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WXKS AM/Talk 1200 appears to be off the air

nowradioguy said:
or, if they know it's there,
do they even care?
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Purely anecdotal (so don't draw any conclusions from it), but I can tell you that my brother, who's in his 60s, drove a car for nearly two years without knowing, or caring, that it was HD-equipped. He knows about HD now, but that's only because, while riding with him in his car a couple of months back, I pointed out the "HD" indicator and checked out what was available locally. He just shrugged the whole demonstration off as "just my radio-geek big brother". I'm pretty sure he hasn't listened to an HD, HD-1, 2 or 3 signal since then.
 
CTListener said:
Purely anecdotal (so don't draw any conclusions from it), but I can tell you that my brother, who's in his 60s, drove a car for nearly two years without knowing, or caring, that it was HD-equipped. He knows about HD now, but that's only because, while riding with him in his car a couple of months back, I pointed out the "HD" indicator and checked out what was available locally. He just shrugged the whole demonstration off as "just my radio-geek big brother". I'm pretty sure he hasn't listened to an HD, HD-1, 2 or 3 signal since then.
Click to expand...


I think it depends on the radio. My Mercedes locks in to the HD channels, so there's no avoiding them if you're flipping through the channels.
 
nowradioguy said:
Sort of makes one wonder how much longer stations will continue to maintain backup transmitters now that they have that precious "online stream".
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How do you know they are using a backup transmitter?

A lot of "backup" transmitters are the old main transmitter. Hopefully they don't get a lot of use. With the exception of capacitors which can start leaking after several decades, the lack of heat can help with long life. As long as parts are available, the spare transmitter should be a very low cost "insurance" against multiple day or week loss of revenue. Especially if you run a lot of "political" commercials which are coming up soon. Some of these commercials are impossible to make up after the election. Also there are some "sale" and going out of business flights the have time limits which can not be made up a couple days later.

IMHO the land costs (values) are much more expensive than the cost of maintaining transmitters.
 
mrradioguy said:
I think it depends on the radio. My Mercedes locks in to the HD channels, so there's no avoiding them if you're flipping through the channels.
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Again, flipping through the channels is a radio-geek thing. He's (my brother) not a radio geek and never touches the tuning knob. He listens to four local FM stations and all are on presets, and those presets are for the station's main signal. The rest of his presets are SiriusXM channels or unused, no AMs.
 
secondchoice said:
How do you know they are using a backup transmitter?

A lot of "backup" transmitters are the old main transmitter. Hopefully they don't get a lot of use. With the exception of capacitors which can start leaking after several decades, the lack of heat can help with long life. As long as parts are available, the spare transmitter should be a very low cost "insurance" against multiple day or week loss of revenue. Especially if you run a lot of "political" commercials which are coming up soon. Some of these commercials are impossible to make up after the election. Also there are some "sale" and going out of business flights the have time limits which can not be made up a couple days later.

IMHO the land costs (values) are much more expensive than the cost of maintaining transmitters.
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I did not mean to imply that a station's "backup" transmitter was at a site different than the main site. I was indeed referring to an older or previously used transmitter the station held onto. I think, but have no way of knowing, that WBZ 1030 cycles through its standby transmitters quite frequently; e.g., weekends or holidays. I perceive slight differences in audio quality, or it just could be my aging ears.

And before someone thinks he has to point it out to me: yes, I know their 10-KW backup transmitter at 1170 Soldiers Field Road was long gone since shortly after WBZ 1030 was separated from WBZ-TV.
 
nowradioguy said:
I did not mean to imply that a station's "backup" transmitter was at a site different than the main site. I was indeed referring to an older or previously used transmitter the station held onto.
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There should be no way to tell if an AM station is using a full power back unless the old transmitter is a tube rig. Generally (there are exceptions) the old tube transmitters don't modulate as "hard" as the solid state units. If the spare unit was taken care of really good, weekly tests should not be needed.

Also: Depending on the power companies billing practices, the tube transmitter can cause a "peak" which they will penalize your whole month rate.

IMHO if decommissioning the backup transmitter is the only way to "save" a station, your station is doomed anyways.
 
There's another unique set of circumstances for 1200/1330/1600.

When the old WUNR 2-tower facility on Saw Mill Brook Parkway was rebuilt a couple of decades ago for the three stations to triplex, the city of Newton was very strict about the size of the transmitter building. It couldn't be expanded beyond its existing footprint. At the time, 25 and 50 kW AM transmitters were still very large and it was a challenge to get three of them plus phasors all into the building.

That limited the space available for backup transmitters, and also ended up with several stations buying a new and unproven compact transmitter design from Broadcast Electronics that turned out to be recalled and replaced a few years into the project.

Modern high-power transmitters (primarily the Nautel NX series) are more compact and much more reliable than those BE 4MX rigs, so I assume the space crunch in the building has eased.
 
CTListener said:
Purely anecdotal (so don't draw any conclusions from it), but I can tell you that my brother, who's in his 60s, drove a car for nearly two years without knowing, or caring, that it was HD-equipped. He knows about HD now, but that's only because, while riding with him in his car a couple of months back, I pointed out the "HD" indicator and checked out what was available locally. He just shrugged the whole demonstration off as "just my radio-geek big brother". I'm pretty sure he hasn't listened to an HD, HD-1, 2 or 3 signal since then.
Click to expand...
I have a brother who lives in the NYC area and loves country music. He was disappointed a few years ago when 94.7 flipped from Country to Classic Hip Hop. We were discussing it and I asked, does your vehicle have HD Radio? He thought it did but never used it. I said go to 94.7, wait a moment, then go one step up.

He found the Country station that Audacy put on the HD2 signal after it was taken off the main station. He's a listener to this day!
 
This points out that you are still listening to it on the AM. Do yourself a favor and get yourself an HD Radio and listen to it on WZLX HD3. It sounds way better!
 


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