Courtesy of Bill Hale: Here is the text of WHOT history from
Jerry Starr as sent to me . . .
================

Hi Bill and the Fidonet gang,

The Fidonet stuff on WHOT was interesting.  I'm not connected to
Fidonet but if you are willing to put an entry in for me I can
add some WHOT info and answer the questions.

As a 33-year employee of WHOT I've been there since the system in
question was built. WHOT did NOT own the 1330 station in Erie. 
We owned the 1400 station in Erie which was a direct competitor
with 1330 so the answer is, NO, it did NOT make it any easier. 
The 1330 Erie station was not helpful at all, hi hi.

Evidently Xen Scott is a relative newcomer to the radio scene and
does not remember when AM radio ruled the business and prudent
station operators did whatever it took to get a fulltime station
on the air.

WHOT's history actually begins in Erie when Myron Jones and Bill
Fleckinstein, two young guys from Youngstown who both worked at
WFMJ, decided to build their own station.  In 1953 they put WJET
on the air in Erie on 1570 kHz as a daytimer.  They immediately
began a search for a fulltime frequency as they were the only
daytime facility in Erie.  They came up with 1400 kHz and moved
there in 1955.  This opened up the 1570 spot and they built WHOT
in Campbell (Youngstown suburb) on that frequency as a 250 watt
non-directional daytimer.  The RCA BTA-250M was the original
rig for this facility. Several years later they raised power to
1000 watts by installing the BTA-1R (the 250M became the back-up)
and went to a two tower system to protect existing 1570 stations
in Latrobe, PA and several Canadians.  However, fulltime was not
possible on 1570 since it was a Canadian and Mexican clear.

Like Erie, WHOT was the only station in the market that was not
fulltime. Even as a daytimer it went to the top of the local
ratings during the daytime periods.  It is one of the first Top
40 stations when it went on in 1955. One of the original staff
was the legendary Dick Biondi who did afternoons.  It is among a
handful of stations that, 40 years later is still running the
same format although it's now called CHR and it's now on FM.

A frequency search turned up only one workable fulltime frequency
for Youngstown: 1330 kHz.  The required daytime pattern would
produce very nice coverage of the market (Market #63 at the time
by the way with a TSA in excess of a million) from the present
studio/transmitter site which has never actually been in the city
of Campbell.  However, due to existing stations on the frequency
the night pattern would have to go entirely to the north.  The
present transmitter site was on the northeast side of the
city so such a pattern from there would totally miss the centers
of population.  The solution was to locate a separate night-only
transmitter site SOUTH of the city so the signal would cover the
metro on it's way to the north. It also turned out that the power
could be raised to 1000 watts with this pattern.  A piece of land
that was a back-filled strip mine and considered "junk land" was
purchased at nearly give-away prices between Poland and New
Middletown and an inline system of five 400-foot towers was built
for the night pattern. The 1000 watt ITA rig was installed here. 
Four additional 200 foot towers were added to the existing
daytime system and the present transmitters were retuned to 1330
kHz.  Total investment was for 9 towers and one more transmitter,
not that much to more than double the operating hours of an
already very successful station. Over the years this operation
turned a very handsome profit.  The additional transmitter site
paid for itself many times over.

This is not the only split-site AM operation, there are over 40
of them.  Nor was it the first.  There are successful two-site
operations in markets many times smaller than Youngstown.

There was not a Critical Hours power. We did have a PSSA to
operate the daytime pattern at 0600 year-round. Even though it
was lower power, the daytime pattern had better full-market
coverage.

Before FM took over as the dominant mode our little 500 watt AM
station commanded ratings with share numbers like 50 not unusual. 
Youngstown at that time was a 12 station market.  It's a 35
station market now.

A few years ago we had the chance to purchase the frequency of
WFMJ-1390.   This would allow us to increase power for better
market coverage.  From the time the 1330 facility was built the
population centers spread to the far suburbs and the coverage was
not able to reach the number of people it once did.  By that time
our FM station had become the dominant station in the market but
we still consider AM to be viable if properly programmed.

The 1330 facility continues to operate under new ownership from
the same transmitter sites we built in 1963.  The night site
which was out in the middle of nowhere when it was built is now
surrounded with developments of $200,000+ homes.  New Middletown
has become one of the new prestige addresses.  The land will
someday be worth thousands of times what it was purchased for so
the fate of this transmitter location will probably one
day be in doubt.

Interestingly, WKBN-570 built a new six-tower system right next
to our five towers about 15 years ago. When viewed from the
Interstate or the Turnpike this looks to be one enormous eleven
tower system and is quite visually impressive.

And, no, we never had any problems about the pirate WHOT although
it was very interesting the day that the operators of pirate WHOT
stopped in to visit at the real WHOT but that's another very long
story I'll save for another time.

73,
(Signed)

Jerry Starr