Washington D.C. Towers Highlighted


If you're in the Washington, D.C. area and exit the Tenleytown Metro station there, it's hard to miss the broadcasting towers clustered in the area. The reason is that it's one of the highest points in the District of Columbia—almost 400 feet above sea level.

David Rotenstein, in Tenleytown's Cold War radio history: Western Union tower does an excellent job describing the history of the location of "some of the region's most significant and contested radio architecture and engineering structures."

Recently Tenleytown Heritage Trail signs were installed in the neighborhood featuring the neighborhood's radio history resources.

And battles over tower sites are nothing new.

Rotenstein writes, "With the proliferation of towers and antennas came complaints that towers adversely affect scenic and cultural resources while also reducing property values and interfering with existing radio and later television reception."

He cites a tower complaint appearing in a 1944 issue of the Washington Post, when NBC proposed building a 250-foot tower in a suburb of Washington, Fairfax County.

Anyone who works at one of the many TV and radio stations in the area will find the history and pictures fascinating, as will anyone with an interest in the history of broadcasting and communications.

Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack.
A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.