• 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

560

Mark Roberts said:
A friendly reminder that we will know the fate of KZAC in less than two months.

As a project manager I knew used to say, "the clock is ticking faster!"

(there's a reason I put that in quotes)
Click to expand...
My clocks are ticking faster. Then slower. Then faster again. That's because, Mark, your former employer seems constitutionally incapable of regulating their 60 Hertz line frequency to save their lives. (They're also constitutionally incapable of talking to customers who try to tell them they have a problem.)

We now return you to the deep mystery around who will be the eventual "biggest sucker-in-possession" of KZAC/560.
 
Weiserguy said:
My clocks are ticking faster. Then slower. Then faster again. That's because, Mark, your former employer seems constitutionally incapable of regulating their 60 Hertz line frequency to save their lives. (They're also constitutionally incapable of talking to customers who try to tell them they have a problem.)

We now return you to the deep mystery around who will be the eventual "biggest sucker-in-possession" of KZAC/560.
Click to expand...

My bet?

Nobody. I think it goes dark permanently. I could be wrong, and we’ll see.
 
michael hagerty said:
My bet?

Nobody. I think it goes dark permanently. I could be wrong, and we’ll see.
Click to expand...
I think there are a few owners of weaker, higher-up-the-dial AM stations that would be happy to move their operation down to 560 IF Cumulus got realistic about how much they'd accept for it. If they did, Cumulus would walk away with at least something, and the other party would get a station whose signal doesn't keep disappearing beneath the waves of RFI. The buyer could then (maybe) transition their own transmitter site into 560's plant and turn in their old license. WIn-win (maybe). Although, who knows, the tax writeoff for Cumulus might be worth more than any residual monetary value the station possesses, in which case Mike's right, buh-bye KSFO/KZAC.
 
Weiserguy said:
I think there are a few owners of weaker, higher-up-the-dial AM stations that would be happy to move their operation down to 560 IF Cumulus got realistic about how much they'd accept for it. If they did, Cumulus would walk away with at least something, and the other party would get a station whose signal doesn't keep disappearing beneath the waves of RFI. The buyer could then (maybe) transition their own transmitter site into 560's plant and turn in their old license. WIn-win (maybe). Although, who knows, the tax writeoff for Cumulus might be worth more than any residual monetary value the station possesses, in which case Mike's right, buh-bye KSFO/KZAC.
Click to expand...

You could very well be right.

My thought process (and it's about to get real dark up in here, yo):

If I own a weaker signal and see the opportunity for an upgrade, and Cumulus will take the money I think is sane, I still have to get my old audience from up near the police band down to 560.

So I look at the success Cumulus had in moving its audience from 560 to 810, and I see that they've gone from a 1.8 to an 0.7---and that 0.7 is the highest-rated AM without a simulcast in the market. AM listening levels in the Bay Area are astonishingly low and unlikely to improve.

This move is gonna cost me money I'm not currently spending beyond the purchase price--the tower lease, a higher electric bill, some level of promotion. And there's no guarantee the signal upgrade improves my revenue picture.

560 is like a used car sitting at the local garage with a "for sale" sign on it. It's only a matter of time before it ends up at the garage again and this time, it's you who decides it's not worth the money to keep it running.
 
Isn't it possible an extension can be filed to the silent authority stating they are negotiating with a buyer or something else silly to be able to hang on to the license a little longer?
 
JJSPC said:
Isn't it possible an extension can be filed to the silent authority stating they are negotiating with a buyer or something else silly to be able to hang on to the license a little longer?
Click to expand...

You mean lie to the federal government in order to hang onto a property that isn't generating revenue, still costs them money (tower lease, basic upkeep) and is depreciating, so that when they do turn in the license and write off the value, they get less of a tax break?



























Solid plan.
 
Last edited:
JJSPC said:
Not at all saying it's a great plan, but it's been known to happen with other stations.
Click to expand...

The 365 days of silence is part of an act of Congress. The FCC can't just issue a waiver.

