WMMM adds FM station to dial

FM radio was still pretty new in these days. WMMM investigated and obtained a license from the Federal Communications Commission to add an FM channel to the current station's facility.

In the early postwar WWII years, WELI-AM (960 KHz in New Haven) put an FM station on the air at 107.9 MHz. This station was issued the call letters WEMI. It later had its call sign changed to WELI-FM shortly before the owners would abandon their attempts at an FM operation. This left that frequency available in the area.

The 107.9 MHz frequency assignment was issued for the new sister station of WMMM. Saturday, September 1, 1962 would mark the first sign-on for WMMM-FM. The station broadcast the same programming as WMMM-AM, which was referred to as simulcasting. The FM transmitter was an RCA BTF 1D with an effective radiated power of 5,200 watts. The FM antenna was attached to one of the radiating towers at the AM transmitting site on Willard Road in Norwalk. The FM antenna was approximately 79 feet above the average terrain.

Electronics weren't as stable and reliable back them as they are today. An interesting story heard from a former station staffer happened about a year or so after WMMM-FM signed on. The FM oscillator (which helps create the broadcast signal inside the transmitter) decoupled from the automatic frequency control circuit (this keeps the station on its assigned frequency of 107.9 MHz). The station's signal began to drift down the dial away from 107.9 MHz, eventually winding up on 102.9 MHz. Apparently the transmitter suffered from some sort of component failure as the AFC lock displayed on the built-in RCA scope "... went nuts".