Viacom tower, 350 Cedar St., Needham

A week-long visit by one Mr. Fybush to his old hunting-ground in Boston prompted a visit to several area broadcast facilities, thanks to his connections in the local engineering community. (I have noted, in my travels, that the engineers are the nicest people in the business, and when time permits, love showing off their facilities to anyone who shows a professional interest.) Our first stop was at the Viacom tower, by far the tallest of the four Newton/Needham towers. Scott had already seen this facility, before the advent of digital TV, so he was curious about the changes since his previous visit. I had of course seen the tower from outside many times, but did not have the contacts to get through the gates and inside the buildings.

We thank Bob Yankowitz and his colleagues at WBZ/WSBK and WGBH for taking time out of their busy schedules to show us around. Thanks also to Mark Manuelian of WBZ radio for putting us in touch with the transmitter engineers.

There are at least eight buildings on the 350 Cedar St. property, which was purchased by Westinghouse in the late 1950s for WBZ-TV and WBZ-FM. Channel 4 signed on from here in 1957, leaving a temporary facility in Malden shared with channel 7. WGBH-TV arrived here in the 1960s from Great Blue Hill. In 1972, WCVB arrived, when it was unable to secure a lease on the tower of WHDH-TV, which it had replaced. WCRB-FM moved here at some point, possibly in the 1970s, having previously been on top of one of the WCRB(AM) towers in Waltham.

When WBZ-FM was sold in 1981, its primary transmitter moved to the Prudential Tower, although WMJX retained a backup facility in Needham for some years more. WCRB remained until 2000, when WCRB's owners were unable to come to terms with CBS (as Westinghouse had by then become) on a renewal of their lease; it moved across the Charles River to the FM-128 tower in Newton. Since the reconstruction and heightening for digital TV, there is no longer any radio on what is now the Viacom tower, although there has been considerable discussion of putting up a master FM antenna below the TV antennas.

We were not able to visit the channel 5 building, but we were able to follow one of the WBZ-TV engineers over to WSBK-TV at the UHF Candelabra, where he spends an hour or so each week. The full story of the UHF Candelabra will have to wait for another time.

Originally, all of the stations had individual antennas; from top to bottom they were 4, 44, 2, 5, and then the FMs. When the tower was reconstructed for digital TV, another 300 feet of 7-foot-face mast were added at the top, crowned by a pair of new broadband UHF antennas. The top antenna, at 390 meters AAT, carries WBZ-DT (channel 30), WCVB-DT (channel 20), WSBK-DT (channel 39), and WGBX-DT (channel 43). The lower antenna, at 374 meters, carries WGBH-DT (channel 19) and WGBX-TV (channel 44). The signals are divided in this way because it was not possible to build a combiner that would allow both channel 19 and channel 20, or channels 43 and 44, as inputs simultaneously. (If it were ever desired to move WSBK-TV from the Canedlabra to 350 Cedar, it too would have to use the lower antenna for this reason. So long as American Tower and Viacom are able to arrive at mutually-satisfactory lease terms, there is no urgent need to move the primary channel 38 facility, although an analog WSBK backup at Cedar St. is contemplated.)