1300 says bye bye to "Freedom"

[ContinuousWave]

Not sure what happened but today was the last day for the "Freedom" format on 1300 KSET Lumberton/Beaumont....the last show signed off at 5 PM (and hey Darby, you idiot who seems to know everything, AM STEREO does exist...he said it was impossible on AM!!).....but the carrier is still on as of this post at 11PM and no IDs!!! MMMM

The station was under a LMA with owner Bill Hill........wonder if someone else came up with a better offer or the LMA wasn't paid and the station is being taken dark....the LMA happened around a year ago or so...after a failed sale to a local interest (because of the bank loan falling through)...personally I am glad to see the format gone..it was total right wing promoting guns all the time and they even gave away a semi automatic styled like a M16......these folks had nothing better to do I guess....they say they will continue to stream....maybe the cost of running 1300's transmitter was too much....the site is nice but has three towers that were originally screwed up from the beginning...two had to be shortened and one was not high enough...that was nice!! Also the ground system is raised radials....I dont think the system meets radiation minimums....

Anyway, so much for "Freedom 1300".......maybe the next format will be a good one...but given the BPT area, not sure what would work.....KLVI does enough talk for the area already with its carrying Rush, Hannity , etc.....maybe a JACK format would work (it would somewhat fit in their mold as to "playing what we want, when we want"...just say "Jack FM....playing WHERE we want...on AM!"

BTW KLVI showed how much their local news sucks...today, a major outage near the I10/Washington blvd area caused 4 major hotels and the local Golden Corral to be without power for HOURS.....but KLVI NEVER mentioned it in their news breaks.....of course they say "for up to the minute news, go to KLVI dot com" uuuhhh HOW can people go to it with their power out?? THATs what YOU are supposed to do....provide SERVICE....but playing pre-recorded generic news breaks that get repeated over and over seems to be the only service CC cares about..and more layoffs are due from CHEAP Channel......yet, the new CEO spent MILLIONS on his "mist wall" at his new NY office...yeah that makes sense....but not cents!

 

[stan]

Quit listening to the nut jobs on 1300 awhile ago. I feel sorry for Tom Clay as he seems to have been stuck in a poorly run station for some time. They were off for months before this reincarnation as Freedom 1300, supposedly due to Mr. Hill's health. Their transmitter site is a mess, and provides horrible coverage, especially at night. No wonder the station has failed twice. Perhaps John Walton can LMA or buy it to go with his marginal KXXF.

As for the clowns at KLVI, much of their 'local' news after the morning show is over is provided by KTRH staff in Houston. AM radio might as well be dead.

 

[dualux]

Haven't been back to Beaumont in a couple of years but it seems like there must be a missing format in the market that 1300 AM could pick up -- the local stations there sounded terrible and didn't sound that local. I do remember that 1300 sounded pretty clear in Beaumont and mid county at one time. Urban Oldies? Easy Listening? Soft AC? What else?

 

[ContinuousWave]

Quit listening to the nut jobs on 1300 awhile ago. I feel sorry for Tom Clay as he seems to have been stuck in a poorly run station for some time. They were off for months before this reincarnation as Freedom 1300, supposedly due to Mr. Hill's health. Their transmitter site is a mess, and provides horrible coverage, especially at night. No wonder the station has failed twice. Perhaps John Walton can LMA or buy it to go with his marginal KXXF.

As for the clowns at KLVI, much of their 'local' news after the morning show is over is provided by KTRH staff in Houston. AM radio might as well be dead.

I will post comments in reverse because of some rather large links at the end for the 1300 pattern: KLVI uses their local folks like Harold Mann...but thats it...he records something after the morning show and it runs for the rest of the day. I have never heard any KTRH news voices on KLVI....As to 1300, actually, Tom Clay was one of those behind the Freedom 1300 format...He was station manager under the last format....and ws the one who came up with the "win a gun" contest....I understand Lee Melton (who was also the sales guy) is divorced and back at Clear Channel?? He owns one of the bars on Crockett St too....They were off the air not because of Bill Hill's health but because they could not afford to pay staff....the previous run of KSET left several advertisers with their money taken up front and no ads run on the air...the transmitter site is in fairly good condition...(after Charlie from Crockett finished it out after the original engineer in charge of the build screwed it up so bad, he backed out when he realized he was gonna lose money because of his mistakes!)..There was a local attempt to buy 1300 while it was off...but bank financing fell through and Clay and Melton got a LMA done where they were able to put the station back on the air but Hill still owes the screwed advertisers...(Jerry Proctor, a radio broker in Livingston also has his hand in the station...which is why the owner is shown as Proctor-Williams, Inc...but the mailing address is a house in Port Arthur on Avalon....not Silsbee where Hill lives (He owned 101.7 before selling it to Cumulus for couple of million but his wife's cancer wiped all the profit out from that...it wasn't Bill who was ill) Hill's son owns the land the towers are on iirc..either way, the land is paid for....

