Grand Spaulding Dodge

krazykuda said
I met Mr.Norm a few years back at a local car show. I got to talking to him and he told me an interesting story.

He said that they used to purposefully advertise on the radio station WLS (AM 89) at night. During the day, they had to "turn down" the power from the antennae that they were using to broadcast from the top of the Sears Tower. At night, they were allowed to "Crank up" the power and the advertisement could be heard from the east coast to the west coast (California). So they would advertise on WLS at night so it could reach out to more people across the country. ---> Very clever...

Mr. Norm is a real nice guy and easy to talk to. I bought some memorabilia from him and got him, his son, and grandson to autograph some of them. Three generations of Mr. Norm!

I told him that I appreciated him "showing up" Chrysler by making the GSS'es and proving that a 440 could fit into an a-body, so then Chrysler offered them in '69. He never really looked at it that way.

Mr Norm may have known cars but he doesn't know radio. My dad has done every job in radio starting in 1960. The AM stations used to run the same power all the time but at night natural physics caused the signal to go much farther. They actually have to turn the power down during the night and run full power during the day. I remember as a kid traveling around the countryside measuring radio signal power for the stations he worked for. I remember getting to go into the big transformer rooms and dial the power down at night. The only station I actually "worked" for actually went off the air at 11 pm so we just threw a big Egor switch and shut it down.

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/why...change-operations-or-cease-broadcasting-night