KNX numbers, FM vs AM

[ChannelFlipper]

It borders on tragic that the current caretakers of the radio business so easily disniss many of its actual benefits that were handed down to them by their forefathers. The long-range of clear chanel stations are a gift - in times of disaster possibly even the gift of life.

But in our up is down and right is wrong world that we live in, the caretakers take the position that if it can't make a (local) dollar, it is uselss.

In a sane world, in exchange for being given a clear channel license, the licensee would have to ensure that the signal is viable over long distances and useful to the many people it covers.

And people always wonder why "radio" is dying.

 

[davideduardo]

A few more comments: First, what harm would be done if KNX announced the 1070 as well as the 97.1? Does the AM signal harm them?

They want all listeners to migrate to FM because they know AM is a declining resource as fewer and fewer people even use the band.

Second, The idea that the skywave isn't worth a penny probably isn't correct. Suppose you were advertising an insurance company. One station offers you the Los Angeles metro area and KNX tosses in a few listeners in Arizona. All other factors being equal, who has the better deal?.

Ad agencies look at the local market. Any added coverage outside the market is pretty much ignored or considered a "bonus".

The best example lies in the fact that most LA stations do not subscribe to the Riverside / San Bernardino Nielsen report. Despite most FMs covering that market as well as LA itself, and several being in the top 5 in the market, they get no extra sales from that added audience, so they don't buy the book.

Third, the notion that AM radio is beset with man made noise is half truth. Drive 30 miles outside a metro area at night and tune across the AM dial. You won't hear noise from a sparkplug or a computer monitor.

And nobody lives or works there. Listening is transient, and most people listen on the road to what they listened to near home and work.

You'll hear the effect of having 20 stations on each frequency with no one on top. I used to listen to KFI from Tucson. Now there's racket from a station on 640 in Juarez. Used to hear 1170 in Tulsa. Now digital noise from KSL on 1160. Problem is a misguided FCC as much as anything. The fact that the victimized stations don't care is also important. The listening public should count for something.

Listeners are important to a commercial station if they are marketable to advertisers. Listeners outside the home metro or market of a station have essentially no sales value today.

Fourth, what about the notion that nobody outside Southern California cares about KNX news? KNX has CBS News on the hour and many feature reports that are of national interest. I even enjoy hearing about a traffic jam that has cars backed up a mile at 3 a.m. Makes me glad I'm not there.

To most people without your sense of inquisitiveness and curiosity, KNX would be about 80% irrelevant and boring. And the fact remains that all news is a 50 and over format that does not have much sales life left in it.

 

[davideduardo]

It borders on tragic that the current caretakers of the radio business so easily disniss many of its actual benefits that were handed down to them by their forefathers. The long-range of clear chanel stations are a gift - in times of disaster possibly even the gift of life.

But if, today, nearly nobody but a handful of DXers listens outside the local market area, how are stations supposed to justify serving a wide area that has no listening only with the possibility that once every few decades there will be a major disaster?

But in our up is down and right is wrong world that we live in, the caretakers take the position that if it can't make a (local) dollar, it is uselss.

If you have a hardware store in Midtown Manhattan, you don't stock well drilling accessories or stable supplies because they don't sell and you can better use the space. Radio is the same: we work with what we can monetize or the things that indirectly help us monetize our station operation.

In a sane world, in exchange for being given a clear channel license, the licensee would have to ensure that the signal is viable over long distances and useful to the many people it covers.

The massive coverage of clear channel stations is at night. Radio sales at night have been light or minimal for four to five decades. Advertisers buy TV for nights, radio for daytime.

There are 50 kw clear channel AM stations in some markets that cover less than a good 100 kw FM due to ground conductivity issues.

The only advantage of a clear channel 50 kw station today is that it is generally powerful enough to overcome man-made noise in many places inside its local metro area... but even that is decreasing. Try to listen to a local AM in a home with computers, dimmers, wall warts and other nose. In my market, I can only hear one AM station well and it is just 4 miles from my home (and it is a Spanish language religious stati0n). The rest are useless.

And people always wonder why "radio" is dying.