The site has always done poor coverage...at night, the main lobe toward Beaumont is pulled in for some reason at 270watts...and it throws more signal SW and SE than it does in the daytime at 2KW. It has never covered Port Arthur and MidCounty has been a so so coverage during the day..but 1300 is lucky to get south of Lamar Univ at night..Here are the two patterns: Day: http://fccinfo.com/image.php?ShowPa...69,350,0.44563318626984,355,0.45031890881569,
and the night pattern: http://fccinfo.com/image.php?ShowPa...49,350,0.51305659062287,355,0.52377535490624,

 

[stan]

I think 1300 attempted to appeal to the fringe listener during this last incarnation although Alex Jones is always entertaining in a weird way.

With its poor signal coverage I don't know who would want to invest in it without a FM translator for improved coverage.

 

[ContinuousWave]

One day, I made the mistake of tuning across with Alex Jones on....he was ranting about some "doomsday" 747 buzzing downtown Austin....so I called a friend at KVET (also on 1300) in Austin..NOPE, NO 747s over town...(though there was a couple of T-38 trainer jets doing a photo shot and all the local media had been notified a week earlier) So much for Jones and his looney-toon notions!!

I think they would have done better with a Classic Oldies format...with Jim Zippo now back on mornings with Cumulus' Good Time Oldies format, that would be a good choice to run...and upgrade to CQUAM on the transmitter, though they could no longer use a mono Comrex or TieLine dialup for the STL....I still cannot figure out WHAT they are protecting at night that requires KSET to pull the pattern in from the South....at 270 watts into the array (which makes them about 500watts ERP if I read the information on the FCC database correctly; daytime only one tower really radiates at ~4KW...the other two feed back into the phasor), they cannot be hurting anyone to the south...in fact, to the west is KXYZ 1320 which they have to "protect" and to the east is 1310 in Sulphur though it is a Class D and must accept interference from a Class B that KSET is...but to the south there is NOTHING close before getting to the Gulf of Mexico....may have to go back through their original applications to see what they are "protecting".

 

[stan]

Is like to know what they think they could get if they sold the station. I would expect it to be a fraction of the price KXXF sold for. A very small fraction.

If it were me, I'd put on classic oldies. I think there would be a niche for older listeners that could be met by even an AM station.

 

[dualux]

CW, I'm no AM radio engineering expert, but according to the KSET application from 2009 that's on the FCC website, KSET's 270 watts and weird night pattern looks like it's to protect a station in Guatemala.

The night time KSET skywave even at 270 watts covers most of the Gulf of Mexico according to a map on the application and stops short of interfering with the much smaller Guatemala 1300's skywave. Seems odd to me.

 

[stevenNOLA]

Looking at the nulls, it appears they are protecting KIVY 1290 Crockett, TX & KJEF 1290 Jennings, LA with the southern area being the non-directional part of the signal. Maybe the low wattage to protect the Guatemalan station?

 

[Mediafrog+]

The KSET night pattern appears to fan fairly widely to the south, and there are no Guatemalan stations on 1300. Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica have some on 1300, but are not "protected." Lots of Mexican stations on 1300 as well. The nulls in the KSET pattern protect other U.S. stations, such as KVET in Austin, and possibly also XEP in Ciudad Juarez.

 

[ContinuousWave]

The KSET night pattern appears to fan fairly widely to the south, and there are no Guatemalan stations on 1300. Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica have some on 1300, but are not "protected." Lots of Mexican stations on 1300 as well. The nulls in the KSET pattern protect other U.S. stations, such as KVET in Austin, and possibly also XEP in Ciudad Juarez.

Yes, KVET is being protected by KSET day and nite As to the 1290s, the night pattern would seem to throw MORE signal toward KJEF....sure does not explain the "boomerang" (thought of another term but this is a family site ) pattern at night....IF they had the day pattern at night, it might actually be heard further south...Evidently some one finally shut down the transmitter Monday after running all weekend at DAY power (I checked signal strength at night with an attenuator...with the 10db pad inline, they had the same signal as they did during the day! With the weird pattern at night, no way I should have been able to hear it)...I need to go read their application for the Lumberton relocation....Maybe the weird throw to the east was to guarantee city grade coverage at night since the site is on the SW side of Lumberton proper..OR maybe I might call Charlie in Crockett and see what he says. Have not heard any news on them shutting down like the last time they did (when the studios were off Eastex Freeway)...so the mystery remains...

