Poor Mountain - Communications Hub

Communications Hub

Poor Mountain is the location of several broadcasting antennas for radio and television stations in the Roanoke, Virginia-Lynchburg, Virginia Designated Market Area (DMA). On the apex of the mountain in what's referred to as an "antenna farm" are the broadcasting antennas on towers for radio stations WVTF(FM) 89.1, licensed to the Virginia Tech Foundation, Inc.; W220BD 91.9, licensed to Family Radio; and three radio stations licenced to Mel Wheeler, Incorporated, WXLK(FM) 92.3; WSLC-FM 94.9; and WSLQ(FM) 99.1. Digital television stations located in the antenna farm are WBRA-TV 3 (PSIP Channel 15), WDBJ-TV 18 (PSIP Channel 7), WSLS-TV 30 (PSIP Channel 10), WFXR-TV 17 (PSIP Channel 27), WPXR-TV 36 (PSIP Channel 38), and WEDD-LP 54. All of these stations are licensed to Roanoke. Other telecommunication antennas and towers for local, county, state and national public service, are also located on Poor Mountain, and their flashing Federal Aviation Authority tower lights can be seen from dozens of miles away, especially at night.

The antennas for the other primary digital TV stations in the Roanoake DMA, WSET-TV 13 (PSIP Channel 13) and WWCW 20 (PSIP Channel 21) are located on towers on Thaxton Mountain, halfway between Lynchburg and Roanoke. Prior to the 2009 digital TV transition, WSET could not locate on Poor Mountain because of an inability to provide analog "city-grade" coverage of Lynchburg from that site, in addition to short-spacing concerns with WOWK-TV in Huntington, West Virginia.

The Poor Mountain broadcast antenna farm is a good example of radio and TV stations, co-locating their broadcast towers near each other on the highest point near their Federal Communications Commission (FCC) city of license. The nearest "antenna farm" to Poor Mountain is on Holston Mountain in upper East Tennessee, home to most of the FM and TV stations in the Tri-Cities (Bristol, Virginia-Kingsport, Tennessee-Johnson City, Tennessee) DMA. Although most radio and TV stations are in fierce competition with each other in their broadcast markets, they will often locate their broadcasting antennas very near each other, and in some cases, will even share land or towers with each other, in the interests of space, land availability, and the cost of putting a transmission building on top of a mountain. Other examples of co-located towers on mountain peaks in the United States are on Signal Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee; Sharp's Ridge in Knoxville, Tennessee; Red Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama; Mount Wilson near Los Angeles; the Sutro Tower in Clarendon Heights near Mount Sutro in San Francisco; Lookout Mountain, Colorado near Denver; Cedar Hill between Dallas and Fort Worth; South Mountain Park near Phoenix; Nelson Peak near Salt Lake City; Sandia Crest near Albuquerque, New Mexico; and probably the most famous broadcast antenna farm of all: the World Trade Center Tower One, on which many of the New York City television and several FM stations had their antennas. All were lost when Twin Towers One and Two collapsed after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Most of those stations now broadcast from their previous home, 200 feet lower, on the Empire State Building.