I'm a little late posting this but 107.5 W298BZ has signed back on and changed it's primary station from 1550 WLOR to 99.1 WAHR HD3. It has been on for a few months now. It is currently playing oldies, but it is jockless and there is no imaging on the station at all other than a legal ID that seems to play at random times. Honestly, it's surprisingly a poor sounding presentation, especially for a professional broadcaster. Maybe they are still testing the waters. We will see.
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Huntsville 107.5 W298BZ back on as oldies
- Thread starter RollTide
- Start date
I agree. They're still running the same thing as of today. An interesting couple of notes though. Both HD2 and HD3 subchannels for 99.1 WAHR which feeds 98.1 The Beat W251AC, and 107.5 W298BZ respectively, have been off the air for at least a week now, however both translators have continued operations. Correct me of I'm wrong, but if the parent frequencies of a translator are not operating, the translators are not allowed to operate independently. Maybe there is some leeway there I'm not aware of for technical issues? I also flipped to the AM side to see if 1550 WLOR was still symulcasting, and it seemed to also be off the air when I checked. Also, oddly enough WAHR's digital HD has been on the air for some years now, but it to this day, I can't find any record that the FCC ever received a Digital Notification filing for them. According to records, it still shows as an anolog only signal.
I've noticed in other markets that sometimes HD "parent stations" will go off the air for a while, while the FM translator runs unimpeded. Ditto parent AM stations. There's a grace period for stations needing to do repairs and the like, but over a certain time (that I can never remember) you're supposed to file an STA and take the translators off the air. No one seems to do that anymore.
WLOR has been off with a silent STA since May 2024 due to loss of the transmitter site, and I suspect it'll never come back on and the license will eventually get turned in. The parent station for the translator was changed to WAHR-HD2.
As for the digital notification, it's my understanding that it's only necessary if the station is transmitting at greater than 1% analog power in digital, or if one sideband is higher powered than the other. Otherwise, they can start and stop it without any notifications being filed. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in if I'm incorrect on that.
WLOR has been off with a silent STA since May 2024 due to loss of the transmitter site, and I suspect it'll never come back on and the license will eventually get turned in. The parent station for the translator was changed to WAHR-HD2.
As for the digital notification, it's my understanding that it's only necessary if the station is transmitting at greater than 1% analog power in digital, or if one sideband is higher powered than the other. Otherwise, they can start and stop it without any notifications being filed. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in if I'm incorrect on that.
Maybe WAHR will have their HD substations back on soon. I don't know what the grace period would be for that either, but your right, a lot of broadcasters don't follow that these days. I knew that the parent signal for both translators had changed to WAHR but I never realized that WLOR had been off the air for that long. I'll admit I'm never on the AM band anymore myself. You're probably right that it won't ever return to the air again as AM seems to be dying out everywhere, but still. Seeing a 50K watter go away is still a hard thing to see happen. WLOR always had a great signal.
That "grace period" is 24 hours.
LOL well they went way past that, but I did tune in yesterday and both their HD 2 & 3 are back on the air. I noticed though that 90.9 WJAB's HD was completely off the air now though. I don't know what the deal is with HDs in this market.
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