It does. It's still diplexed with KVTO at Aquatic Park in Berkeley, a longstanding arrangement. Strictly speaking regarding coverage, perhaps whoever was counting didn't take into account the coverage a lower-frequency station can have with 5,000 watts. That said, KEAR is noncommercial, thus not competing the way a commercial station would compete, and its religious format shows up with minimal audience if it shows up at all.
By then it might make it to post #1120!
Just a thought: How old are the media buyers these days? In my syndication days they were (in many markets) very young and female who bought time on stations they were likely to have the most exposure to. I saw top-40 stations get big buys for things their largely teen audiences would never need to buy while stations with bigger numbers went without.
I wasn't arguing that the ethnic stations in LA have low listening. In fact I was pointing out that on normal terrestrial radio in LA and Sacramento, you have Talk, and Sports without FM simulcasts that get numbers.
Again, I was speaking about the Bay Area. In fact, few of the San Francisco FM's cover the full market. Less than half cover San Jose with a usable signal on FCC maps and certainly don't even touch Santa Rosa. On the other hand, most the LA FM's are monster's that cover areas well outside of the market. LA Stations cover the IE better signal-wise better than the SF stations cover SJ.
Or 106.9 after 1978 or before 2005, lol.
Media Buyers tend to be in their 20's and 30's and mostly women. The Media Planner allocates funds for each market based on the directives from the Media Director. The buyer requests rates from stations and sometimes will tell a station rep what rate is needed to get on the buy based on the station audience delivery.
Many if not most agency buys come from agencies directly, although some use buying services to get the best rates and to do the paperwork.
Depends on the station and its transmitter location. San Francisco's radio MSA is long and thin, and most FMs start out circularly. So those close to the Oakland/San Francsco "center" are going to be weaker to the south and up north, too.
LA has three conductivity zones... the coast which is fairly decent, the basin which is good and the foothills and inland highlands which are fair to poor.
The original definitions of the Arbitron markets came out in the 60's. Once a market was defined, changing it is hard as stations in the "old markets" have to agree. LA stations would not want the IE added, and no IE station would want to be absorbed into the LA market. But when Miami and Ft. Lauderdale metros combined, the majority of stations agreed as nearly all the FM covered both counties.
I know K.M. and others have made the point that 610 being religious kinda takes it off the radar, and that's true.
Another factor: 610 and 560 were pretty decent to the north and south back when a 3 mV/m to 5 mV/m signal was adequate to overcome background noise. Today, the ITU says 15 mV/m is needed in urban areas; I think that is a bit "European overstated" and think around 10 mV/m is the needed signal.
106.9 in San Francisco.
The directional patterns, whether day or night, favor the SSE, more so at night but daytime coverage also does not go as far north as it does south. You can't get it in Eureka but you can get it in Paso Robles.
But it protects the Canadian border. It has "sticks" plural.
