WMTC                 -88.7 FM-

The story of WMTC began in 2001, with the birth of a boy named Michael Crowley.  As he grew, he developed a love for music.  By the time he was three years old, he had already begun to amass a record collection.  Sitting in his living room with records scattered around him all over the floor, he'd sit with a cassette recorder, pretending that he was on the radio, hoping that one day, that dream would come true.

 

By the time he turned six, he was running a "radio station" through a pair of wireless speakers. He set up the little transmitter for the speakers in his bedroom, playing music for his parents downstairs, still dreaming of being on the radio for real.  One day in 2009 at barely 8 years old, Michael would turn that dream into reality.  He was shopping with his parents, and, during one of his usual visits to the electronics section of the store he was in, he saw a little device called an FM transmitter.  The purpose of this device was to transmit a signal a short distance to a radio (usually for a car without an auxilary input).  He thought that maybe, just maybe this device would put him on the radio, so his parents made the $20.00 investment into the transmitter, little knowing what that investment would evlove into.

 

 Michael found that, indeed, his speculation was correct.  He was now on the radio for real!  Though the  transmitter had very little power, hardly enough to reach downstairs, he was still actually on the radio!  He created a small "studio" in his bedroom, and chose the frequency 88.7 FM for his station.  He began branding the station as "88.7, Michael's Radio."

 

One day, he made an important discovery.  He was talking about his station with his next door neighbor.  His neighbor decided to try to take a listen to Michael's station, and to both their surprise, his neighbor could tune in!  The signal wasn't exactly loud and clear, but he could listen.  WMTC now had an audience...

 

Over the next year or so, Michael continued to expand his record collection, through many generous people giving him records, as well as through purchasing them.  By the time the picture on the right was taken, we were well on our way to a nice, large collection of great music!

 

One of the earliest people who offered their knowledge and support to WMTC was Steve Morse.  One day, Michael went down to WYEP to watch Morse do his Saturday Morning Sunrise show.  He asked Michael what the call letters were for his staion.  Michael replied that that he didn't have any, so Mr. Morse explained the "W" and "K" rule.  He asked Michael what his initials were.  Michael responded that his initials were M.T.C.  "Well then," Morse said, "How about WMTC?"  We now had call letters!  Thanks, Mr. Morse!

 

At this point, Michael realized that his transmission was powerful enough that a few of his neighbors could tune in.  He would deliver flyers to their front doorsteps, letting them know when he'd be on air.  At this point in our history WMTC was not on air unless Michael was doing a live show; there was no automation system at this time.

 

The bedroom setup was rough in terms of sound: there was no mixing board and only one turntable.  This meant that DJs couldn't crossfade between songs, nor could they cue up a record in advance.  Also, the "mixer" was a standard Kenwood reciever, the kind found in entertainment systems.  DJs couldn't talk over the intro of records; only one channel could be open at once.  The result was a very rough and unpolished sound.

 

Michael's record collection continued to expand, and he began to aquire more equiptment.  The bedroom that he shared with his brother didn't have adequate space for his studio, so he moved WMTC's studio to its current home in his basement.  Soon after moving to the basement studio, WMTC got a second turntable.  Michael rigged things up so that both turntables could be "hot" at the same time, so that with a little timing, you could overlap and "crossfade" songs.  There was no way to adjust the volume of the turntables seperately, nor was there a way to mute one turntable while the other was playing.  The second turntable helped to "tighten" the sound of WMTC, but without a mixing board, it was still impossible to get a truely "tight" sound.

 

It was finally time to get a mixer for WMTC.  Michael's parents got him a Numark mixer and a set of DJ speakers for his birthday one year, likely in 2013.  That Numark mixing board is still the main mixer of WMTC today!  With the mixer, it was now possible to crossfade between the two turntables, as well as to talk over records.  Now WMTC sounded much more "tight", like a true station.  At this point, things really started to get a little more serious at WMTC! We began using email instead of flyers and we also began to aquire better equiptment.  The Kenwood reciever was removed from the setup, replaced by the Numark mixer.  The Kenwood was now used to run the studio's sound system instead (Replaced with an Optonica in early September 2017).

 

There was, however, still one problem.  That was the transmitter.  We were still using the original transmitter at this point. It had a very small range and poor signal to noise ratio in the bedroom studio, and the move to the basement didn't help things any.  Because of this, Michael decided to try an experiment with the transmitter.  He thought that by increasing the voltage fed to the transmitter, he could increase the transmitter's power, which would increase the station's range.  He ended up frying WMTC's only transmitter.  To make matters worse, the store where he had purchased it was no longer selling transmitters.  WMTC would be permanantly off the air unless another transmitter could be found!

 

At about this time (June or July, 2014), Michael began messing around with coaxial (television) cable.  Upon frying WMTC's transmitter, it was decided to create a TV station instead!  And so WMTC TV was born.  Much of the equiptment from 88.7 WMTC was used to create WMTC TV.  It was a closed circuit system, so it was only accessable through the cable lines inside his home.  The programming was a mixture of music shows (the same thing that had been on 88.7 WMTC), as well as some movies and cartoons.    From early summer, 2014, to November of that year, 88.7 FM was silent.

