BRIDGTON – Shively Labs announces the completion of its new master FM antenna system atop the Conde Nast Building at 4 Times Square in New York City.

The new antenna system doubles the FM station capacity of the Durst Organization site to 21 stations, enough to handle all the FM stations presently broadcasting from the multiple antennas atop the Empire State Building.

This site is also the first major broadcast facility designed from conception to handle both analog and digital broadcasting.

Digital capability is not currently available to most NYC radio stations.

Planning for the new system began shortly after the 9/11 tragedy when it became apparent that additional broadcast capacity was required to replace transmission sites lost at the World Trade Center.

The antenna is the second Shively Model 6016 FM panel antenna to occupy this site and replaces a system installed in 1999.

During the nearly one year that it took to remove the old tower, reinforce the building, and erect the new tower, FM service continued uninterrupted on a Shively Model 6017 Lindenblad antenna.

The antenna is fed from a Shively Labs Model 2540 balanced combiner system.

Currently operating with nine stations, the combiner can be expanded to handle all 21 stations.

The Model 2540 combiner was selected for its “plug and play” ability to be expanded in any frequency order, its compact design, and its ability to be brought on line with no warm up period.

The combiner is designed to accommodate HD Radio implementation using the “back-feed” method, pioneered by Shively Labs, which passes the analog and digital signals through the combiner independently and combines them in the antenna.

Shively Labs, a division of Howell Laboratories, Inc., is located in Bridgton.