 

[stan]

Weren't their studios still in the same location? If not, where were they?

 

[dualux]

To follow up on Mediafrog's post: The KSET application does mention protecting station TGLT in Guatemala...scroll down to the last page (pg 48) of the application located at https://licensing.fcc.gov/cdbs/CDBS...?appn=101344010&qnum=5120&copynum=1&exhcnum=3

Guatemala is also mentioned in the narrative Engineering Statement in Attachment 13.

But the only radio station call sign TGLT that I find on the web actually broadcasts at 4780khz. As stated by Mediafrog, there are no 1300's in Guatemala. If TGLT is not a factor, looks like they could push a little more night power south toward mid-county and Port Arthur while still protecting KVET, KJEF etc.

 

[davideduardo]

CW, I'm no AM radio engineering expert, but according to the KSET application from 2009 that's on the FCC website, KSET's 270 watts and weird night pattern looks like it's to protect a station in Guatemala..

Why would a US station be protecting a station in Guatemala? I do not believe that there is any reciprocal treaty with Guatemala, which has some significant signals even on US clear channels, starting with TGZ, the government station, on 640.

Guatemala was never part of NARBA, either.

Obviously, there is a reason why the non-existent Guatemalan is mentioned in the application, but it seems odd to protect stations in countries that have very lax regulation and which do not protect US stations.

 

[ContinuousWave]

Oddly enough, the FCC database DOES show TGLT as active on 1300 with 50KW day and 10KW night AND is shown as a Class A!! If they are not on 1300 (and this would not be the 1st screw up in the FCC DB), then KSET could file to change pattern and increase night power....Any sky wave interference would happen over international waters anyway...As long as the FCC thinks TGLT is real (and is notified by Guatemala that it does exist!), they would fight an uphill battle...but something is wrong.

 

[ContinuousWave]

The "Freedom 1300" studios are (well, were?) on 18th street behind Casa Ole just off I10.....the original 1300 studios were in the "Texecutive Plaza" on north Eastex just south of Target....they were locked out of the old studios because they didnt make their payments....I think that suite still is full of equipment (though their control board was not a real console but a consumer grade audio mixer)..

 

[davideduardo]

Oddly enough, the FCC database DOES show TGLT as active on 1300 with 50KW day and 10KW night A

I live for the day when any station in Central America reduces power at night to avoid interference with any station in any other country.

 

[Mediafrog+]

The 1300 Guatemalan in the FCC database is probably a phantom listing. Nothing there in recent World Radio TV Handbooks. Will have to dig into my older editions to find any earlier Guatemalans on 1300.

The "TGLT" mentioned earlier is most likely TGCT, which was indeed on 4780 kHz but but has not been heard in several years, presumably gone for good.

There is a lot of ridiculously outdated and outright wrong international station info floating around.

 

[davideduardo]

There is a lot of ridiculously outdated and outright wrong international station info floating around.

The FCC has quite a bit of trouble understanding station operations outside of the immediate North American zone. They have never understood that, for example, Honduras will license high powered stations on channels used in El Salvador and Guatemala and, further, not care about any interference.

When i owned stations in Ecuador some years ago, I got a letter from the FCC saying that my HCFV1 was operating "off channel" on 805 kHz and telling me to fix it as it was interfering with WGY in Schenectady, NY.

In fact, HCFV was licensed to operate on 805 kHz by the government of Ecuador, so I took the letter to the Ministry of Communications and asked them what they thought. The letter immediately went to the equivalent of the Secretary of State, who lodged a formal complaint with the U.S. Ambassador in Ecuador for "attempting to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation".

We continued to operate on 805 quite peacefully.

As I said, the FCC is pretty much clueless on how to deal with foreign stations and the regulations of other nations.

 

[ContinuousWave]

David, I agree with the FCC and their lack of grasping the concept of other countries AM operations....with the Cubans and Mexican station running superpower stations and not caring about the treaties, etc, you THINK the FCC would catch on by now......well you WOULD think....but we are talking the FCC

I listened to 1300 tonight...heard an ESPN affil on it above the noise...but that was it...other signals were buried in the noise floor...Probably was Tulsa's KAKC as their nite pattern points toward SE Texas...Surprised KVET out of Austin was not in the mix since they do are closer and throw a major lobe toward "Lumberton"...but all I heard was ESPN promos...nothing mentioning the "Zone" moniker that KVET uses.