If there's a buyer in the wings for 560 (and there's no reason to think there is after this long), the legal and commonly-used path forward would be for Cumulus to reactivate 560 before the year is up, file a resumption of operations notification, and then go silent again after a week or a few days.

This assumes Cumulus can still operate from the Islais Creek site, which is uncertain. I know from their new chief engineer that he has no involvement with that site at all, which would suggest Cumulus isn't putting it back on before the license goes away.
 
fybush said:
The 365 days of silence is part of an act of Congress. The FCC can't just issue a waiver.

If there's a buyer in the wings for 560 (and there's no reason to think there is after this long), the legal and commonly-used path forward would be for Cumulus to reactivate 560 before the year is up, file a resumption of operations notification, and then go silent again after a week or a few days.

This assumes Cumulus can still operate from the Islais Creek site, which is uncertain. I know from their new chief engineer that he has no involvement with that site at all, which would suggest Cumulus isn't putting it back on before the license goes away.
Click to expand...
…then why don’t they hand in the license today?
 
Surrendering a low band AM station with 5KW DA-N in a major market will really make a statement if it's indeed a good tax write off. I still say the adding simulcasts to KNBR and KCBS only accelerated the inevitable demise of the AM band in the Bay Area. There's really no reason for the masses to go to AM at all. Without KNBR and KCBS, there isn't much cume on the AM band unless you are in the fringes of the market.

The additional conservative flight from the Bay Area continues to hurt what used to be "somewhat valuable" conservative talk. iHeart even sees that having BIN on 910 and the

That's just my two cents.
 
Michael Rivers Kramer said:
Surrendering a low band AM station with 5KW DA-N in a major market will really make a statement if it's indeed a good tax write off. I still say the adding simulcasts to KNBR and KCBS only accelerated the inevitable demise of the AM band in the Bay Area.
Click to expand...

Yes, but it also kept those stations afloat. They not only have listeners who abandoned AM to hear them on FM, they have listeners who were already FM-exclusive who would not have developed an AM habit just to listen to them.

I'm turning 70 in two and a half months. If I hadn't been in radio and listened "professionally" (to hear jocks and programming/promotion techniques), I likely wouldn't have listened to AM after I started listening regularly to FM in 1969.
 
Just one guy's opinion: I have KGO -- (no, I won't) -- and KNBR close enough to my house that I can see their sticks from my bedroom, but they sound like crap on the best of my radios. But I can also hear KCBS from Novato on those same radios, and can also hear it via KFRC-FM, and I actually prefer the sound of the AM better. Maybe this is a byproduct of hearing loss -- aside from all the headphone listening and audio work I've done over a lifetime, I also had the great good fortune to grow up under the final approach path to JFK runway 22L, in the days of Boeing 707's and DC8's, so tinnitus has become my regular companion -- but KCBS-AM just has a cleaner, more clear, more resonant sound that the other AM's no longer have. Make of that what you will.
 
Weiserguy said:
Just one guy's opinion: I have KGO -- (no, I won't) --
Click to expand...

Attaboy, @Weiserguy ! And while we're at it, it's the Fog City Diner, the Nimitz Freeway and Long's Drugs, dammit!

Get me Van Amburg and Herb Caen! We'll get this straightened out.
























Carry on.
Weiserguy said:
and KNBR close enough to my house that I can see their sticks from my bedroom, but they sound like crap on the best of my radios. But I can also hear KCBS from Novato on those same radios, and can also hear it via KFRC-FM, and I actually prefer the sound of the AM better. Maybe this is a byproduct of hearing loss -- aside from all the headphone listening and audio work I've done over a lifetime, I also had the great good fortune to grow up under the final approach path to JFK runway 22L, in the days of Boeing 707's and DC8's, so tinnitus has become my regular companion -- but KCBS-AM just has a cleaner, more clear, more resonant sound that the other AM's no longer have. Make of that what you will.
Click to expand...

KCBS does sound good for an AM. And I'm just enough of the right kind of geek to admit that their top-of-the-hour sounds a lot punchier on the AM than it does the FM. More aggressive compression.

