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KIKK on at Night

T

ThatVoice22

Banned
It's 8pm on Saturday night, so KIKK AM 650 should be off-the-air right now, but Jody MacDonald (aka "Jody Mac") with CBS Sports Radio has been discussing the Astros sign-stealing woes and the NFL Championship game tomorrow for quite a while. In the background, WSM Nashville, the dominant clear channel giant, can be heard airing the country classics from the Grand Ole Opry. The FCC required sign-off for KIKK in January is still listed as 545 pm, so it's obvious the Entercom/Radio.com control computer has a glitch or the system has been taken over by aliens who enjoy hearing CBS Sports in Houston at night without the signal delay on FM 95.7 HD-3.
 
From 1105 to 1140 pm, AM 650 KIKK is still going strong in violating its FCC sign-off requirements. The "Huge" Show with Bill Simonson on CBS Sports Radio is discussing more cheating allegations in baseball; former players are charging that MLB Manager Tony LaRussa developed a plan to steal signs in the 1990s. Callers are wondering when players will be held responsible, good question. Comparisons are made between the Astros great home and weaker away hitting record in 2017. Sports is alive on KIKK, but it should have been off the air at 530 pm.
---Meanwhile WSM is in the background playing Honky Tonk from Nashville. Yee-hah!
 
If you're still hearing WSM, it's possible you were hearing the exciter and not the actual transmitter. Did you have a signal strength meter?
 
TheBigA said:
If you're still hearing WSM, it's possible you were hearing the exciter and not the actual transmitter. Did you have a signal strength meter?
Click to expand...

FM stations have exciters which can "leak" to the antenna at very low power and be broadcast.

AM transmitters are a bit different: the oscillator stage which, via a crystal or a very precise frequency control system, produces a "baby carrier", is not modulated immediately. It is after that stage that modulation is applied by varying the amplitude of the carrier at a higher power level. High Level Plate modulation, Ampliphase, Dougherty, PDM and Direct Digital Synthesis (most common today) don't have a modulated "eciter".

In today's DDS transmitters, or the older ones like the Harris PDM devices, modulation is achieved after primary signal generation and amplification at the RF module stage.

See http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog...dx-series-transmitter-block-diagram-large.jpg for a diagram of a Harris DX, typical of the way an AM signal is created and modulated in today's transmitters.
 
TheBigA said:
If you're still hearing WSM, it's possible you were hearing the exciter and not the actual transmitter. Did you have a signal strength meter?
Click to expand...

Doesn't matter what power they are operating with, KIKK is a daytimer.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Doesn't matter what power they are operating with, KIKK is a daytimer.
Click to expand...

I think the idea BigA was suggesting was that the transmitter's exciter was on and in the near area a tiny bit of power leaked through to the antenna, just enough to be heard right around the transmitter site.

That used to happen a lot with FM stations where, for reliability and stability, the plate voltage was turned off when the station was off the air, but filament voltage and the exciter remained on. Depending on the coupling between stages, the station could radiate a signal, fully modulated if audio continued to be fed (such as a satellite network), such as from an automation system.
 
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The other thing is it's the weekend. Probably no wknd engineering staff. We'll see if it continues on Monday. If so then there's a real problem.
 
Engineering has been notified, they think a piece of equipment in line tat the transmitter site that should function as part of the process to turn things off has failed.
 
KIKK is still on-air at 1126 pm Sunday, just when it should not be drowning out WSM---those classic call letters stand for "We Shield Millions" as launched in 1925 by the National Life and Accident Company. What would/should the FCC do about such violations of night broadcasting from a daytime-only station -- WSM might have a role in that discussion. Dang, I hear a great fiddle riff from WSM when I turn my radio to null out KIKK.
 
ThatVoice22 said:
KIKK is still on-air at 1126 pm Sunday, just when it should not be drowning out WSM---those classic call letters stand for "We Shield Millions" as launched in 1925 by the National Life and Accident Company. What would/should the FCC do about such violations of night broadcasting from a daytime-only station -- WSM might have a role in that discussion. Dang, I hear a great fiddle riff from WSM when I turn my radio to null out KIKK.
Click to expand...

The FCC today only acts on actual filed complaints today.

And WSM likely does not care all that much; night skywave listening is so minimal today and produces no revenue any more.
 
ThatVoice22 said:
KIKK is still on-air at 1126 pm Sunday, just when it should not be drowning out WSM---those classic call letters stand for "We Shield Millions" as launched in 1925 by the National Life and Accident Company. What would/should the FCC do about such violations of night broadcasting from a daytime-only station -- WSM might have a role in that discussion. Dang, I hear a great fiddle riff from WSM when I turn my radio to null out KIKK.
Click to expand...

The FCC is somewhat understanding of technical mishaps if the station can prove it was such, that it wasnt willful and repeated and took steps to fix it.

If you want WSM that bad, listen online
 
DavidEduardo said:
And WSM likely does not care all that much; night skywave listening is so minimal today and produces no revenue any more.
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Oh, try and tell the radio geeks that when they got worried they wouldnt be able to hear WBBM after they moved towers.. "Errmahhgerd, i wont be able to hear it in XX anymore" and they didnt like when i said... listening 400 miles away doesnt do anything for anyone money wise
 
It's been fixed. A power supply crapped out and has been replaced
 
If KIKK is a daytime-only station and they have been operating at night, there is no excuse. The FCC would expect someone to go to the transmitter and take it off the air to prevent unlicensed operation.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
It's been fixed. A power supply crapped out and has been replaced
Click to expand...

sounds like poor engineering management. When control systems fail, a station should automatically go off the air. In this case, a module or circuit that controlled sign on and off stopped working. The remote monitoring should have alerted the engineering staff and, absent a way to manually control those functions, the station should have gone off pending arrival of an engineer.

When a transmitter loses remote control capability, it is supposed to tun off.
 
The KIKK transmitter had the same issue a few years ago when it was on at night for a couple of days. The night signal was actually quite good at my Cy-Fair location, some 30 miles away from the transmitter. Of course the normal 250 watt day signal does well as it is in the lower end of the AM band.

The KIKK transmitter appears to be on a timer, rather than a manually operated remote control for power up/down. The station used to have sign-on/sign-off announcements, but now just crashes in and out of programming at the FCC mandated times. They do frequently promote the 95.7 HD-3 availability, which is on 24/7.

The ratings on SportsRadio 650 are probably microscopic, but I do enjoy having it as a sportstalk alternative when I want a national perspective.
 
My question is why was it still feeding CBS Sports Network? Is the network hardwired into the transmitter? Had it simply been a transmitter problem, it would have been dead air.

UPDATE:

Mediafrog+ said:
The station used to have sign-on/sign-off announcements, but now just crashes in and out of programming at the FCC mandated times.
Click to expand...

That explains a lot.
 
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