It is believed that they are running less than 50 kw now. There is no day and night power for that one, as it is on a Mexican clear channel. However, in the past they only ran from sunset to sunrise. Now it is part of the quasi-official public broadcasting organization and dedicated to local service.
IIRC in the late 60s TWR didn’t broadcast on 800 kHz during the bulk of daytime hours; it was mostly a late afternoon to shortly after sunrise “night/critical“ hours schedule. And if you plot the signal path from Bonaire to Quito it pretty much straddles the northern Andes, which would shred up any groundwave.
There were many years it did a daytime service in Spanish for the area from Maiquetía, Venezuela to about Cartagena, Colombia and even Colón, Panamá.
It did OK in Quito, but not great. One of my stations was on 805, and it did not bother us much.
TWR has an odd habit of listing the maximum power of its transmitters. They still do with the new Nautel they put in recently in Bonaire.
That daytime service would seem to be a lot of watts to cover a pretty small area. I remember Radio Nederland leasing TWR on 800's facility for an English, Spanish and I think Dutch Caribbean service starting at 6pm.
The coverage daytime was not that bad... it ran from the coastal area East of Caracas to Eastern Panamá, a distance of nearly 1000 miles and including Caracas, Maracaibo, Santa Marta, Barranquilla, Cartagena and a bunch of other coastal cities. From what I recall, from working on some projects in Venezuela in the 70's and visiting often in the late 60s, the signal only made it 30 to 40 miles inland at best.
At the time (mid to late 60s) Radio Netherlands itself referred to the transmissions as purchased airtime. The deal included two hours on 800 kHz and seven hours on TWR's 250kw shortwave transmitter (TWR also had a 50kw shortwave unit that was not part of the deal.)
Yes, the 20 minute broadcast at 0110 UTC on 800 kHz was pure Dutch, identical to the first 20 minutes of the 80 minute international shortwave version. However when RN opened its own shortwave facility on Bonaire in 1969 its SW output did have a Dutch-Papiamento hybrid broadcast (which also included Sranan Tongo) aimed at the various Dutch islands in the Caribbean as well as Suriname. This ran for many years at 2130 UTC, but much later on was moved to a morning broadcast at 0930 UTC.
Remember it's the square root of the increase or decrease on power. Since the square root of 10 is 3.16, a 500 kw station is cranking out a little over 3 times the voltage of a 50 kw facility, so the ground wave travels 3 times farther out. This is assuming we're talking about the same frequency and the same antenna system. The S/N ratio is also improved at a given location by three times.
Well, I am seeing that my belief about the operation was pretty inaccurate.
I never figured out why 800 was selected. There was a higher power station in Maracaibo, a 10 kw in Bucaramanga, a 10 kw in Panama City as well as a 5 kw in San Jose, another 10 kw in Guatemala City and a major 150 kw station in northern Mexico.
Both Curacao and Aruba were favorite getaways for me in the 70's and 80's, as there were cheap and convenient flights from San Juan as well as hot and cold running trade deals. I also visited a couple of times on cruise ships out of San Juan, but don't recall hearing anything other than Papiamento (or Papiamentu as some spell it), Spanish and English.
I was referring to OTA radio in general, AM, FM, HD, etc.. FM listening has dropped also. Eventually it all will 'spiral.' Until then, OTA has to do what it can do to stay receivable, and in the case of the AM stations, it's keep your power or go FM, and develop and promote your stream. Mainly to counter the RFI, but also because streaming is the future.
That prediction has been made since the 70's. Hasn't happened yet.
AM stations have technical and programming concrete shoes dragging them under water. First, on the technical side is inferior audio quality. Just about anything sounds better than AM. Second is terrestrial noise. Even 50kW clear channels can't be heard in urban or suburban communities like they used to. About six years ago the ITU determined that for average listening to occur using conventional consumer radio's, the listener needed to be in the 10mV/m field strength. For decades that level was 5mV/m. Word is, considering the increasing levels of interference from natural and man-made noise, the ITU is considering increasing the recommended field strength standard to 20mV/m. Frankly, I think we're already at that point.
There is no countering terrestrial noise. Those horses left the barn years ago. The barn since burned down and there's no place for horses to return. Consumer products from overseas have taken over. It's too late to turn back the clock for the sake of saving AM stations.
Bearing in mind this was decades ago, I read a book by I think the founder of TWR who only said that "a radio station went bankrupt and we were able to use 800". No idea what that have been.
This was later in the 70s, but my foggy brain seems to remember the RN broadcasts being cut to 70 minutes. I remember Tom Meijer doing a separate bilungual "Happy Station 70 (referring to the length)" where he spoke i a mellow tone, I guess getting his Carribean vibe on.
Yeah, that sounds like their attitude. Besides owning stations in Ecuador back in the later 60's, I compiled and edited several editions of the Latin American AM log for the National Radio Club, and there was no station on 800 that went bankrupt. Not in the Netherlands Antilles, not in Venezuela, Colombia, Panamá, Ecuador, Central America or anywhere in the Caribbean.
Or a local full service station in Maracaibo, just 400 km from Bonaire.
Very interesting, not surprising.
However in the 1960s and early 70s TWR also clashed with what was then XELO, a border blaster that ran English language religion at night.
I think you are correct. My own foggy memory recalls that when RN's medium wave block on 800 kHz was moved up to 2300 UTC in the late 70s it was also cut to 90 minutes. Spanish would have been at 2300, English at 2335, and the 20 minute newscast in Dutch at 0010. On days when the Spanish and English segments were combined into the bilingual show it would have resulted in a 70 minute program before the Dutch newscast.
The Dodger's great closing pitcher Kenley Jansen is from the NA and speaks all the local languages.
By the early 70's XELO had become XEROK, X-Rock 80 and tried to replicate the success of the later 60's and 70's success of KOMA. But by then nearly every market, even smaller ones, had a local Top 40 and it did not really succeed... plus KOMA's big billing was from movies and shows and that radio money did not spend on a distant station any more.
