Another B bites the Dust: WAYY 790 Eau Claire WI

[joebtsflk1]

Northpine.com reports WAYY has signed on an FM translator at 105.1 and in conjunction, WAYY has filed a CP to go ND at night with 123 watts. This will allow them to drop two of their current three tower array. WAYY will maintain its current 5 kW ND daytime status.

Is WAYY at 5 kW DA-N the largest B signal to drop their night-time coverage and elect D status?

And looking around at other nearby 790s, it would appear that WAYY's decision to drop to D may allow other co-channel stations to modify their night facilities to a less complex array. Case in point: WSGW Saginaw MI, 1 kW night with 6 towers, with a significant null towards Eau Claire. Without the need to protect WAYY, might WSGW be able to use a less complex 2 tower pattern?

 

[Sammi Brie]

Northpine.com reports WAYY has signed on an FM translator at 105.1 and in conjunction, WAYY has filed a CP to go ND at night with 123 watts. This will allow them to drop two of their current three tower array. WAYY will maintain its current 5 kW ND daytime status.

Is WAYY at 5 kW DA-N the largest B signal to drop their night-time coverage and elect D status?

And looking around at other nearby 790s, it would appear that WAYY's decision to drop to D may allow other co-channel stations to modify their night facilities to a less complex array. Case in point: WSGW Saginaw MI, 1 kW night with 6 towers, with a significant null towards Eau Claire. Without the need to protect WAYY, might WSGW be able to use a less complex 2 tower pattern?

KHEP (former KMIK) in Phoenix is to go from 50 kW directional night to 95 watts, though not in conjunction with an FM translator. Instead, one of the towers on their six-tower array fell due to rusted guy anchors. Upon inspection, it was found that the other five towers were likely to suffer the same fate. At the time, KMIK was being sold to Gabrielle Broadcasting, a vehicle of the owner of 1280 AM, so they're going to be diplexed at the 1280 AM site. (The move and call change reunites the KHEP calls, formerly on 1280, and transmitter site with big KHEP letters!)

Instead, they're silent right now.

 

[MarioMania]

So that's the reason KHEP going 95 Watts

There changing Transmitter Locatation?

 

[cyberdad]

Northpine.com reports WAYY has signed on an FM translator at 105.1 and in conjunction, WAYY has filed a CP to go ND at night with 123 watts. This will allow them to drop two of their current three tower array. WAYY will maintain its current 5 kW ND daytime status.

Is WAYY at 5 kW DA-N the largest B signal to drop their night-time coverage and elect D status?

And looking around at other nearby 790s, it would appear that WAYY's decision to drop to D may allow other co-channel stations to modify their night facilities to a less complex array. Case in point: WSGW Saginaw MI, 1 kW night with 6 towers, with a significant null towards Eau Claire. Without the need to protect WAYY, might WSGW be able to use a less complex 2 tower pattern?

Sad, but not surprising what things have come to. One of my first jobs in radio was in Eau Claire at a station that competed with what was then WEAQ/790. Sort of. I say "sort of" because the market was "WEAQ and everybody else". They had the best signal and they locked up the lion's share of the local advertising business. I had a short air shift and sold time. The latter involved fighting with several other stations for crumbs left over from WEAQ buys. The former involved running a low-budget copy of WEAQ's format. (Adult contemporary daytime/top 40 after 6pm).

It wasn't a fun gig, and I didn't hang around for very long. But now it strikes me as ironic that while every other radio facility in town...AM and FM...has expanded/grown/upgraded, the longtime "invincible" has fallen.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

WMMN Fairmont was 5000 watts fulltime and went to something around 200 watts nondirectional at night.

With a complex array like WSGW, they might be able to make the null more shallow toward Midland without any tower location changes. It's worth looking in to.

Translators are a secondary service. I think going to Class D is misguided in most cases. What happens if the translator gets bumped? Really, we need an expanded band, and moving the lesser AM facilities to the new full power FM frequencies, like they did with the expanded band on AM. 250 watts on FM is nowhere near sufficient to replicate 5000 watts on 790.

