In the foreground are three towers standing on nineteen acres in Charlotte’s south side. They transmit the signal of WBT/1110 AM, a 50,000-watt giant, with a signal that stretches from Canada to Cuba at night:
WBT was born 104 years ago and is about to die, because the land under its towers is worth more than the signal. The property is for sale, pitched as a site for apartments or townhouses. The broker does not publish an asking price.
As of today, programming consists of nonstop music interrupted by requests that listeners tune instead to the station’s FM signal on 107.9
I think Charlotte should buy the WBT property and its towers—or find the persons and/or foundations that will, and make the WBT site a Museum of Broadcasting and the Antenna Age.
Broadcasting shaped civilization for the century before we all turned digital. Nothing has both enabled and symbolized broadcasting more than antennas: towers for AM, FM, and TV, and metal whips and stubs on the receiving end.
AM transmits using whole towers, and the most historic of those are the Blaw-Knox diamond design, emblematic of the art deco age. Only eight still stand. Three of them are WBT’s. Built in 1934, here is how they looked when I shot them on a flight out of Charlotte in 1985:
Two of those towers were destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989—
—and replaced with identical ones, because the design was so attractive and iconic.
The transmitter building is also legendary, having served as a Cold War bunker, among other purposes. From a 2013 report by WFAE, Charlotte’s public radio station:
In fact, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, WBT was beaming pro-American propaganda to Cuba with a program called “Radio Liberty.”
WBT Chief Engineer Jerry Dowd has preserved that original bomb shelter with the care of a museum curator. He keeps a picture from 1963 on hand to prove it. With that photo in hand, we head downstairs into a chilly basement with government-issue green walls.
“As you can tell, not a lot has changed,” he chuckles. “The clock has stopped.”
Literally. At just after 6 – a.m. or p.m.? Would it even matter if an atomic bomb went off?
Everything else still works. And the emergency supplies to keep some poor engineer alive and broadcasting for up to 60 days are still here, too.
“We have a leftover can of survival crackers that were date coded from April 1963,” says Dowd, with a gesture to the can. “We had drinking water. The most important thing we had was the sanitation kit.”
He picks up a cardboard bucket with a plastic donut-like lid: “It’s a porta-potty.”
And there are giant turntables poised to broadcast the most natural of things for the end-of-times.
With a photo:
I’ll bet that stuff is still there, museum-ready.
Yes, there are good broadcast museums out there. This one could be much bigger, better, more broadly focused, and more fun. To compare—
| Place | What it preserves | What WBT could add |
|---|---|---|
| National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting, Ohio | An original shortwave relay-station building and transmitter, dedicated only to American shortwave, with no towers. | An intact antenna field, with historic towers. |
| WLW transmitter plant, Ohio | A historic high-power AM plant and Blaw-Knox tower, but not yet a museum. | A museum designed for public access, education, and celebration of a great age |
| Armstrong Tower facility, New Jersey | Armstrong’s FM laboratory and tower | The broader story of AM, FM, and television broadcasting |
| Texas Broadcast Museum | An extensive collection of broadcast equipment | Land and infrastructure on which broadcasting history happened |
A museum at WBT could begin with Charlotte’s own history and grow outward to encompass all of AM, FM, and TV broadcasting. The original building could explain (and perhaps demonstrate, if it keeps the signal going) WBT and high-power AM. Its emergency facilities could tell the Cold War story. As other stations retire equipment, the museum could give some of it a home.
The whole thing could (and should!) be interactive: the kind of place kids and scholars of all ages won’t want to leave. Models include St. Louis’ Industrial & Heritage Museums, Minneapolis’ Mill City Museum, Pittsburgh’s Steel Museum, Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, Los Angeles’ new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Detroit’s Motown Museum, Boston’s Museum of Science, among others.
We’re talking here about a destination museum. Let’s give people a reason for coming to Charlotte that isn’t business meetings or ball games.
The towers would be the biggest and most obvious attraction, but there is room enough in nineteen acres for a park where kids can run around and everyone can appreciate why broadcast radio needed so much room. And for parking!
Charlotte’s N2-B district allows multifamily housing. A museum would be classified as a cultural facility and require a change in the property’s permitted uses. A buyer could ask for a conditional rezoning that spells out the museum, park, parking, educational work, and preservation work. Since this would be a major Charlotte Thing, that shouldn’t be hard.
The main challenge is finding funding for purchase and development. My own guess is that the property would go for a few million dollars. There are countless pockets and purses much deeper than that, in the pants of people and institutions that value history and like to preserve legacies before they are lost forever.
Charlotte has long been one of America’s top banking centers. There also isn’t a shortage of civic-minded philanthropies: Foundation for the Carolinas, The Leon Levine Foundation, the Arts & Science Council, Duke Energy Foundation. Foundation For The Carolinas seems most relevant to me. Its Inspiring Places (see the home page) should include the new Broadcasting Museum.
Charlotte can build another apartment complex anywhere. Here it can stand up something found nowhere else: a museum where people can experience the scale and importance of broadcasting, the dedication of its pioneers and workers—and the fun one can have understanding it—before it falls into digital dust.
The time to do this is now. Towers are falling everywhere. (WMAL in Washington. WKIX in Raleigh. WECT-TV in Wilmington-Fayetteville. WMVP in Chicago. WMID in Atlanic City. KHJ in Los Angeles. WKRG-TV in Mobile. And yesterday, WSLC in Roanoke. Among countless others.) WBT’s towers, alone among all of those, are museum-quality treasures, truly worth saving. But the opportunity is so much bigger than that. Take it, Charlotte.
Leave a Reply