was able to see what I think was one of the studios and the control room. The studio was perhaps 20 by 18 feet (uneducated guess). The control room was little larger than six or eight phone booths. At the time, it appeared the audio console was at a 90-degree angle from the studio, so as to be to the left of the engineer. That opened into a large corridor and I was told the area had been used for the station's Bandstand-type record show, hosted by announcer Bill Hoffman. He was, by the way, track announcer at the Waterford Speed Bowl in the early 60's. That area might have held as many as 15 or 20 couples. In one corner was a raised dias, similar to what Dick Clark had on American Bandstand. The rest of the area, to the best of my recollection, (didn't) have any indication of the station's presence."
One contributor recalled:
”from the 1967-72ish period are: Jim Reigert - mornings; Jim Scott - midday; Tom Brown - afternoon. There was an announcer, who was an engineer at WERI-AM&FM, Westerly RI, who did early afternoons around 1970. His name MAY have been Bob, but I'm not sure.
One of the part-timers was Tom (or Thom) Wilborn. I recall he worked Sunday evenings. His full name was Thomas Lee Wilborn and was stationed at the New London Naval Base. I think he'd been with the U of Arkansas station, KASU-FM. His goal was to work for KMOX, St.Louis.
Bill Hoffman was another WNLC announcer in the 1960's. I think he preceded Jim Reigert. He also announced the races at the New London- Waterford - now just Waterford - Speed Bowl. For a time in the 1960's, part of the Saturday night racing card was carried on WNLC.
Len Stevens was on the air in the 30's and 40's. I don't know if he was there in the 60's. He was the station's sports director.
Dave Connors was news director and John "Cousin Johnny" Small was program director or station manager. CJ did "Starlite Ranch and Round-up Time", a country music program. Every December 23 he did an all-night show, called "The Night Before The Night Before Christmas Show". He is, as I understand, still with WNLC-FM and doing country music. CJ threw me out of WNLC (figuratively, not literally) when I used to hang around on weekends.
Note to CJ: if you read the following, please understand I'm NOT making fun of the show, just relating what can be termed a spoonerism. With that caveat, I'll admit that at times the show was referred to as "Starlite Raunchy Round-up Time". Hey, it's got to be pretty good as I understand it may still be on the air. Ya doesn't last if ya isn't good.
Dave Lind was one of the engineers and had a hand in getting WTYD-FM on the air in, I think, the latter part of December, 1969. The chief engineer at the time was Randy Barrett. Randy was kind enough to send me two sheets of old WNLC stationary. On one he drew a diagram of the studios in the Mohegan Hotel as they were when he joined the station in 1951 or so.”
William Cunningham: "I did 2-6 pm at WNLC am 1510 from Oct. '73 - May '74. Jim Reigert did mornings, Jim Buchanin middays, and Ric Everette 7-11. John Fleming was the OM, and Paul Morey, GM. I had always wondered what happened to the building and towers at Waterford Industrial Park..Thanks to the great shots taken in 2010, now I know! I retired from radio in 1994..what a long strange trip it's been.- "
This is the pad that the studio building sat on.
Another view of the pad.
The area behind the building where the station's massive antenna system was is now pretty overgrown.
At first we weren't sure if we would be able to find any evidence of the towers but then we came across this broken antenna tuning unit insulator on the ground.
The field behind where the studio building was used to be was the site of the station's massive, eight tower directional antenna system, the largest in the state. The towers are gone but we were able to find evidence of them. Above, the base of the west tower.
Reportedly the eight towers were aligned in two parallel rows, with fix towers running L-R behind the building and two more towers beyond that. This picture is of one of the easterly towers in the line of 6.
This tower was closest to the building.
We located one of the old transmission lines.
Part of the original ground screen at the base of one of the towers. Reportedly the original ground system consisted of over 100,000 feet of copper radials!
You can see pictures of the remaining shelters at other stations elsewhere in CT here:
http://coldwar-ct.com/Fallout_Shelters.html
When we went looking for the old WNLC bomb shelter in August, 2010 we weren't exactly sure of it's location and as you can see in the photo above the area is quite overgrown. But after walking around for a few minutes we spotted this conduit sticking out of a mound of earth. It was a vent pipe from the top of the shelter that tipped us off to the location of the structure.
The front of the WNLC shelter which is buried into the side of a hill.
Looking in the front door which had been pried open by vandals we weren't sure what we were going to find.
Unfortunately vandals had done a pretty good job on trashing the interior of the shelter. After going throught the front door and proceeding down a short corridor one has to turn right to access this room. Like many shelter, this one had a right angle turn at the entrance for blast and/or radiation protection.
We noticed something unusual that we hadn't seen in the other shelters we had visited: a small pass through adjacent to the door. This concrete walled space apparently had double doors which would have allowed small items to be passed through from the outside to the inside of the shelter without opening the larger door. We're not sure what this was used for.
Remains of the electrical service panel, along with conduits (we assume) leading back under the parking lot to the
studio proper.
Looking from the main room into the area where the studio was originally located.
Given how vandalized the place was we didn't expect to find any of the old studio equipment but we did find a side room where you can still see the counters that supported the console, tape decks and turntables. The papers were old program logs from the 90s.
View looking back towards the entrance corridor.
Looking out from inside the shelter. Thankfully the shelter was never used in an emergency but one has to wonder what the occupants would have seen looking out this door after emerging from the shelter after a war.
Three of the eight towers behind the building can be seen in this 1982 photo.
1982 photo of the WNLC bomb shelter which reportedly contained a small studio and emergency AM transmitter.
