WOSS-FM Ossining, NY 1973

I had the great privilege to work at Ossining High School's Radio Station WOSS-FM during the '73-'74 School year. The station was housed in a small one room studio in the corner of the Shop Class. The transmitter was housed in the top floor with a small antenna on the roof. Power was only 10 watts. Martha Quinn of MTV fame went to the school at the time, and she was involved in a Fund Raiser for the station, but I don't believe that she ever worked at the station. After that school year, my father changed jobs and I was to be radioless until I enrolled at C.W. Post Center /Long Island University in 1977.

From Left to right: Sports reporting, Deidre (?) reading the news.

Jeff Davidson at the controls with his "Gold but not gone" Oldie Show.

From Scott Fybush's North East RadioWatch: March 26, 1998 Edition

"In NEW YORK, we bid farewell to one noncommercial station. WOSS (91.1) in Ossining has returned its license to the FCC. No word on why the school-owned station is calling it quits."

Information from Mark Sophos, Director of WDFH (who now occupies 90.3) in February of 1998:

When we filed our FCC application for 90.3 in 1984, WOSS had already vacated it in favor of 91.1. I believe they made the move a year or more before our application was filed. My understanding is that they at one point wanted to increase power to 100 watts and their consulting engineer told them that this would not be possible on 90.3 but that there was a
chance on 91.1, and that's why they made the move. Once they moved to 91.1, money was apparently earmarked for the upgrade, but the part of the school where the original studios were located was condemned and the money
for the upgrade had to be spent on relocating the studios to the second floor of the main part of the school building. So the upgrade never happened.
Some time later our consulting engineer identified the vacant 90.3 as something holding a possibility for us (I had been trying to get a new noncommercial FM station in Westchester for over 11 years by that time), so we filed the application in 1984 and it sat in Washington until 1992, when it was granted.

1974 Ossining High School Yearbook Photo - Courtesy of the Ossining Public Library

Please Pass along any information and photos you may have of WOSS-FM. Send to Webmaster WCWP.NET

return to: VanTassell.net     go to: WCWP.NET