WBT (radio Station) - Broadcasting

Broadcasting

WBT's unusual diamond-shaped antennas (called Blaw-Knox Towers), make up three of only eight still operational in the United States. In the morning hours of September 22, 1989, Hurricane Hugo slammed into Charlotte. The storm severely damaged two of WBT's towers and nearly killed station engineer Bob White. The FCC approved WBT to operate on a full-power non-directional pattern for the next year while the two damaged towers were rebuilt.

• 1989 - WBT's transmitter towers just after Hurricane Hugo

• 2007 - WBT's transmitter just south of Uptown Charlotte, NC

Despite its clear-channel status, WBT's signal is spotty at best in some parts of the Charlotte metropolitan area at night (particularly the western portion) because it must adjust its coverage at sundown to protect co-located KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska. Even though WBT must direct its signal north-south as a result, its nighttime signal still reaches parts of 22 states (including much of the country east of the Mississippi River) as well as portions of Ontario and Quebec. It can also be heard in some Caribbean islands. During the day, it provides grade B coverage as far as the fringes of the Columbia, Upstate and Piedmont Triad areas. Under the right conditions, it can be heard as far east as Fayetteville, North Carolina.

To improve its nighttime coverage in the Charlotte area, WBT first tried a synchronous booster signal in Shelby. Finally, in 1995, then-owner Jefferson-Pilot bought WBZK-FM (which signed on August 30, 1969 and was once called WDZK) in Chester to provide a better signal to the western part of the market at night. WBZK's calls became WBT-FM. The transmitter is located 40 miles southwest of Charlotte. WBT-FM almost always simulcasts its AM sister, although the two have occasionally carried different programming.

For many years, WBT boasted that it could be heard "from Maine to Miami" at night.