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Denny Heindl is an interesting man. Born and raised in the small north-central Pennsylvania town of Ridgway, he has spent his entire life there. After his first radio job, a sales position working for the legendary Cary Simpson at WKBI in the early '60s, he left the industry and spent many years building a successful powdered metals company. Shortly thereafter, he purchased his own station and gave it the call sign WLMI - named after his business, Laurel Manufacturing Inc. He eventually sold WLMI to concentrate on his other business ventures. But, proving that once radio gets into your blood, it never leaves, he couldn't resist an opportunity to purchase the station near his home, WDDH - The Hound - a flamethrower serving 18 counties in Pennsylvania and Southern New York.
This is Heindl's second stint at ownership of this particular facility. His company, Laurel Media, had owned the station from 2001 to 2004. Itching to get back into the business, Heindl made a play for the station once again and is now running the show at WDDH. He is a minority owner of a Major League Baseball team and a local philanthropist. He is active in the day-to-day operation of the facility and hosts a Sunday public affairs program, the award-winning "Talk of the Town" show.
Aging Facilities
WDDH (95-7 The Hound) is a Class-B FM, licensed to St. Marys, PA. Originally built in 1986 as WKYN, the facility was wheezing along with aging analog consoles that needed constant repair and dated handmade chipboard and plywood furniture. The ceilings were full of hundreds of feet of unlabeled cabling of all types, and some of the building's electrical wiring was outdated and overly complex.
Another physical plant problem was lightning damage. The WDDH STL antenna is co-located with a cellular carrier on a tower across an empty field approximately 200 yards behind the studio building. Using a Modulation Sciences Composite Line Driver set, composite audio was fed to the studio to transmitter link through twinaxial cable encased in buried PVC conduit. The C-band satellite dish was at the base of this tower, with a long run of RG-6 though this same conduit back to the studio. This setup proved to be rather troublesome during thunderstorm...