Heading south and east from the WTVI tower, our next stop was the Hood Road facility of country WSOC-FM (103.7), shared with eighties outlet WSSS (``Star'' 104.7) and NPR news and talk WFAE (90.7) -- all Charlotte licenses.
Subsequent research by Mr. Fybush has revealed that the building at the base of the tower was once the studios of channel 36, now Belo-owned NBC affiliate WCNC. Scott's reference shows that the studios were here in 1981, when the station had just been sold by Ted Turner to Westinghouse. The WSOC-FM antenna is at the right height to be located where channel 36 used to be, but we don't know whether this tower is actually old enough to be itself a former channel 36 tower. What makes this even more interesting is that channel 36 now transmits from the site that used to belong to channel 9, WSOC-TV, which makes one wonder if there was a real-estate swap at some point in the recent past.
WFAE, by the way, started out at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. We never made it to their studios.
Copyright 2003, Garrett Wollman. All rights reserved. Photograph taken 2003-03-22.