 

[joebtsflk1]

One of my first obs in radio was at KIRX-KRXL Kirksville MO...in the 80s, KIRX and WAYY-WAXX Eau Claire had common ownership, though I think the percentages between the partners may have been different between the different markets. The GM/partner at KIRX and I didn't get along the greatest, so I was a short-timer there.

Correction:WAYY will maintain B status. I assumed with such low power that WAYY was heading for D. 123 watts into a tower that's 130° tall apparently is efficient enough to get the required field strength to keep B status.

Meanwhile, WAXX continues as the big gun on FM for the area, 100 kW at some 546 meters HAAT.

 

[ftballfan]

One of my first obs in radio was at KIRX-KRXL Kirksville MO...in the 80s, KIRX and WAYY-WAXX Eau Claire had common ownership, though I think the percentages between the partners may have been different between the different markets. The GM/partner at KIRX and I didn't get along the greatest, so I was a short-timer there.

Correction:WAYY will maintain B status. I assumed with such low power that WAYY was heading for D. 123 watts into a tower that's 130° tall apparently is efficient enough to get the required field strength to keep B status.

Meanwhile, WAXX continues as the big gun on FM for the area, 100 kW at some 546 meters HAAT.

WAXX is the only full C on FM (a boatload of C0s and C1s) in the Great Lakes region IIRC

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

One of my first obs in radio was at KIRX-KRXL Kirksville MO...in the 80s, KIRX and WAYY-WAXX Eau Claire had common ownership, though I think the percentages between the partners may have been different between the different markets. The GM/partner at KIRX and I didn't get along the greatest, so I was a short-timer there.

Correction:WAYY will maintain B status. I assumed with such low power that WAYY was heading for D. 123 watts into a tower that's 130° tall apparently is efficient enough to get the required field strength to keep B status.

Meanwhile, WAXX continues as the big gun on FM for the area, 100 kW at some 546 meters HAAT.

Originally, the application was for Class D. The FCC contemplated and/or approved a reduction in Class B efficiency. 130 degrees is not enough for 141 mV/m efficiency, but it is enough for the new minimum. The application was modified to Class B. It's confusing, because it is about the same as isotropic efficiency expressed in mV/m @ 1 mile @ 1 kW, but this is 107.5 mV/m @ 1 km for 250 watts. Not sure that a bunch of super short antennas with high angle skywave is a good idea. It's a recipe for big problems with fading during CH. This appears to have WAYY have its cake and eat it too, because the NIF is still protected. They could just not clip the new smaller contours, and in some cases that might allow upgrades of interfering stations. Former Class III-As, and I'm not sure WAAY was as WEAQ, on low frequencies can have large protected contours. Just because it was 5 kW Night didn't necessarily make it Class III-A. David's Archives would show that though.

 

[joebtsflk1]

Did the former III-A status allow those stations more protection than III-B? I was looking at this map: http://nf8m.com/pattern_maps/2016/NIGHTTIME-UNLIMITED/NIGHTTIME-UNLIMITED_map_790KHz-1.html and some stations get a lot more overlap than others. I'm guessing the more heavily overlapped are the stations that were authorized more recently.

It seems like the northern states have situations where they are covered by multiple co-channel stations that don't interfere with each others' NIF contour, but in the middle overlapping areas between stations is a mighty war zone. One example I remember in Minnesota was 1600. Watertown MN 5 kW night was up against Ripon WI 5 kW night, Cedar Rapids IA 5 kW night, plus 500 watts from Algona IA. All had patterns that sent most of their power towards the north, and had deep nulls to the south. I thought my car radio was going to blow up

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

III-As were "normally protected" to 2.5 mV/m contour. III-Bs were normally protected to the 4.0 mV/m contour. I've seen clipping studies on NIFs exceeding 25 mV/m. The protected contours just get smaller with higher NIF. Back before around 1960 at least, stations could negotiate the overlaps. With groundwaves they usually use measured conductivities now. You still can negotiate the skywaves, but usually you have to pay to upgrade the other station interfered with. Study the WJJD/WYLL 1160 Chicago, IL 50 kW Night application and the related upgrade of WHBY 1150 Kimberly, WI to 20 kW Day and 25 kW Night for the ways that this has been done.

