• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WCCR Radio Improvement Project

J

johnbasalla

WCCR-AM 1260 "The Rock", over the summer, sent out their periodic publication called "Upon This Rock". The lead story is about needed improvements to their signal. Written by Leo Burkhardt, a founding member of the Board of Directors of St. Peter The Rock media ... in part the article reads: "Just like when you buy a previously owned home, when you buy a previously owned radio station, issues start showing up that were not noticeable when you bought it, much of it because of aging of the buildings and equipment. Here at AM1260 The Rock we are finding things popping up that will need to be addressed over the near future and into next year. As you know, with your help, we installed a new transmitter in 2020 that allowed us to transmit at our full daytime power of 10kw with a clearer signal ... We have discovered that we are losing about 2 kw of power between the transmitter and the broadcast signal, We are in the process of investigating what is causing the problem... Our engineer and a contracted consultant are taking field measurements around the area as well as checking the equipment itself to determine why we are losing that signal power. The cost of this study will be more than $7,000".

The article goes on to explain that "AM stations require not only antennas but also a grounding system to broadcast their signal". The article explains that the towers are 200 ft. high with each ground wire being 200 ft. long. There are 12 buried ground wires radiating out from the antenna.
"In the fall, we will be digging around the ground meshes to check out their condition and ascertain their actual size".

The article hopes that, with this work, they will be able to find out where the losing of 2 kw of power comes from. The station also wants to replace programming production computers because they are 7 years old. Fortunately, they are not showing any problems right now. This will be another $7,000 expense.

Continuing with the article: "Our next big maintenance item is putting a new roof on the building that houses all of the electronics at the antenna site. We need to do this before leaks develop in the current roof which has seen better days".

They hope for continued support from their listenership base to complete all of the above.
 
johnbasalla said:
WCCR-AM 1260 "The Rock", over the summer, sent out their periodic publication called "Upon This Rock". The lead story is about needed improvements to their signal. Written by Leo Burkhardt, a founding member of the Board of Directors of St. Peter The Rock media ... in part the article reads: "Just like when you buy a previously owned home, when you buy a previously owned radio station, issues start showing up that were not noticeable when you bought it, much of it because of aging of the buildings and equipment. Here at AM1260 The Rock we are finding things popping up that will need to be addressed over the near future and into next year. As you know, with your help, we installed a new transmitter in 2020 that allowed us to transmit at our full daytime power of 10kw with a clearer signal ... We have discovered that we are losing about 2 kw of power between the transmitter and the broadcast signal, We are in the process of investigating what is causing the problem... Our engineer and a contracted consultant are taking field measurements around the area as well as checking the equipment itself to determine why we are losing that signal power. The cost of this study will be more than $7,000".

The article goes on to explain that "AM stations require not only antennas but also a grounding system to broadcast their signal". The article explains that the towers are 200 ft. high with each ground wire being 200 ft. long. There are 12 buried ground wires radiating out from the antenna.
"In the fall, we will be digging around the ground meshes to check out their condition and ascertain their actual size".

The article hopes that, with this work, they will be able to find out where the losing of 2 kw of power comes from. The station also wants to replace programming production computers because they are 7 years old. Fortunately, they are not showing any problems right now. This will be another $7,000 expense.

Continuing with the article: "Our next big maintenance item is putting a new roof on the building that houses all of the electronics at the antenna site. We need to do this before leaks develop in the current roof which has seen better days".

They hope for continued support from their listenership base to complete all of the above.
Click to expand...
They had a new transmitter installed back in 2020? I don't know about a cleaner signal, but I just checked and reception where I'm at is the same, heavy background static that its always been. I'm not sure if the loss of 2 kW would even make a big difference.

Also, back in 2007, the transmission lines between the transmitter building and the towers were replaced, probably in order to improve the HD Radio carrier that was recently activated at the time. Those lines should be OK, although they are already 15 years old. Other than that, that entire site dates back to the early 80's (82 if I'm not mistaken) when the owners at the time moved the night time pattern from the original Seven Hills site to Brecksville. In the early 90's, the daytime pattern was moved to and combined with the night time site as well, in order to increase daytime power from 5 kW to 10 kW. Afterwards, the Seven Hills site was abandoned.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Any hopes of their getting an FM translator in that market?
Click to expand...
Probably not in their budget, or can't obtain a frequency with adequate coverage in the primary listening area to make signing on a translator worthwhile. The only option they have, outside of streaming, is to lease a HD Radio sub from another station, which should at least help improve coverage, especially while driving.
 
