Are you ready for some football?
Pittsburgh: Finally, someone found a use for Alex Langer's WPYT (660), the former AM daytimer that moved from Portage to Pittsburgh in 2004 and which has been "forgotten but not gone" ever since.
WPYT (suggested motto: "Testing, testing, 1-2-3, is anyone out there?") will carry MSA Sports Network's coverage of today's Class A state football championship between McKeesport's Serra Catholic High School and Steelton-Highspire High School from the Harrisburg area.
Kickoff is at 1 p.m. with a pre-game show at 12:45 p.m. If you're not within range of WPYT's 1,400-watt blowtorch, which shares a tower along Ardmore Boulevard with another suburban AM also-ran (Braddock-licensed WLFP), you can listen online.
MSA Sports Network gets its name from its owner and principal sponsor, the Pittsburgh-based information technology company Management Science Associates.
MSA's coverage of the Class AAA championship between Thomas Jefferson High School in Jefferson Hills Borough and Garnet Valley High School, west of Philadelphia (both teams are called the Jaguars!), will be carried by a station with a decidedly higher profile than WPYT, Washington's WJPA-FM (95.3). 'JPA should be easily heard throughout the West Jefferson Hills School District in Pittsburgh's South Hills.
On Saturday, the hotly awaited Class AA contest between Jeannette High and Dunmore High (near Scranton) will be carried at 12 p.m. over Greensburg's "Sam FM" WGSM-FM (107.1).
The Quad-A game between Pittsburgh Central Catholic and Parkland High (near Allentown) will be heard on "Fox Sports" WBGG (970). Kickoff is 5 p.m., and the pre-game starts at 4:50 p.m.
All of those games are being carried live from Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pa., and can be heard online at MSA Sports Network's website. The fast-growing network now links broadcasts of high school and small college athletics from more than two dozen Western Pennsylvania radio stations.
Many of those stations even have actual listeners, unlike WPYT.
I'm sorry to be so sarcastic about WPYT, but if anyone can explain to me how the FCC served the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" by allowing a Cambria County radio station to move to "Wilkinsburg" and run 24 hours daily of paid programming, I'm open to listen.
Trivia Note: Dunmore High (Jeannette's challenger) was mentioned earlier this year on an episode of NBC-TV's Scranton-based sitcom "The Office."
In the episode, Dunmore High's prom invitations had been printed on paper supplied by the show's fictional Dunder-Mifflin Paper Co. The paper had to be recalled because of an obscene watermark, necessitating a visit to the school, where one of the characters (played by Ed Helms) learned he was inadvertently dating a girl who was a student there.
. . .
Correction: This item originally stated that WPYT had 88 watts' nighttime power. That was based on an incorrect entry at Radio-Locator.com. Several readers have pointed out that WPYT had nighttime authorization when it was operating on 1470 as WCIX and WFJY, but not any longer.
FCC license data shows that WPYT is currently licensed only for daytime operation on its present frequency, which it shares with WFAN, New York.
Readers’ Forum
Though not exactly the same, one wonders how the “Public Interest” was served by the FCC in allowing TWO AM stations to share the same 1520 khz frequency in Canton and Kent, Ohio..20 miles apart.. in 1966. Its nearly impossible to this day to recieve either station in Akron, they step on each other so much..
Tim Lones
Canton, Ohio
Tim Lones (URL) - December 14, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I believe WPYT did go from being a fulltimer in Portage to a daytimer in Wilkinsburg. It may be authorized somewhere to put out 88 watts (perhaps in critical hours or pre-sunrise), but at night in east suburban areas I am hearing WFAN in New York on AM 660.
Pat Cloonan (URL) - December 19, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Dear Jason,
Im Randy Tantlinger of Rt Media. Im leasing airtime from Langer to create a sports talk format in Pittsburgh. Give us a listen and a chance! My DJs are just as good if not better tahn ESPN and FSN.
www.660ampitt.com We grow everyday!
Randy Tantlinger - January 18, 2009 at 07:34 am