Palm Beach, USA: How do you find Jupiter’s little radio station? Look for the antenna in the palm tree!
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| The antenna for WJTW is attached to a palm tree behind the radio station’s studio in Jupiter. (Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post) |
While there are several ways to grow a radio station’s audience, not many include fertilizer.
But then, few radio stations use a 70-foot Washingtonian palm tree planted in back of its studio as an antenna pole.
“We
try to take good care of that tree,” said Tom Boyhan, the owner of
low-power WJTW, 100.3 FM, known as “Jupiter’s Home Town Radio Station.”
“Our first one got hit by lightning.”
The
palm tree was Boyhan’s workaround of a Town of Jupiter rule prohibiting
antennas more than 50 feet tall near residential areas.
With
an extra dose of fertilizer and regular watering, a few more listeners
each year from Palm Beach Gardens to Hobe Sound might be able to tune in
to the station’s mix of local news and nostalgia, with songs that range
from ’50s crooners to ’70s soft rock, salted with plenty of show tunes.
“The
joke around town is the taller that palm, the better the signal,” said
Jennifer Sardone-Shiner, marketing director of Maltz Jupiter Theatre.
On
a local radio dial dominated by homogenized super stations with
corporate formats devised in board rooms, tiny home-grown WJTW is
radio’s artisanal micro-brew.
Instead
of “Don’t Touch That Dial” bombast, there’s a handmade quality to the
airwaves emanating from this four-room office suite, where the
transmitter room is the size of a closet and the production studio
doesn’t have soundproofing.
Read More at The Palm Beach Post
(Source : The Palm Beach Post, spotted by SCOOPWEB)
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