WBCH 1220 kHz QSL

From the Samuel Weinstein collection

Longtime medium wave DXers will recognize that the frequency of 1220 kHz as clear channel assigned to a powerful station in Cleveland, Ohio. By all rights, a station in nearby Michigan should never have been given this frequency. But mistakes happen and the FCC issued a license for WBCH in August, 1968. WGAR protested but the new station was in the district of a prominent congressman ... one Gerald Ford. That may have had something to do with why the FCC was unwilling to correct the mistake.

WBCH went on the air in October of 1968 but had technical problems from the beginning. Few local listeners could get an acceptable signal. The station put a request out to DXers to try to log the station, but Samuel Weintstein of Bad Axe, Michigan had the only known logging of them. Over the next few months the station spent over $20,000 (quite a sum in 1968) but the problems continued. Finally in February, 1969 they gave up and the WBCH closed down. The story might have ended there, but a few days later the chief engineer left town in a new sports car and soon after started a new job ... in Cleveland.

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