 

One day in late November of 2014, Crowley stopped to take a look in the electronics section of the store where he'd found his first transmitter.  To his delight, the store was carrying transmitters again!  The new transmitters were of a different brand than of the old one that WMTC had been using, and had much better sound.  The studio was quickly put back together, and WMTC was back on the air at 88.7 FM just in time for the 2014 Christmas season!  The new setup incorperated WMTC TV into the station - the transmitter was placed on the first floor, hooked into a TV, its audio fed from WMTC TV. This greatly improved our on-air range.  The new transmitter also sounded much better than the old one.  Using this setup, we got through the first half of the 2014 Christmas season.  In early December, we strung a wire from the basement studio to the attic, so as to get a much better range.  This wire is still in use today to get audio from the studio to the current transmitter.

 

At this point, Michael decided that it was time to take the station to a 24/7 operation and one day during the 2014 Christmas season, he did just that!  Using a 5 disc Kenwood CD player for source material, WMTC was now on the air 'round the clock!  Michael quickly began to organize a playlist for the station digitally on a small iPod.  This was finished in time for the switch back to our regular format.  We were now officially on air all day every day, and here to stay!  This is when WMTC truely started to become the radio station that it is today!

 

The initial playlist system was simple; it included all of WMTC's digital music selection, placed on an iPod set on random.  This allowed for non-stop music.  What it did not allow, however, was the ability to automatically schedule things to start at a certain time.  When Gilligan's Island was added as a show, the playlist system had to be re-vamped to allow the show to start automatically.  Now, we would create 12 hour long playlists, beginning with Gilligan's island.  A sample of one of these playlists can be found in the column on the right.    This system was plauged with problems, though.  For some reason, the playlist would get ahead, so Gilligan's Island would start at the wrong times.  We never found out what was going on.  There were also several other problems with this playlist system.  We only had a few of these lists, so that meant that the playlists started to become predictable (every few days, the same song would play at the same time).  The other problem was that it was impossible to add new elements into the playlist without a lot of work to keep the playlist exactly 12 hours long.  Michael realized this difficulty, and began looking for an alternate option.

 

We began 2015 on air 24/7, but with such a limited range, we couldn't reach very many listeners.  Michael began looking for a way to stream WMTC live online.  By spring of 2015, he found a program that would allow streaming for one-hour segments.  This program was used to stream live shows only; it would not be used to stream the playlist system.  Now, people anywhere in the world with an internet connection could listen to WMTC!  This software was used for a year or so, until a better program was found during mid-2015.   

 

At this point, we had already had this website up and running for a couple of months, and used it to keep our listeners informed with what was going on here at WMTC!

 

In March of 2015, we got a new transmitter that greatly improved our signal to noise ratio.  It is still in use today!

 

On the week of Easter, 2015, WMTC got its first reel to reel tape recorder, the Teac A-4010SL pictured at right.  Now, we could finally master commercials and other show elements on high quality analog tape.  We could also do on-the-spot recording at different events, with great results! 

 

It was around this time that we started to use our current online streaming software, allowing us to stream live online 24/7.  We'd like to thank the Sugarbush Killington Vermont Farmhouse for sponsoring mobile support for our streaming software!

 

One day in late October, 2015, we got an email from a renowned Pittsburgh radio personality, Jim Merkel.  He offered to do voice imaging for WMTC.  His liners have transformed the stations sound, and have been used since November of 2015! We'd like to thank him for all of his help in making WMTC what it is today!

 

During the 2015 Christmas season, we celebrated one year of continuous broadcasting!  We were still using the playlist system for automation at this time.

 

It was also during the 2015 Christmas season that we finally got some good album shelving!  Now, we could store albums on a shelf instead of leaning up against every table in the room...  You can see pictures of the studio before and after the shelving in the "before and after the shelving" section below...

 

We went into 2016 with a better sound and bigger record collection than ever before!  Early in 2016, Michael finally found the perfect automation system!  He worked hard over two weekends to get things up and running, and constantly maintains the system to keep things running smoothly toady!  With the new automation system, we could easily schedule voiceovers, shows, and commercials.  We could even tell it when to play what songs!  This was a huge improvement to WMTC and made things a lot easier!

 

In spring of 2016, WMTC was featured in the Trib newspaper.  You can see the article here: http://triblive.com/news/neighborhoods/cranberry/10556387-74/michael-radio-station.  We'd like to thank Mr. McElhinny for making the article possible! 

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***More updates coming soon...

 

Be sure to check out the "Sample Audio Clips" section, as well as more pictures of WMTC down below!  We'll continue to add more audio clips as we digitize them (many of them are on cassette tape).

 

Again, we'd like to thank everyone who has made this great station possible.  We couldn't do it without you!