There’s been no signal from iHeart’s AM flagship since mid-morning at least. The stream continues, but their usual weekend lineup of wall-to wall paid programming isn’t being heard on 710 AM.
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WOR off the air for the 4th
- Thread starter Ex-RadioTV
- Start date
No outage showing in that area at outagecenter.pseg.com. I checked shortly after the first post and didn't see one then either.
The station is still off the air as of this post.
Are they back?
Still off.
Curious what you would hear in the NYC area on 710 at night with WOR missing?
I would expect WLW & WGN to show up, but there is a lot of lightning still around late this evening, making DX-ing impossible right now.
Nothing for me. The noise floor is too high, I just get hash on my Tecsun PL-330 and Sangean HDR-14.
My Qodosen DX-286 is producing intermod, WABC mixed with one of the NYC brokered Chinese stations. And yes, lots of lightning noise too.
Worth noting, there is no status update, or even a mention of WOR being off the air all day, on their Xitter feed.
My Qodosen DX-286 is producing intermod, WABC mixed with one of the NYC brokered Chinese stations. And yes, lots of lightning noise too.
Worth noting, there is no status update, or even a mention of WOR being off the air all day, on their Xitter feed.
This was posted on the WOR Facebook site at 8PM
Due to the extreme heat, 710WOR is currently broadcasting on 710WOR.com, the iHeartRadio app, and 103.5 FM HD2. Stay cool and stay connected wherever you are. We hope to be back on 710 AM later tonight, when the power is restored.
Due to the extreme heat, 710WOR is currently broadcasting on 710WOR.com, the iHeartRadio app, and 103.5 FM HD2. Stay cool and stay connected wherever you are. We hope to be back on 710 AM later tonight, when the power is restored.
As a class A station that's been on its frequency since the early 1920s, WOR doesn't protect much of anything, and everything else that came later on 710 had to protect WOR.
So with WOR off, even if the noise floor weren't as high as it is now, you wouldn't hear much - and that's even before a bunch of other 710s all went away. Miami is at reduced power with a bad DA pattern now, Niagara Falls ON and Ville-Marie QC are long gone, Kansas City has a deep DA null against NYC, and even Los Angeles is only 2500 watts.
What else is left on the channel at this point? Bismarck, Shreveport, Amarillo, Duluth/Superior are all 10 kW or less - and eventually you get to Seattle, the other 50 kW.
So with WOR off, even if the noise floor weren't as high as it is now, you wouldn't hear much - and that's even before a bunch of other 710s all went away. Miami is at reduced power with a bad DA pattern now, Niagara Falls ON and Ville-Marie QC are long gone, Kansas City has a deep DA null against NYC, and even Los Angeles is only 2500 watts.
What else is left on the channel at this point? Bismarck, Shreveport, Amarillo, Duluth/Superior are all 10 kW or less - and eventually you get to Seattle, the other 50 kW.
I wonder, do they give those infomercialists make-goods, refunds or partial refunds? If the latter, what basis would they use?
Make goods are one of the problems with brokered time stations. When the time is gone, the revenue is gone. They may be able to run a makegood in an unsold block, but most sponsors will say "We bought this time slot, we want this time slot and don't want a different one." I worked for a couple of brokered stations when a hurricane took them off the air for a few days. Revenue was just gone.
The carefully crafted wording of the message posted to their FB suggests they'll claim the station was available all those other ways in an effort to avoid paying out any refunds.
The AM signal returned to the air sometime between midnight and noon today (July 5).
The AM signal returned to the air sometime between midnight and noon today (July 5).
One has to wonder in market #1 why they don't have some kind of generator back up. There have been blackouts in NYC before. They could have traded out time for a generator. I know at one time Hannity had a survival food dealer commercials. Infrastructure failure or worst terrorist activities can happen again.
The WOR site is a fairly new one, and it was definitely built with a generator.
A lot has changed, though, in just the last couple of decades. When it was built, the site and the station were both owned by Buckley Broadcasting. There were two full-time engineers devoted exclusively to WOR.
Now? WOR is owned by iHeart, which has only three (I think) engineers for its entire NYC operation. The site is owned by Vertical Bridge, which is notoriously lax on site maintenance.
What happens with the paid programs? You'd have to see the actual contracts to know how the lawyers will handle this. I would expect iHeart has business continuity insurance that would cover the few thousand dollars it might owe. It's a tiny rounding error against the size of the whole business.
A lot has changed, though, in just the last couple of decades. When it was built, the site and the station were both owned by Buckley Broadcasting. There were two full-time engineers devoted exclusively to WOR.
Now? WOR is owned by iHeart, which has only three (I think) engineers for its entire NYC operation. The site is owned by Vertical Bridge, which is notoriously lax on site maintenance.
What happens with the paid programs? You'd have to see the actual contracts to know how the lawyers will handle this. I would expect iHeart has business continuity insurance that would cover the few thousand dollars it might owe. It's a tiny rounding error against the size of the whole business.
Why would they be effected by heat?
Transmitters need a cool environment to operate properly.
If it's pushing 100 outside and the air conditioning fails, you end up with a very unhappy transmitter.
Because they are the only station at that site* and nobody else's AC happened to fail?
*Audacy's WXBK is also on one of the WOR towers but it has a separate transmitter room with separate cooling and separate engineers looking after it.