Partial Cumulus outage in Mobile

[tomservo]

Looks like Cumulus is doing a little late night maintenance here in the Mobile market. I know it's not unusual for a station to go off air on a Sunday night/Monday morning for a little TLC, but this is the first time I've heard three off at once. 92.9 WBLX, 100.7 WJLQ and 104.1 WDLT are all off.

Nash FM 102.7 WXBM is still on, as is WDLT's HD feed. So if you tune to 104.1 it's static, but then the HD kicks in and the music/programming comes back. Talk about odd. Clear Channel did this a while back with WKSJ and it was weird then, too. Just for the heck of it I made a video and posted it showing the HD sidebands continuing to decode while the analog is off:

http://youtu.be/YwxHOFo4dqo

Probably not related, but WKSJ's HD audio is silent right now, although the analog is running normal.

 

[Poledo]

For some reason I was thinking BLX and WKSJ were diplexed on the same set of 100kw rabbit ears. They must not be if they can shut one off and not the other.
Aren't WJTQ and WDLT sharing one of the antennas at the Wilcox Tower Farm?

BLX, DLT and KSJ are the only "Mobile" stations that broadcast from Robertsdale instead of Spanish Fort?

 

[tomservo]

For some reason I was thinking BLX and WKSJ were diplexed on the same set of 100kw rabbit ears. They must not be if they can shut one off and not the other.
Aren't WJTQ and WDLT sharing one of the antennas at the Wilcox Tower Farm?

BLX, DLT and KSJ are the only "Mobile" stations that broadcast from Robertsdale instead of Spanish Fort?

I know who is on what tower but not whether they use the same antenna or not. I'll list them by HAAT which should clear things up.

WKRG-TV tower:

96.1 - 535m
99.9 - 535m

97.5 - 473m

100.3 - 408m

91.3 - 325m

So it appears that the two iHeart stations are diplexed while WABD is lower down, and the iHeart translator lower still, and WHIL's antenna is the lowest of all.

The Wilcox Road area tower closest to Baldwin Beach Express:

92.9 - 520.5m
94.9 - 520.5m
100.7 - 520.5m

104.1 - 508m

In this case, it looks like iHeart and Cumulus share a diplexed antenna across BLX, JLQ and KSJ. WDLT is the low man on the totem pole now. Before it was re-licensed to Saraland, it was diplexed at the 520.5m mark with the other three stations; before that, it was even higher — 549.9m. That made it the highest antenna in the market plus it was a full 100 kW with beam tilt. Today the height/power crown belongs solely to WMXC.

The Wilcox Road area tower closer to the I-10 exit:

94.1 - 488m
101.5 - 488m
102.7 - 488m
107.3 - 488m

Again, iHeart and Cumulus sharing facilities, with all four on one antenna. It's interesting that all these are Pensacola-licensed and biased and all the others except 100.7 are Mobile-licensed and biased. Makes me wonder if 100.7's upgrade to class C hit a spacing issue forcing it further west.

The remaining stations are all outliers. WPCS is on the WJTC-TV 44 (at 414m) tower which is even further east than the two bigger towers. WYCT is on their own stick (at 299m) north of I-10. WBHY-FM is on their own tower (at 190m) in Spanish Fort, which I think used to be the old WKRG-TV tower? I think that's all the Baldwin County broadcasters. Everyone else is in their respective market town.

As for shutting off transmitters, they're all fed into a combiner so I imagine any one of them can go off as needed without affecting the others.

The only question I have remaining is whether the ones broadcasting in HD also diplex into the same antennas or if they use something else, something lower… Reception from the 96.1/99.9 combo, when they work, is terrible. The others are better with WKSJ being the most rock-solid of them all. I'm 99% convinced they run higher power like WUWF in Gulf Breeze.

 

[tomservo]

More work must be getting done this Sunday morning as well. Right now the following are off: 94.1, 101.5 and 107.3.