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Good Karma buys WMVP (1000)

T

tvnut

Announced today. Good Karma also buys WEPN (1050) New York and KSPN (710) Los Angeles from Disney, plus take over the LMA of WEPN-FM (98.7) New York from Emmis. Good Karma had been running WMVP under an LMA. All three stations will remain ESPN Radio affiliates.

Disney remains the owner of KRDC (1110) Los Angeles and KESN (103.3) Allen / Dallas, Tex.

radioinsight.com

More Details On Good Karma’s ESPN New York, Los Angeles & Chicago Purchase - RadioInsight

Craig Karmazin's Good Karma Brands will acquire ESPN's local radio properties in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Update 12/20: The deal has been filed with the FCC showing that Good Karma Brands will pay $15 million for 1050 WEPN New York, 710 KSPN Los Angeles, and 1000 WMVP Chicago. Good...
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
 
An update to the coverage on RadioInsight dated today says that WMVP will be required to relocate its transmitter site. Which will surely mean a downgrade to whatever level they can get with non-directional operation, or a diplex at someone else's DA.
 
They should work together with WLS to get a decent diplexed site, further North, to reach the Northern parts of Chicago better. A DA diplex is so unlike any other existing DA in the area as far as similar WMVP DA Diplex. Most of those are oriented for North. To get anywhere near 50 kW Night for WMVP, you really need three towers aligned along a near East West axis. Relocation is indeed problematic. Obviously somebody wants to sell the site. WGN does have a lot of land to put a second tower, maybe a third though. Don't know if they could agree though.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
WGN does have a lot of land to put a second tower, maybe a third though. Don't know if they could agree though.
Click to expand...

If Chicago is like every other city I've worked in, the engineers all know each other and have already talked it over.

Using an existing site means they don't have to get additional zoning permits. Saves time & money.

Karmazin got a pretty good deal from Disney. They're basically financing the purchase.
 
TheBigA said:
If Chicago is like every other city I've worked in, the engineers all know each other and have already talked it over.
Click to expand...
But decisions like that don't originate with local engineers. They come from corporate talking with consulting engineers and finding the existing sites that would work and then doing a CEO & DOE conference with the selected site owner.

And, in most cases, local engineers are not qualified to design directional system and diplexing circuits.

When the KTNQ site was sublet to iHeart for the 1150 upgrade, the decision came from the CFO of HBC after working out the details with Clear Channel's executives and the corporate heads of engineering. The staff in LA learned about it after the ink was dry.
TheBigA said:
Using an existing site means they don't have to get additional zoning permits. Saves time & money.
Click to expand...
Frequently, though, such sharing involves adding a tower and the like, so it can be complicated.
TheBigA said:
Karmazin got a pretty good deal from Disney. They're basically financing the purchase.
Click to expand...
Yes, he got what will be a miserable AM in LA and a soon to be downgraded one in Chicago.
 
DavidEduardo said:
But decisions like that don't originate with local engineers. They come from corporate talking with consulting engineers and finding the existing sites that would work and then doing a CEO & DOE conference with the selected site owner.
Click to expand...

We're talking about Craig Karmazin. Not Bob Pittman. Two very different guys.

DavidEduardo said:
Yes, he got what will be a miserable AM in LA and a soon to be downgraded one in Chicago.
Click to expand...

There has to be more to that LA story that we don't know yet.
 
TheBigA said:
We're talking about Craig Karmazin. Not Bob Pittman. Two very different guys.
Click to expand...
Neither are engineers nor do they have much technical expertise.

But local engineers generally don't have the decision-making power or the directional antenna knowledge to determine which stations and sites might be sharable.
TheBigA said:
There has to be more to that LA story that we don't know yet.
Click to expand...
Unless there is a final flip for Karmazin to get 1110, it's a really bad station. And the reported antenna move in Chicago will also likely be a downgrade, too.
 
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For those of us outside Chicago, how long has WMVP been at the current transmitter site? Does it stretch way back through the WCFL incarnation?
 
Yes. The current transmitter building is emblazoned with the "WCFL" call sign on the front facade. Looking at the history cards, it looks like the Chicago Federation of Labor activated the first tower at that location in 1936 with 5kW non-directional, but the cards are a little faded so that may not be exactly right.
 
Since so many of the old-timers like Glen Clark and Ron Rackley have sadly passed away, few consulting engineers specialize in AM DAs. From what I hear, Cynthia Jacobson and Jeremy Ruck are the new generation of experts. I think Cynthia did the multiplex of four or five AMs in Wisconsin and/or Minnesota near the border, forget exactly which stations.
 
tvnut said:
Announced today. Good Karma also buys WEPN (1050) New York and KSPN (710) Los Angeles from Disney, plus take over the LMA of WEPN-FM (98.7) New York from Emmis. Good Karma had been running WMVP under an LMA. All three stations will remain ESPN Radio affiliates.

Disney remains the owner of KRDC (1110) Los Angeles and KESN (103.3) Allen / Dallas, Tex.

radioinsight.com

More Details On Good Karma’s ESPN New York, Los Angeles & Chicago Purchase - RadioInsight

Craig Karmazin's Good Karma Brands will acquire ESPN's local radio properties in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Update 12/20: The deal has been filed with the FCC showing that Good Karma Brands will pay $15 million for 1050 WEPN New York, 710 KSPN Los Angeles, and 1000 WMVP Chicago. Good...
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
Click to expand...
So what format is gonna be on 1110? Assuming the format on 710 changes.
 
WMVP was 10000 watts STA and only in the Daytime as I recall. It’s a far from ideal location. It wasn’t bad when WLS was trying to serve rural areas to the South. But that format ended sometime before 1960.

Only as an STA to preserve the license would it be considered.
 
WMVP 2-tower DA Day, 3-tower DA Night. 50 kw day/night.
Probably some downgrade power wise daytime, much bigger night time (if they end up non-directional) as they'll now have to protect those that protected them now. Would they lose Class A status?. Think they would if the night power was below 10 kw.
 
Best calculation of Nondirectional Night power would be around 239 watts toward XEOY. XEOY remains as a Class A on 1000, Class I-B in Mexico under NARBA. David may know about their future plans, but even if it went off the air, they would still have to be protected under the Agreement. Wikipedia says they are now just a simulcast of XHMM-FM.

With just KOMO, the limit would be a little under 1000 watts.

The limiting factor is XEOY, even if they vacate 1000 kHz.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
Since so many of the old-timers like Glen Clark and Ron Rackley have sadly passed away, few consulting engineers specialize in AM DAs. From what I hear, Cynthia Jacobson and Jeremy Ruck are the new generation of experts. I think Cynthia did the multiplex of four or five AMs in Wisconsin and/or Minnesota near the border, forget exactly which stations.
Click to expand...
Sadly, Jeremy Ruck just passed away from Covid. He was only 50 years old and very gifted.

In addition to Cynthia, Hatfield still does complicated AM work and Matthew Folkert at DLR has been doing very impressive AM consulting for over a decade. But really there are very few compared to FM and the list keeps getting smaller.
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
Since so many of the old-timers like Glen Clark and Ron Rackley have sadly passed away, few consulting engineers specialize in AM DAs. From what I hear, Cynthia Jacobson and Jeremy Ruck are the new generation of experts. I think Cynthia did the multiplex of four or five AMs in Wisconsin and/or Minnesota near the border, forget exactly which stations.
Click to expand...

you miss that Jeremy Ruck passed away last week?
 
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