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AM Frequency of the week: 1390

cyberdad

cyberdad

Far northwest suburban Chicago....

Days: WGRB, Chicago. 5kw aimed mostly north from a south side tx location. The result here is a fair daytime signal (at best)

Nights: WGRB stays at 5kw, but the pattern tightens. WGRB is usally on top of the mess here, but only barely. For all intents and purposes, WGRB is audible but unlistenable. The other stations in the mix are unlistenable, but I have picked out WNIO Youngstown, OH a few times (ex-WFMJ).

Other Loccation/Retro: WGRB sounds great in northeast Wisconsin at night. It used to sound great (going back to its predecessor WYNR days) all over the northern half of that state at night until WRIG in Wausau moved over from 1400 and went to 9kw days and 7.2kw nights. I've never heard WRIG here, but I've never really tried for it.

As WYNR, the Chicago 1390 was Gordon MacLendon's attempt at going after WLS with an inferior signal in 1962. Actually, I think the plan was to launch as top 40 and then morph into an R&B top 40 station. Whatever, it didn't work, and the next phase was a pioneering all-news format as WNUS, Which was also simulcast on 107.5 fm. That didn't end well either, but the "news wheel" format lives on as the template for all news radio,

As WYNR, the signal was pretty much same as now at/near my location, but with the channel less crowded, it was listenable 24/7.
 
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Near north Chicago suburbs it's WGRB with a decent day & night signal.
Retro: Back in the WGES,WYNR, WNUS days the signal seemed a bit better because of less noise all around us.
 
"1390's got a lot of power, that's because of the water tower".

East Tennessee (Knoxville-Sevierville area) daytime: WYXI, Athens TN
Sunset and sometimes winter daytime skip: I may have mentioned that at times in the winter we seem to have a pipeline to Northeast Ohio. That has made WNIO a frequent visitor. Also, I've caught WMPO, Middleport-Pomeroy, Ohio---there buddy.

Retro/other: Looking at patterns, there is literally no way I would have ever received WCSC (now WSPO), in Western Ohio and Indiana, but I did. It was a nightime regular (not regular listening level, but there and identifiable during its top 40 days).

In that Western Ohio town, WTOO (now WBLL) was weak but there in the daytime. Besides WCSC, WVON, Chicago was in the mix.

Indiana: WVON/WGCI was in at times. Had it almost local-sounding in Logansport once. In the Dusty 1390 era, I could catch them weakly with interference in Lafayette.
 
"Dusty Radio 1390". (WVON) When I worked out of an office in downtown Chicago, I put a radio near the (south-facing) window and had it on all day. The signal was every bit as good as the blowtorches.
 
cyberdad said:
"Dusty Radio 1390". (WVON) When I worked out of an office in downtown Chicago, I put a radio near the (south-facing) window and had it on all day. The signal was every bit as good as the blowtorches.
Click to expand...

"Dusty Radio 1390" was a very good station. I was a regular listener. The closest thing I can find to it now is "Soul Town" on Sirius/XM channel 49.
 
1390 in my area is Charleston, as probably the 2nd or 3rd best AM signal in the market currently. 1390 adequately serves the area daytime, and points their signal toward the most populated part of the area at night. It misses a lot of the populated areas now though, such as Summerville.

1390 is WSPO now, and is a gospel station. It has a FM translator at 100.1. It switched back to gospel from a tourist information wheel, which it was for several years. Before that, it was sports, both local and Fox Sports (a format it was in the early 90s). It was gospel in the late 90s and early 2000s, after it had simulcasted a FM country station for a little bit.

It’s had an interesting history in the 30 years or so since it flipped from WCSC.
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL in the near NW suburb of Chicago:

Daytime: WGRB
Nightime: WGRB with average signal, but still over anybody else

DX/RETRO: Only two stations logged with WRGB (WVON, WGCI) on the air and nulled. KJPW (Waynsville, MO), WFMJ (Younstown, OH). All others heard with WGRB off: KLNT (Clinton, IA), WFBL (Syracuse, NY), WCSC (Charleston, SC)
 
Very little day or night around Columbus, Ohio, although in the northern and western portions of the metro a very weak WBLL from Bellefontaine can be heard daytime. 500 watts, previously talk and now country. Vanishes at night and its signal is limited to its local area.
 
From NW San Antonio:

Daytime: Nothing but a bit of splatter from too-close local 1350 KCOR.

Sunset: Classic country stations KULP (east) and KBEC (northeast) in El Campo and Waxahachie, TX, respectively.

Night: KULP and KBEC are in and out. Aiming east, gospel talk/music station WMER in Meridian, MS, can often be heard. Aiming NW, occasionally I'll hear a weak KHOB, a classic hits station in Hobbs, NM, and sometimes brief snatches of news/talk station KENN in Farmington, NM.

Retro/DX: I've heard KFRA in Franklin, LA, KGNU in Denver, and XETL in Tuxpan once each. It's been a couple of years since I've heard XEXO or XERW (which I believe has transitioned to FM), and I last heard XEOR in Reynosa, back in January.
 
DXing the Dearly Departed: 1390 KCBC Des Moines used a four tower parallelogram on the east side of Des Moines. By the 90s, 1390 had morphed into a rather sorry simulcast of co-owned KJJY FM, taking the call letters KKSO to tweak the competition that ditched the long time country format on KSO 1460, turning 1460 into a simulast of KGGO FM. Later, KKSO 1390 was one of the affiliates of the old Radio AAHS, sounding horrible for Des Moines and its denizens.

1390 and three towers of the long neglected four tower plant received its death sentence upon the grant of its X Band clone on 1700.
 
From the Valley of the JOlly Green Giant (Le Sueur, MN)

daytime-KRFO Owatonna
nightime-nothing much to be distinguished
 
unclehonkey said:
From the Valley of the JOlly Green Giant (Le Sueur, MN)

daytime-KRFO Owatonna
nightime-nothing much to be distinguished
Click to expand...

I was wondering if you might be hearing the 1390 from St. Cloud, MN. Perhaps under KRFO. But the St. Cloud 1390 is very directional, and thinking about it, I realize you're probably too far south.
 
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