 
Last edited:
michael hagerty said:
Because the write-off value won't change in 60-ish days, and in that time, although it's unlikely for the reasons stated above, someone with more money than sense might make them a more profitable offer.
Click to expand...
We have to remember that a write off is based on the book value of a property at its point of abandonment. Normally, businesses depreciate the physical assets over a period of time. The intangible assets, according to standard accounting practices, have to be reevaluated periodically; this is based on an assessment of current market value.

In recent years, we have seen a number of broadcasters take paper losses due to the reevaluation of the value of stations. In the case of 560, it is probable that they had to write off any remaining asset value on the books when they closed it.
 
michael hagerty said:
KCBS does sound good for an AM. And I'm just enough of the right kind of geek to admit that their top-of-the-hour sounds a lot punchier on the AM than it does the FM. More aggressive compression.
Click to expand...
I agree.

I've done side-by-side comparisons using my '94 GMC truck's stock stereo, so it still has decent-for-AM bandwidth, probably 6kHz, give or take (fun little fact about this stereo: in AM C-QUAM mode, it actually opens up the bandwidth a bit with close signals, probably something like 7.5-8kHz. I know this only because I have a little transmitter that is capable of broadcasting in that mode; the only C-QUAM station still in existence is KVON, which is too distant to pull in clearly). I've also used my Sony SRF-A100 to listen to the AM in wideband mode.

In either case, normal narrowband mono or wideband, KCBS-AM sounds fundamentally indistinguishable from the FM, except of course for the fact that as you noted, the AM sounds punchier and clearer. The FM, of course, has a much wider frequency response, but the highs seem a bit annoying. Perhaps they're a bit on the hot side? Or maybe it's because I listen on AM the vast majority of the time and I'm simply not used to hearing it on FM.

I've tried listening on FM, but I always go back to AM despite the static and less-good frequency response because it just sounds better to me (modern car radios don't help, however with their sharp cutoffs somewhere around 4 kHz, which is okay for talk, but almost worthless for music).

michael hagerty said:
Weiserguy said:
Just one guy's opinion: I have KGO -- (no, I won't) --
Click to expand...
Attaboy, @Weiserguy ! And while we're at it, it's the Fog City Diner, the Nimitz Freeway and Long's Drugs, dammit!

Get me Van Amburg and Herb Caen! We'll get this straightened out.
Click to expand...
alok said:
throw in THE DOGGIE DINER too!!!
Click to expand...
If you've been to the East Bay in downtown Lafayette before the early 2000s, there was also Freddy's Pizza. It's not widely known across the entire Bay Area I don't think, but it was locally popular.

Oh, and speaking of restaurants, who can forget the Cliff House?

***and this thread has now slid firmly back into discussion of, among other things, inane and sundry San Francisco factoids and obscure trivia***

c
 
cc333 said:
If you've been to the East Bay in downtown Lafayette before the early 2000s, there was also Freddy's Pizza. It's not widely known across the entire Bay Area I don't think, but it was locally popular.

Oh, and speaking of restaurants, who can forget the Cliff House?

***and this thread has now slid firmly back into discussion of, among other things, inane and sundry San Francisco factoids and obscure trivia***

c
Click to expand...
Again, my joke was about @Weiserguy deadnaming KSFO. Not about stuff that’s gone, but stuff that we now use different names for (CVS, 880). My error (from not double-checking) was thinking that Fog City was renamed. In fact, it closed and sits vacant.

As for the Cliff House:

 
Or...they can just donate it to someone for a a tax write off.

Is it too far fetched to give it to the CHRS in Alameda, and through donations put it back on the air with a longwire or drop down antenna somewhere.

Broadcast nostalgic programming like the internet feeds of KABL and KYA online. A fun project that would welcome volunteers.

Hey, a person can at least dream right?

Maybe @michael hagerty could throw the idaa at them on his next trip there....
 
Last edited:


Back
Top Bottom