Saturday Brings Commemorative FM Broadcast in New Jersey

Updating you on a story we reported here earlier: This weekend is a 70th anniversary broadcast, recalling the first public demo of FM radio by Major Armstrong.
Saturday, a transmitter operating will be switched on at the Alpine Tower in New Jersey. The replica transmitter was built by Steve Hemphill of Solid Electronics Laboratories, one of the organizers.
A special program will air “at 42.8 Mc” at noon, hosted by WINS(AM) anchorwoman Judy DeAngelis, a long-time New York City newscaster. Those who can’t tune to that original FM frequency can listen on WFDU(FM) at 89.1 MHz or online at www.wfdu.fm.
Organizers said the program will include the story of FM radio and recollections by some of the people who worked with Armstrong including Renville H. McMann Jr., former vice president of the CBS Technology Center, who worked with Armstrong when McMann was 14. Tom Lewis, author of the book “Empire of the Air,” is scheduled to take part. The show includes excerpts from a recording of a 1941 test broadcast of the original New England Yankee Network, which organizers said was the first such network to use FM radio links instead of telephone lines to connect stations.
A radio dramatization of “Empire of the Air,” originally produced by David Ossman for American Public Radio, will be broadcast. The broadcast day is scheduled to conclude with the 1954 signoff of the Alpine station W2XMN following the death of Major Armstrong.
The program will be rebroadcast on the Web at 7 p.m. on June 14 and 16.
The broadcast was organized by Hemphill and the Sackermann family, owners of the Alpine Tower. Audio production, engineering and transmission are being provided through WFDU(FM) under the direction of Barry Sheffield. WFDU is licensed to Fairleigh Dickinson University.
For more on this event, click here.