I find it perplexing that some AM stations in Cleveland reduce power so significantly at night so as to not interfere with stations hundreds of miles away, yet they don't even cover Cuyahoga County.
 
johnbasalla said:
The signal is mediocre during the day in the Southwest portion of Cuyahoga County, and is poor at night.
Click to expand...
I always thought it was OK in that area, though I rarely travel there.

Southeast of the transmitter, in areas like Peninsula, Stow, Hudson & Kent, and even the east side of Akron, reception is pretty bad, despite all those cities falling inside the local contour. The signal starts to get plagued with static and interference 5 miles east & southeast of the transmitter. I believe the Cuyahoga Valley greatly degrades reception in that direction, which isn't reflected on the coverage maps. I also think that the WTAM tower just down the street from WCCR's transmitter site messes with their pattern, and creates a null as well.
 
snowdog88 said:
Southeast of the transmitter, in areas like Peninsula, Stow, Hudson & Kent, and even the east side of Akron, reception is pretty bad, despite all those cities falling inside the local contour. The signal starts to get plagued with static and interference 5 miles east & southeast of the transmitter.
Click to expand...
Slight thread hijack - Back in the early 2000s, after Clear Channel bought legacy 50,000 watt WWVA and changed the format from country to news/talk, they were planning to relocate that station to Stow, most likely so they could call it a Cleveland station and bill there, vs. billing in WWVA's existing (small) radio market of Wheeling, WV. The plan never came together, most likely because Clear Channel found it to be cost prohibitive and realized the AM band was dying, but it would've been interesting to see the actual (vs. on paper) coverage. As it is, WWVA supposedly covers the eastern 2/3 of the USA and much of Canada at night.
 
IF WWVA had moved to Stow, I wonder if WCUE would have had any legal recourse to object WWVA:1170, WCUE:1150. I'm sure 50,000 watts would have bled all over WCUE's signal and obliterated them. After all WCUE's antenna is in Cuyahoga Falls and assuming WWVA's antenna(s) would have been located somewhere in the area, even though it's not "frequency adjacent" I'd think there'd be an issue. Interestingly enough, the WWVA towers are on the Ohio side of the West Virginia/Ohio border even though it's promoted as a WV station. I know that the nighttime signal of WCUE gets cut to 500 watts and the broadcast pattern goes to an "hourglass" type pattern to "protect" WWVA and one other station from interference.
 
Last edited:
Yabadabado1 said:
IF WWVA had moved to Stow, I wonder if WCUE would have had any legal recourse to object WWVA:1170, WCUE:1150. I'm sure 50,000 watts would have bled all over WCUE's signal and obliterated them. After all WCUE's antenna is in Cuyahoga Falls and assuming WWVA's antenna would have been located somewhere in the area, even though it's not "frequency adjacent" I'd think there'd be an issue.
Click to expand...
The other question is whether WWVA would remain at their same frequency and wattage if they'd made that move to Stow. While at one time when AM radio was king and WWVA hosted the weekly country "Jamboree" show from Wheeling and it was the longest running live radio program behind the Grand Ole' Opry", it was advantageous for them to have that big and powerful a signal. If for no other reason, when the world was a smaller place, it caused loads of people to get on chartered tour buses to Wheeling on the weekends to see the Jamboree, and for people to come to that area each July for the large-scale multi-day "Jamboree in the Hills". Now that those live programs have folded or were repackaged and neither is broadcast on WWVA, it's kind of a waste for them to cover that large of an area when much of their billing comes from local Wheeling-area businesses, aside from their programming in the evenings which is paid religious programs and bible thumpers. Not sure what they're running overnights these days. It used to be the Truckin' Bozo and then I believe Coast to Coast.

Had they made the move to Stow, they may have been happy to be on a frequency and power that would cover Cleveland and not much more.
 
If WWVA had moved to Stow, it would still have been a 50,000 watt signal on 1170. It wouldn't have been nondirectional like WTAM, but it would have been the second-best Cleveland AM at night and probably third by day after 850.

At the time the project was cancelled, I heard some interesting reasons why, having to do more with local management in the market than anything technical.