 

[Sammi Brie]

So that's the reason KHEP going 95 Watts

There changing Transmitter Locatation?

To diplex with KXEG 1280.

Their tower array site is probably now fairly valuable land, adjacent to a freeway (but not an interchange) with a couple farm parcels nearby. It wouldn't be a bad site for infill residential or light industrial, though they do not own any of the parcels that front Center Street. (The southernmost piece is city-owned.)

The owner of the parcel, a concern known as Mesa Rose LLC based out of Phoenix, pays $220,000 a year in property taxes to the county, and the county assesses the land's full cash value around $1.3 million. It looks like Gabrielle Broadcasting sold the land for $10 to an attorney.

It's probably very expensive to maintain the five-tower array (which should be 6), and I think Gabrielle Broadcasting (Jacob Barker) found it more expedient to move in with the station he already controls (KXEG, which was a former Communicom station) than replace the whole thing as would be necessary to continue service. Not only that, but then he can reap the profits of a land sale.

 

[cyberdad]

....I'm not sure WAAY was as WEAQ, on low frequencies can have large protected contours. Just because it was 5 kW Night didn't necessarily make it Class III-A. David's Archives would show that though.

WEAQ was definitely a class III-A. WAXX started as a 5kw AM daytimer with COL Chippewa Falls, WI. About 12 miles northwest of Eau Claire. I believe the WAXX call letters migrated to FM sometime around 1970. Then after a few years after that, WAXX (FM) overtook WEAQ as the market leader. Right around that time, the WAYY call letters were introduced for 1150, and the "call letter hopping" under common ownership got underway. WAXX (FM) broadcasts from the NBC TV affilliate's tower (WEAU-TV) and has a monster signal.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The 1968 BC Yearbook does show WEAQ as a Class III-A. But the protected contours are much more limited even if the NIF is quite low.

 

[davideduardo]

The owner of the parcel, a concern known as Mesa Rose LLC based out of Phoenix, pays $220,000 a year in property taxes to the county, and the county assesses the land's full cash value around $1.3 million. It looks like Gabrielle Broadcasting sold the land for $10 to an attorney.

An assessed value of $1.3 million would pay something more like $2000 in taxes, or something under 2% of the cash value, not 20% of that value.

In Maricopa County, the assessed value is 10% of the full cash value. And the tax rate depends a bit on the city the property is in within the county as well as the amounts located for bonds and fees.

So a full cash value of $1.3 million would have an assessed value of $130,000 and the taxes would be the applicable percentage of that amount.

Valuing that land, totally surrounded by a trailer parks and zoned residential with an exception by apparent waiver or grandfathering for the radio station, at $1.3 million seems a bit high, too. It would be surprising if they got more than $600 k for the property.

The assessed value of the property is based on the land and the real property improvements. I've not had any dealings with land with just towers and a transmitter building on it for many years, but the value is the sum of the land and the building and the towers. I'd guess that a significant portion of the assessment is based on the value of the installations. However, Arizona considers towers "personal property" and not added to the real property value like buildings, access roads and such would be so there may be somewhat variable tax bases for a transmitter site.

 

[cyberdad]

The 1968 BC Yearbook does show WEAQ as a Class III-A. But the protected contours are much more limited even if the NIF is quite low.

FWIW, my own experiences as a teenager....

I first became familiar with WEAQ on family fishing trips as a teenager to a spot about 45 miles northwest of Eau Claire. R-L and SC's excellent map link both show a null in the direction of where we stayed. Yet I clearly remember WEAQ with a good signal day and night. It was a little better in the daytime, but still very definitely listenable at night....although sometimes you could hear stuff in the background.

