That being said (and maybe this has been asked elsewhere, I'd say it has), just how long has the real estate actually been up for sale or considered up for sale?
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AM 1110 Off The Air?
- Thread starter DToTheJ
- Start date
That being said (and maybe this has been asked elsewhere, I'd say it has), just how long has the real estate actually been up for sale or considered up for sale?
What advertisers would benefit from the simulcast? None. Th FM Covers everything that matters
That means absolutely nothing to sales
SW heard a few hundred miles away is well, nothing special......... try 6-7k miles away clearly, every day
That must be why KNX has zero advertisers now that they've moved back to AM only.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt... they prob. brought in some extra but not as much as a different format would
Plus the FM covers everything that counts for WBT.. the skywave of 1110 wouldnt help any
Is it Beasley or Radio One that is pushing the sale of the 1110 broadcast property? And could they consider relocating the transmitter and towers to a different site near Charlotte? Or does historic legacy not seem to matter anymore? Kind of ironic since just a few years ago they made such a big deal regarding their 100th anniversary. WBT as a brand may live on from 107.9, but the legacy frequency of 1110 no longer seems to matter.
No offense, but please tell me how "legacy" makes you money. Radio is a business, not a museum.
you think relocating or rebuilding a 3 tower site makes sense these days? it doesnt. how does legacy and history pay the bills?
That would be one huge job, assuming it could even be done. And then there's the cost of it, and recouping that cost.
It absolutely doesn't. The legacy radio stations in the UK have mostly been butchered into 3-4 quasi national networks devoid of character and mostly presenterless. 40 year old BRMB? Gone. Trent, Radio City, Ram, and dozens more stripped of their decades old identity. It's business.
Setting aside the costs and just considering the technical requirements….If 1110 were to be moved, the location would need to be west to northwest of present site but can’t be too far from present site or the nighttime interference free ground wave signal would not cover the corporate city limits of Charlotte. That’s gonna place the ideal alternative site right in the approach path to Charlotte airport. So even in a perfect world world where the financial costs are ignored, there likely is no physical location the signal could be relocated. It’d be a lot cheaper to buy KFAB and take it dark but there are, under present rules, protection afforded to 1120 KMOX St Louis and 1140 WRVA Richmond which would likely place restrictions on the 1110 nighttime pattern.
The clear channel signal of WBT was greatly sacrificed during CBS ownership in the 1930s when CBS wanted to eliminate the shared time status of its WBBM Chicago with KFAB Omaha. Had that not happened, WBT would be operating today with a single tower. Instead it was always hampered during nighttime and more important pre-sunrise hours with such a deep and broad null toward the prosperous western suburbs where many of the South’s largest textile mills were then in operation including the world’s largest, Loray Mill, at Gastonia.
Even though it never had the sky wave protection offered to WBT, Raleigh’s 680 WPTF had much better coverage of its market with the lower frequency signal performing much better in the poorly conductive soil of the Carolinas’ Piedmont.
The clear channel signal of WBT was greatly sacrificed during CBS ownership in the 1930s when CBS wanted to eliminate the shared time status of its WBBM Chicago with KFAB Omaha. Had that not happened, WBT would be operating today with a single tower. Instead it was always hampered during nighttime and more important pre-sunrise hours with such a deep and broad null toward the prosperous western suburbs where many of the South’s largest textile mills were then in operation including the world’s largest, Loray Mill, at Gastonia.
Even though it never had the sky wave protection offered to WBT, Raleigh’s 680 WPTF had much better coverage of its market with the lower frequency signal performing much better in the poorly conductive soil of the Carolinas’ Piedmont.
Let's sum up the points being discussed:
- WBT is a heritage station. My answer is that it is not as at this moment it has no audience and the "name" has been moved to the FM for whatever value the name may have.
- WBT has huge coverage part 1. At night, the skywave covers much of the areas southeast of it to the NE, east, SW and SW. But there is absolutely no ad revenue attached to night coverage outside the market as defined by Nielsen and the industry.
- WBT has huge coverage part 2. No, it does not. It is so directional at night that in "the good old days" they had a synchronous repeater on 1100 to the west of Charlotte to fill in the area that had a bad signal.
- WBT has a big local signal. Yes, daytime it is pretty good, but with current noise levels, 50 kw barely covers the metro area with a 10 mV/m to 15 mV/m daytime signal which is what is needed today to overcome urban noise according the EBU (European Broadcast Union).
- AM is dead in the Piedmont. Conductivity is so bad that there are few stations that cover their market, so those AMs that do exist can't even cover their own market in many cases. If there is not a variety of good stations on AM, the average person will not visit the band at all.
- AM is dead because it does not sound very good, even at its best. The last generations of radios made since the 80's have poor audio quality and frequency response, and the FCC h as imposed a hard cut-off at 10 kHz to avoid heterodyne squeals. But that limits even more the "fidelity" of AM overall.
There are some areas in the US that do not have adequate FM reception for local programming. Alaska and rural Nebraska come to mind. KICY still broadcasts messages to the Bush because even with Starlink and Facebook, messages can't always be reached into the villages. And KRVN broadcasts agricultural programming to a massive audience, including the rancher in Hyannis that can't get more than 3 or 4 FMs with a clear signal. Their fringe daytime map covers parts of five states.
If you look at their nighttime map (on radio-locator.com ), their "distant" coverage area is really very lightly populated, aside from the Triad and Columbia. It is this roughly 200-mile-long crescent that cuts through the largely rural Sandhills region and the equally rural lower Piedmont of SC. As 50 kw clear-channel stations go, it's not terribly impressive. It totally misses Raleigh and Greenville, and then of course there is that null towards Gastonia.
I would suggest using a site like https://www.fccdata.org instead of Radio-Locator. Radio-Locator as a site is a dinosaur and the maps it provides are not true indicators of coverage.
I believe it was just a few years ago, that Congress was pushing for AM to still be included on car radios and I believe their points (some mentioned above) are still valid. Furthermore, I'd say the same for home radios, commercial (as in used on the job), etc, where applicable, the job, that is. Re: corporate radio playing, FM included, plants have a variety of music, a new kind every three feet.
)That is current legislation that the NAB is pushing to be passed, although it has stalled in our perpetually on-recess, do-nothing Congress.
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