Communications tower in Wisconsin, US
The
WITI TV Tower
is a
lattice
communications tower
located in
Shorewood, Wisconsin
, which transmits the signal of several
television
and
radio stations
in the
Milwaukee
area, including its namesake,
Fox
owned-and-operated
station
WITI
(channel 6), along with
cellular
and
wireless
communications. The structure is owned by WITI's parent company,
Fox Television Stations
. The 1,081 feet (329 m) tower
[1]
built in 1962 was for many years the tallest free-standing tower in the United States until the
Stratosphere Tower
was built in 1996. It remains the tallest lattice tower in the country and the tallest 3-side
lattice tower
in the world.
History
[
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]
View of the tower from its base
The tower was built after FCC relaxed earlier tight guidelines on station co-location as the various characteristics of the signal ranges for
VHF
television and
FM
signals were shown in everyday consumer use.
In 1956, WITI came to the air as an
independent station
, but had to deal with interference issues with two other channel 6 stations in adjacent states while trying to come on the air. The most obvious issue involved
WJIM-TV
in
Lansing, Michigan
. Television stations in
western
and
central Michigan
are subject to
tropospheric propagation
, along with the flat waters of
Lake Michigan
effectively allowing the western signal radius of those stations to be amplified across the lake and into the communities along the lake's western shore in eastern Wisconsin and Illinois (and vice versa those stations into Michigan), causing interference between the two stations that did not exist with the market's other stations.
WTMJ-TV
broadcast on channel 4, with the nearest adjacent channel 4 being
WWJ-TV
in
Detroit
, while
WISN-TV
's channel 12 was unfettered for two more years before
Flint, Michigan
's
WJRT-TV
came on the air. The FCC also cited that
WOC-TV
of
Davenport, Iowa
had some interference from WITI in small portions of their own market area (another station in the
Quad Cities
region,
WHBF-TV
, also broadcast on channel 4, which later forced a shift in Chicago and Milwaukee's channel plans in 1953 due to Chicago's channel 4 causing havoc with several adjacent markets, including the Quad Cities and
Kalamazoo, Michigan
; this included WTMJ-TV moving from channel 3 to channel 4, and Chicago's channel 4 to shift over to channel 2, today's
WBBM-TV
).
As such, WITI thus launched being
licensed
to the North Shore suburb of
Whitefish Bay
, with a tower located in
Ozaukee County
in the then-
Town of Mequon
to address the Lansing and Davenport interference issues. This proved disadvantageous to WITI because viewers in the area had to aim their antennas more northward or northeastward to receive WITI, where the city's other stations were centrally located north of downtown. In 1958, WITI would be purchased by
Storer Broadcasting
and would acquire the market's
CBS
affiliation in 1959, then switched to
ABC
in 1961, with that affiliate switch partially due to
WISN-TV
(channel 12)'s more central signal. The station would continue to campaign the FCC to relocate its city of license to Milwaukee, along with its transmitter site, and finally was successful in doing so in 1962. However, the appropriate area to build the tower was Milwaukee's north side (as the south side's
Mitchell International Airport
prevented any location of broadcast towers in that area), and with most of the prime in-city sites already taken by other radio and television stations, WITI would instead be required to locate the tower in a nearby suburb just outside the Milwaukee city limits.
The village of Shorewood allowed WITI to build the tower on a piece of privately owned land that otherwise would have completed the Estabrook Parkway along the
Milwaukee River
, which would increase the village's
property tax
base (though the road was eventually completed through the tower property). The
WTMJ-TV
/
FM
tower was directly across the river to the west behind
The Milwaukee Journal
'
s "Radio City" studios for the WTMJ stations, with the
WISN-TV
/
FM
tower 2.15 miles (3.46 km) northwest in
Lincoln Park
(
Weigel Broadcasting
's
WDJT-TV
would build their own Lincoln Park tower in 1999), along with the eventual
WVTV
(channel 18) tower nearby (that station, along with WDJT and
WMKE-LP
, all originally utilized a transmitter tower atop the
Hilton Milwaukee City Center
downtown), and locating the tower there meant that viewers throughout the Milwaukee market could point their
antennae
in the same general direction.
An issue with the tower's location is that the west side of the property is along the
Milwaukee River
, within
Estabrook Park
. As
guy wires
could not be placed on the parkland or into the river, the structure would have to be free-standing by design. The Bentley Company was the
contractor
building the tower's foundation, with
Dresser
Ideco constructing the actual structure, and Seago Construction Co. erecting the tower. Consistent with Storer's exterior studio and transmitter architecture standards, the transmitter building itself is of faux-
Georgian architecture
design.
In August 1962, construction of the 1,081 feet (329 m) tower was completed. It was formally dedicated on October 9, 1962. Storer looked for a way to make the tower a Milwaukee landmark, and in October 1963, the station received permission from the Shorewood village board to install additional non-
navigational lights
on the structure. Shortly thereafter, approximately 2,000 lights, each light 25
watts
, were installed. Station manager Roger LeGrand then coined the phrase "Milwaukee's Tower of Light". Some neighbors objected. The Shorewood village attorney opined that a lighted "6" sign (rendered in the
Eurostile
font used by the station from 1962 until 1973, then again from 1998 until 2002) might violate the village's lighted sign ordinance, but that the lights affixed to the tower's legs were legal. The village later declared the lights and the sign to be legal. Except for special requests ? such as to aid
navigation
on
Lake Michigan
during
sailing
races ? the tower was only lit from local sunset until midnight.
The lights stayed on until the
energy crisis of 1973-74
, when a viewer suggestion permanently darkened the lighting, though the maintenance costs of the lighting were already high due to winter and spring
atmospheric icing
which would rain higher-up
icicles
onto the lighting, constantly breaking bulbs (the icing also occasionally requires the area around the tower to be closed for safety reasons). The strands remained dormant upon the tower legs until 2003, when they, along with the giant "6" sign, were removed as the station fitted the tower for
digital
broadcasting.
[2]
Outside WITI, the city's
public broadcasting
and
religious broadcasters
have an extensive history with the structure.
Milwaukee Public Television
leased space on the tower for
WMVS
(channel 10) and
WMVT
(channel 36) until a move to
WVTV
's tower in 1981 (with all three stations, and
WCGV-TV
(channel 24) moving to the nearby digital-ready Milwaukee PBS Tower in 1999, which does have guy wires over the Milwaukee River terminating on the river's east bank).
WYMS
(88.9) and
WUWM
(89.7) have been long-term tenants of the tower dating to the 1970s, along with
Family Radio
's
WMWK
(88.1) coming online in the early 1990s.
Ion Television
's
Kenosha
-licensed
WPXE-TV
(channel 55) would begin to transmit from the tower in the late 2000s to centralize their digital signal.
WVCY-TV
(channel 30) became another tenant of the tower in 2018 as part of a channel sharing agreement using WITI's existing spectrum (which was relocated to digital channel 31 in fall 2019, requiring new transmitter work that year). In November 2019, W269DL (101.7), a translator of
WGKB
(1510), began to also transmit from the tower.
The Tower is located off of the Oak Leaf Trail, just north of Capitol Drive in Shorewood, Wisconsin (north of the city of Milwaukee).
Tower tenants
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Television
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FM radio
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See also
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References
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External links
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