590-KLBJ endless spots running now

[davideduardo]

You seem to be thinking that 590 would go dark! That would be very sad indeed.

It's a pretty bad signal at night, missing about half of the market with its extreme directionality.

 

[Ryan Williams]

It's a pretty bad signal at night, missing about half of the market with its extreme directionality.

590 is pretty bad in much of Williamson County at night (which is the fastest growing area of the market). I am speaking from first hand experience. It's also not great in parts of Travis County, for example around Pflugerville. 99.7 is better even at just 250 watts in nearly the entire market.

It does appear from their application that the new non-directional 350 watts nighttime signal will improve the coverage in southern parts of Williamson such as Round Rock, but I have my doubts about how well 350 watts will actually perform in such a noisy location.

Also, while the signal in Round Rock might improve somewhat, the reduced power will mean a massive loss in nighttime coverage in Southern Travis and Northern Hays (Kyle/Buda).

 

[Ryan Williams]

You seem to be thinking that 590 would go dark! That would be very sad indeed.

I don't necessarily mean go dark.

KLBJ makes a lot of money. It's not going to be left to die. They went through the trouble and expense of getting a site change from the FCC and a tower approved by the FAA, but since it was approved at the end of November nothing has happened. They have a lot of time left to be sure. The application to move though was filed 16 months ago. AM is in a far worse position than it was then and perhaps the current transmitter site by Tesla is not as hot as it once was (i'm just speculating here, they may already have an agreement to sell).

All I was saying is that it would not surprise me if the move to The Domain never actually happened and they instead put KLBJ on a underperforming full-power FM when they felt they needed to in order to maintain it's position and billing.

 

[Dondd]

I don't mind the station losing a lot of its coverage area. With the exception of the local live programming, it's not like there's an absence of the same one-sided and narrow topic'd talk programming carried in every other city.

Imagine many former die-hard conservative talk radio listeners moved away from the host "knows everything" and how "the Dems are responsible for all wrongs!!" type of irrational "talk radio."

 

[Delete My Account]

They tried, under Emmis. Jeff Ward, Dale Dudley, etc.

Sinclair's more in line ideologically with the current lineup.

 

[Dondd]

The station is off the air. Tuned in a minute ago, all I could get was static.
Wonder if anyone at the station even noticed it went dark?

 

[Ryan Williams]

The station is off the air. Tuned in a minute ago, all I could get was static.
Wonder if anyone at the station even noticed it went dark?

Was 99.7 off too?

 

[Robert Douglas]

The stream is there. 590 is still off the air, but getting a nice signal from Mexico on 580.

 

[Ryan Williams]

As of 9 PM, 590 is still off the air. Austin Energy's power outage map shows one customer in the vicinity of the KLBJ transmitter site without power and shows an estimated restoration time of 10:09 PM. It's not totally clear though that they are the customer without power.

No mentions of the power outage on the socials or on the website. I guess everyone listens on the translator or the stream.

 

[TheBigA]

They switch to syndication at 7PM, so it's all automated from then on.

 

[Ryan Williams]

As of 9 PM, 590 is still off the air. Austin Energy's power outage map shows one customer in the vicinity of the KLBJ transmitter site without power and shows an estimated restoration time of 10:09 PM. It's not totally clear though that they are the customer without power.

No mentions of the power outage on the socials or on the website. I guess everyone listens on the translator or the stream.

590 is back on the air.

 

[Dondd]

They've often gone off the air. Like for no reason. But, it fits with their mostly unimpressive one-sided programming.

 

[davideduardo]

They've often gone off the air. Like for no reason. But, it fits with their mostly unimpressive one-sided programming.

... which has resulted in the #1 billing radio station in the market.

And, despite its older demographic appeal, it averages in the top 5 stations in 25-54.

(I've always been amused by the fact that the call letters of a severely Republican leaning station has call letters that honor a classic democrat of the 40's to the 60's. Anyone with immense time on their hands should read at least the first two volumes of Caro's four volume biography of LBJ, "Path to Power" and "Means of Ascent" that take us through nearly 1,800 pages of expediency. I always thought the spin-off of "The Walking Dead" should follow Johnson and "The Voting Dead".)

 

[dlf1]

The dead vote catapulted LBJ to victory against Coke Stephenson in the 1948 Democratic primary.

 

[Krash Kelly]

Been enjoying the speculation and commentary on this thread - but as an insider at Waterloo Media let me add my 2-cents.
The appropriate people know anytime one of our stations either goes off, or we have dead air. There are systems in place for all of our brands. But our engineers don't live in our studios or at the xmtr sites. Not to mention, broadcasting and Murphy's Law go hand-in-hand. When things go wrong, they can sometimes really go wrong. Last year, our studios took a direct lightning strike causing catastrophic damage to 6 of our studios and countless other pieces of equipment. Our team had every one of our stations back on-air within 2 hours.

But to be fair, in the world of consolidation - we may well be an exception to the rule.

And just to reiterate... Waterloo Media is our Austin dba for Sinclair Telecable out of Norfolk, VA. Austin and Norfolk are our only stations. Sinclair Broadcast Group is the TV corporation known to lean just a bit right of center. We are not affiliated in any way.

 

[Mediafrog+]

(I've always been amused by the fact that the call letters of a severely Republican leaning station has call letters that honor a classic democrat of the 40's to the 60's.

Although Lyndon Johnson (and his wife) once owned 590 (and 93.7) the flip to the KLBJ call came after his death, as a result of the sale of his TV station. Oddly, the TV station kept the legacy KTBC call while the retained radio stations changed theirs…opposite of what usually happened in such a situation.

 

[Robert Douglas]

Been enjoying the speculation and commentary on this thread - but as an insider at Waterloo Media let me add my 2-cents.
The appropriate people know anytime one of our stations either goes off, or we have dead air. There are systems in place for all of our brands. But our engineers don't live in our studios or at the xmtr sites. Not to mention, broadcasting and Murphy's Law go hand-in-hand. When things go wrong, they can sometimes really go wrong. Last year, our studios took a direct lightning strike causing catastrophic damage to 6 of our studios and countless other pieces of equipment. Our team had every one of our stations back on-air within 2 hours.

But to be fair, in the world of consolidation - we may well be an exception to the rule.

And just to reiterate... Waterloo Media is our Austin dba for Sinclair Telecable out of Norfolk, VA. Austin and Norfolk are our only stations. Sinclair Broadcast Group is the TV corporation known to lean just a bit right of center. We are not affiliated in any way.

Thanks for jumping in with this and good to know that the engineers are getting the notifications! Can you give us any update on the 590 transmitter move? Living in S.A., I'm worried that I'm about to lose one of my favorite news talk stations on the car radio.