No, the reality of listening to distant, fading, noisy AM disappeared in the 50's and 60's. As the nation filled up with FMs, nearly no place, from Marathon, FL to Sidney, Montana, has an FM and it sounds better and usually covers better than an AM.

 

[TheBigA]

It borders on tragic that the current caretakers of the radio business so easily disniss many of its actual benefits that were handed down to them by their forefathers. The long-range of clear chanel stations are a gift - in times of disaster possibly even the gift of life.

Maybe you missed the part where the FCC doesn't agree with you and they've been part of the reason why clear channel stations have limited range. If it was up to the owners, they'd all love to increase power. The FCC doesn't want that to happen. So these legendary stations are stuck in their boxes created by the FCC. The problem here is not with radio ownership, it's with the government.

It's popular to complain about big companies, but somebody has to own these stations. iHeart has done a lot to buy these legendary AM stations and keep quality local content on them. Nobody else seems to be interested in buying these stations. There are a lot of billionaires in this country, and none of them are using their money to preserve radio. If Elon Musk sold a few shares of Tesla, he could buy a radio station in LA. But he wouldn't get the news coverage he's getting from buying Twitter. Radio needs a few billionaires like Musk to buy some radio stations. That would do a lot.

 

[gr8oldies]

KAAY is now essentially a daytimer, with less than 100 watts at night. WFED could not cover a disaster in a nearly city as it does not cover either Baltimore or Richmond way up there on 1500. 1210 in Philadelphia barely covers its own market, and KYW is not far behind.

The most useful are the former 1-A clear channels. There are not even 30 of those. A few others could in an emergency run non-directional but the ones in areas of bad conductivity can't serve an adjacent area as they do not cover them day and night: examples would be WSM, WSB.

The stations that might be useful are ones that helped in the past. When it was a daytimer, WAPE 690 in Jacksonville ran fulltime and served multiple hurricane zones to the north and south of them... but back then even a Top 40 station had a newsroom.

At the time 690 in Jacksonville was WPDQ and oldies. They indeed used daytime facilities, with live news, a live DJ and phone calls (including "we're having a hurricane party on an island. For a few hours it was the only media source available in Charleston. That being said, it was 1990, and most people had radios.

 

[davideduardo]

There should not be a 640 in Juarez, except maybe as a daytimer, based on my understanding of the rules.

It's been there for decades. XEJUA is 5 kw non directional with a 6 AM to Midnight schedule. It's 700 miles away from LA.

 

[xmtrland]

Now some 50KW AM's use MDCL. They have the option of turning that off during an emergency situation. If I'm faced with running a 50KW I'm in charge of I would shut off MDCL for the emergency until I start to run low on diesel.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

It borders on tragic that the current caretakers of the radio business so easily disniss many of its actual benefits that were handed down to them by their forefathers. The long-range of clear chanel stations are a gift - in times of disaster possibly even the gift of life.

Just as long as that disaster happens after sunset.

I went to my DXing radio just now and tried to tune some of the midwestern clear channel stations, high noon on a Sunday. I live in rural Kentucky, so that's where I'd turn first.
WSM: Not audible
WLW: Not audible
WHAS: Poor signal, but the best of the bunch...
Chicago clears: (WGN, WLS, WBBM): Not audible
KMOX: Not audible

 

[davideduardo]

At the time 690 in Jacksonville was WPDQ and oldies

I'm going back to when the Benns family owned it and it was The Big Ape and covered several hurricanes in the 60's.

. They indeed used daytime facilities, with live news, a live DJ and phone calls (including "we're having a hurricane party on an island. For a few hours it was the only media source available in Charleston. That being said, it was 1990, and most people had radios.

Their tradition of covering East Coast hurricanes goes back to when they first went on the air as a daytimer, complete with the gorilla cry in the station ID. In particular, Donna in '60 and Camille in '69 were covered non-stop at night.

 

[xmtrland]

Have you looked to see if any of those facilities use MDCL? You have to notify the FCC if you use MDCL.