As for why signals like 1260 are where they are, you have to understand how the FCC rules worked in the post-WWII era when many of these were licensed. Stations then had to put 25 mV/m over the central business district of their city of license. As a practical matter, that meant a 5000-watt station in the upper part of the dial had to be within 8 miles or so of downtown.

On 1260, then-WDOK had to protect other stations that were on the channel first, including Indianapolis, Washington DC and Boston.

Draw out those protections to the southwest, southeast and east, and the site pretty much had to be due south aiming north with a pretty tight pattern at night.

There were hundreds and hundreds of these post-WWII class III regional channel DAs, and almost none of them ended up with broad enough patterns to serve their entire markets as they sprawled out after the war.

(I know. I'm on one!)
 
Mikey Radio said:
Any hopes of their getting an FM translator in that market?
Click to expand...
Even if they wanted to, I doubt any real usable frequencies remain. WHK's translator at 102.5 runs a whopping 5 watts ERP from downtown and WHKW 1220's translator at 96.9 is highly directional and pretty much unusable west of downtown.
 
snowdog88 said:
They had a new transmitter installed back in 2020? I don't know about a cleaner signal, but I just checked and reception where I'm at is the same, heavy background static that its always been. I'm not sure if the loss of 2 kW would even make a big difference.

Also, back in 2007, the transmission lines between the transmitter building and the towers were replaced, probably in order to improve the HD Radio carrier that was recently activated at the time. Those lines should be OK, although they are already 15 years old. Other than that, that entire site dates back to the early 80's (82 if I'm not mistaken) when the owners at the time moved the night time pattern from the original Seven Hills site to Brecksville. In the early 90's, the daytime pattern was moved to and combined with the night time site as well, in order to increase daytime power from 5 kW to 10 kW. Afterwards, the Seven Hills site was abandoned.
Click to expand...
Fun little note: that original tower site is being converted to a nature preserve.
 
For a non-profit operation with a small listener base, they should not be throwing hard to get donations down the rabbit hole of a small AM station with an historically weak signal.
The wisest action would be to sell it off and put the money toward bolstering their streaming and online presence and creating a strong campaign to educate their audience on how to access the programming.
The old arguments about elderly needing AM don't cut it anymore. Even "elderly" folks are getting hip on how to use their cell phones, tablets and laptops to hear and see what they want. The car listening saw also fades when even the lowest price Japanese compact comes with bluetooth conectivity. The AM band is quickly becoming unusable due to rapidly increasing EM noise.
Maybe some board members remember nearly 60 years ago when 1260 was successful with listeners digging it out of the noise and static to hear their favorite music and DJ's, but audiences today won't do that.
Use the donations wisely and don't waste them on overpriced "studies" leading to even more expenses that aren't going to change these trends.
 
I doubt very many people are listening to AM radio anymore, unless it's a 50 kW blowtorch like WTAM. These small, low power stations should consider shutting down and selling their property.
 
skiwest said:
I doubt very many people are listening to AM radio anymore, unless it's a 50 kW blowtorch like WTAM. These small, low power stations should consider shutting down and selling their property.
Click to expand...
Well, somebody must be listening since the group that purchased the station wants to improve it. What would be the point if not? There are many listeners who don't care about smartphones, streaming etc. and still listen the "old" way since it's simpler for the most part. There are a good number of religious stations on AM.
 
Santa fe said:
For a non-profit operation with a small listener base, they should not be throwing hard to get donations down the rabbit hole of a small AM station with an historically weak signal.
The wisest action would be to sell it off and put the money toward bolstering their streaming and online presence and creating a strong campaign to educate their audience on how to access the programming.
The old arguments about elderly needing AM don't cut it anymore. Even "elderly" folks are getting hip on how to use their cell phones, tablets and laptops to hear and see what they want. The car listening saw also fades when even the lowest price Japanese compact comes with bluetooth conectivity. The AM band is quickly becoming unusable due to rapidly increasing EM noise.
Maybe some board members remember nearly 60 years ago when 1260 was successful with listeners digging it out of the noise and static to hear their favorite music and DJ's, but audiences today won't do that.
Use the donations wisely and don't waste them on overpriced "studies" leading to even more expenses that aren't going to change these trends.
Click to expand...
See my post above. It's not always the "elderly" whatever that means today. Some people like simple and flipping on the radio is still easier than using a smartphone assuming that person has one since not everyone does. As for quality, there are other religious stations on AM and it must also work for them although some have a stronger signal no doubt compared to 1260.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom