That is pretty amazing. I wonder if there were any health impacts from that level of ambient power just buzzing through the air. Still, quite a feat of engineering to think about.It's very common, and becoming more common.
WLW was a special case because it put out so much power it affected homes a fair distance away. But even stations as low as 1,000 watts have to deal with this today.
I worked at close to a dozen different AM stations in a previous life. It's very common for AM transmission towers to be located in flat, moist areas. I'm not an electrical engineer, but from what I remember, flat is preferred so the groundwave signal travels farther, and marshy for electrical reasons.
The problem is that when vast majority of AM stations were built, they transmitters were in the middle of nowhere. Since then, the suburbs have surrounded these facilities with homes, sometimes building houses right up to the property line, and people get interference in their electronics. And they're not happy about it. If they're close enough, everything with a speaker in the house only broadcasts that nearby station. Radios, TV's, even things that don't have "speakers," but are able to pick up the radio waves and resonate.
It's like when people build a house next to an airport, and then complain about all the damn airplane noise.
For reasons I don't understand from an electrical standpoint, it was particularly bad at one 1,000-watt station where I worked in the mid-90's. The General Manager's attitude was along the lines of, "Why would you move next door to a radio station? Didn't you notice the 300-foot-tall red-and-white tower with all the blinking lights out front?" Of course, that's a wholly unsatisfying answer to a new homeowner.
Since I left radio, I've read that there are a number of AM stations that have gone off the air simply because of the angry neighbors. They get the local politicians to pass zoning regulations that end up forcing the AM stations to move their towers, but the stations have nowhere else to go for three reasons: First, because they have to be located within a certain area to fulfill the coverage requirements of their license; second, depending on the station's transmitting characteristics, they may need a pretty large piece of land for multiple towers; and third, because AM radio doesn't make a lot of money, they may not be able to afford new land. So for some, they just go dark.