As for 1150, then-WAXX, I said earlier that it began as a 5kw daytimer. More correctly, it was operating as a 5kw daytimer when I first encountered it on those long-ago fishing vacations. For all I know, it may have been operating at a different power when it first signed on. Anyway, by the mid-60s, they were running a top 40 show between 6pm and summer sunset sign off. I remember flipping back and forth between 1150 and Storz' WDGY (Minneapolis). WAXX had the better signal of those two, but as sunset approached, the slop in the background was more noticeable than on WDGY. WDGY had a fairly respectable night signal, but not as good as WEAQ. I've often wondered if WDGY was sending more of their 25kw night signal to the east in those days.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

The modification of the WAYY application for Class B shows how much smaller the protected contour is. It will be interesting to see if other stations modify their "Daytimer" licenses so they are protected from further interference, and if other stations modify their patterns to clip the old protected contours of Class Bs that elected to become "Daytimers". The consultants open up a lot of cans of worms when they do this. These things end up being used against them in other applications. I don't think the stations realize what they might lose in service when they do this. Translators are still secondary services and can potentially be bumped. There needs to be an expanded band allowing new full power FM stations. If the US had rules 40 years ago for contour based FMs for migrations from AM to FM like has been done in Canada in particular, there wouldn't be the need for all the translators. And instead of becoming Daytimers, AM stations could elect to make the footprint of their DA smaller by going to a more compact two tower array with 250 watts or more.

A lot of the stations like the chain of 1130s and 1500s from the East Coast to the Twin Cities have tried to get more power. As I recall, there were applications and plans to make WJBK...WLQV 1500 50000 watts Night, and WISN 1130 to 25000 watts Night, and WDGY 1130 to 30000 watts and possibly 50000 watts Night. I think WCAR...WDFN was always too close to WNEW...WBBR to increase.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Here's the display from the latest WAYY application.

https://licensing.fcc.gov/cdbs/CDBS...?appn=101724853&qnum=5120&copynum=1&exhcnum=2

The NIF for the existing site and the new site, though slightly different, is about 5.8 mV/m. This is consistent with many former Class III-Bs today. Often, the III-As and III-Bs were interfered with by more than one signal, which brought the NIF up to higher levels. I suspect the adjacent channel interference from WBBM is what brought the NIF up in this case. Back in the old days, adjacent channel interference was not considered in the NIF calculation.

 

[cyberdad]

Thanks for the info, SC. I don't know off the top of my head if Eau Claire is considered a metro area, but if we think purely in terms of where the population is, WAYY will be losing a rather significant chunk of that. Oh well....welcome to AM radio in the 21st century!

As for the chain of stations on 1130, I seem to remember that at one point WISN had a CP for 25kw nights, but it never got built. If that's correct (and it certainly may not be), I'm guessing that someone successfully objected.

 

[joebtsflk1]

There needs to be an expanded band allowing new full power FM stations. If the US had rules 40 years ago for contour based FMs for migrations from AM to FM like has been done in Canada in particular, there wouldn't be the need for all the translators. And instead of becoming Daytimers, AM stations could elect to make the footprint of their DA smaller by going to a more compact two tower array with 250 watts or more.

Perhaps after we learn the results of the TV repack auction that enough TV stations have elected to merge operations, such as the Quincy Newspaper/Sinclair moves in Peoria and South Bend (Quincy acquired Sinclair's net affiliations in Peoria; Sinclair acquired Quincy's net affiliations in South Bend) that there will be little or no need for future TV migrations down to low band VHF. Maybe if that occurs, FM might get 82 to 88 MHz. At the very least, the FM band could add 87.5, 87.7 and 87.9 except in those areas with an existing channel 6 TV operation.

Contour protection for 92 to 108 MHz hasn't been received well in the US, but I think it may just be a matter of time before it happens.

And I don't think most AMs value coverage outside of their COLs, so chopping the extra towers for night ops seems a no-brainer. But what might the future bring? Digital operation on AM could become more robust...but who knows?

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Most cities that haven't annexed large areas in the last several decades or consolidated whole counties have as many people who live just outside within a few miles of the city limits as reside in the city. These can be "hidden" in several townships surrounding a city, sometimes in more than one county, and not necessarily in incorporated suburbs. This is apparent if you ever did a population count by hand from census data for an application. Nowadays, people just use a computer program to do population counts, which usually isn't nearly as instructive. Also consider the IBOC interference from WBBM, particularly in the areas with far lower signal strength. If anything, these kinds of changes hasten the decline of AM. I just don't think a secondary service 250 watt Class D translator is the answer for any but the smallest service area, smallest market stations.