 

[gr8oldies]

Maybe you missed the part where the FCC doesn't agree with you and they've been part of the reason why clear channel stations have limited range. If it was up to the owners, they'd all love to increase power. The FCC doesn't want that to happen. So these legendary stations are stuck in their boxes created by the FCC. The problem here is not with radio ownership, it's with the government.

It's popular to complain about big companies, but somebody has to own these stations. iHeart has done a lot to buy these legendary AM stations and keep quality local content on them. Nobody else seems to be interested in buying these stations. There are a lot of billionaires in this country, and none of them are using their money to preserve radio. If Elon Musk sold a few shares of Tesla, he could buy a radio station in LA. But he wouldn't get the news coverage he's getting from buying Twitter. Radio needs a few billionaires like Musk to buy some radio stations. That would do a lot.

Even a cluster containing 2 class Cs and 2 Class A FMs didn't attract any of the local billionaires. A baseball stadium is thought to be more attractive.

 

[gr8oldies]

Now some 50KW AM's use MDCL. They have the option of turning that off during an emergency situation. If I'm faced with running a 50KW I'm in charge of I would shut off MDCL for the emergency until I start to run low on diesel.

I'm sorry but what is MDCL?

 

[frankberry]

Modulation-Dependent Carrier Level. It reduces the transmitter power output when the modulation is low.

 

[gr8oldies]

Just as long as that disaster happens after sunset.

I went to my DXing radio just now and tried to tune some of the midwestern clear channel stations, high noon on a Sunday. I live in rural Kentucky, so that's where I'd turn first.
WSM: Not audible
WLW: Not audible
WHAS: Poor signal, but the best of the bunch...
Chicago clears: (WGN, WLS, WBBM): Not audible
KMOX: Not audible

East Tennessee: WSM, barely audible
WLW--the last breath of being audible
WSB-the last breath plus splattered by local WETR
WHAS--weak but audible
WWL-not a trace
WTAM---can be audible during winter daytime skip
WLAC---not audible.

 

[gr8oldies]

Modulation-Dependent Carrier Level. It reduces the transmitter power output when the modulation is low.

Gotcha, thanks!

 

[TheBigA]

I went to my DXing radio just now and tried to tune some of the midwestern clear channel stations, high noon on a Sunday.

East Tennessee: WSM, barely audible

Those stations aren't meant to be heard over long distances during the day. The FCC licensed a lot of small local stations on those same frequencies and allowed them to operate during the day. Once again, that's the government, not local radio owners.

WSM is only meant to be heard for a radius of about 100 miles during the day.

 

[K.M. Richards]

Electric cars can't get AM stations because of the static. Crazy no one had figured out a solution.

Not necessarily. I drive a 2015 Smart EV and its AM radio has no static issues other than the usual AM interference. I get KNX, KFI and Saul Levine's KMZT as cleanly as I do the FMs. (On my car radio, 1070's reception actually is clearer than 97.1's as I drive around the Valley.)

 

[K.M. Richards]

If you have a hardware store in Midtown Manhattan, you don't stock well drilling accessories or stable supplies because they don't sell and you can better use the space. Radio is the same: we work with what we can monetize or the things that indirectly help us monetize our station operation.

And, more relevant to the multiple posts you replied to, if you own that hardware store you don't need to buy coverage that reaches to Atlanta or Cincinnati.

 

[TheBigA]

And, more relevant to the multiple posts you replied to, if you own that hardware store you don't need to buy coverage that reaches to Atlanta or Cincinnati.

However, if that hardware store is part of Ace, they'd love to be involved. You'd be surprised how many "small local" businesses are actually part of larger regional groups. They do it to spread out the expense and give them buying power. I know of car dealers and restaurant owners that are doing that. Buying a national ad is overkill, but a regional ad would do the trick. Som radio companies handle this through their regional managers, who spread sales among stations within the group.

 

[ragazzo-pazzo]

And the fact remains that all news is a 50 and over format that does not have much sales life left in it.

With this I completely disagree. 30 years ago, I had little interest in "news". That was boring and uninteresting. Today I am a news junkie. People evolve over time. Today's disinterested 30 something is tomorrow's all news listener, so I think it is premature to declare the sales life being near extinction.