WBT and WBTV are still in the same building at One Julian Price Place, despite no longer being co-owned. And back in the 80's and early 90's the WBTV evening newscast was simulcast on 1110 at 6pm.
-
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
1110 New Format
- Thread starter amos1001
- Start date
Back during Hurricane Hugo when folks lost power they were able to tune to 1110 for emergency information, if they had batteries for their radio. I guess now they can tune to 107.9 if necessary. The various talent mentioned today they were planning special weekend broadcasts as warranted. I know the morning show was planned to originate from the US Capitol in DC today, but last minute Bo and Beth turned around in Virginia and returned to Charlotte for special storm coverage.
I imagine 107.9 will now be marketed as "your emergency situation station." and then next summer as your "summer vacation station." and come thanksgiving "your holiday vacation station." and any other alliteration they can think of. It's all marketing. Obviously i mean this with tongue-firmly-in-cheek, because a news-talker is more important during emergency situations than during summer vacation. But radio programmers have done this for over 40 years.
On 1110, it'll be the uninterrupted loop we can hear now. There will be no change, and certainly no license revocation. I imagine the first day of the February book we'll hear something different. I have changed my sports-talk simulcast prediction to something more on line with Radio One's mission statement. I suspect it's about to get real up in here.
On 1110, it'll be the uninterrupted loop we can hear now. There will be no change, and certainly no license revocation. I imagine the first day of the February book we'll hear something different. I have changed my sports-talk simulcast prediction to something more on line with Radio One's mission statement. I suspect it's about to get real up in here.
Which I completely understand your point but what happens if 107.9 goes down because of weather?
Why would it go down? It's actually much easier to maintain aux/backup facilities for an FM station than it is for an AM.
WBT-FM has a 38 kW auxiliary facility licensed at Spencer Mountain. If their main site goes down, one push of a button turns on the aux and 107.9 stays on the air.
38kW of FM won't cover the area 50K of AM does. Sorry, I just think it'd be hypocritical of them to be playing elevator music on a 50kW signal while we're potentially going through one of the worst winter events we've had in over 20 years. Where I work, our mantra is serve the viewer. This isn't.
Outside the metro charlotte area, what 1110 covers doesnt matter. 107.9 covers everything that matters and then some
Simulcasting TV, to me, wouldn't make much sense in this case because you're showing maps, etc. which obviously won't translate to radio.
Who says the aux signal won't cover? This is the 60 dBu contour, and in the real world it will be very listenable for 20 to 30 more miles, easily.
It's 2026, not 1960. There's no actual audience at a distance trying to tune into a scratchy AM signal when there's a nice loud FM that comes in better. Whatever emergency information WBT conveys is going to be entirely Charlotte-centric, anyway. They're not going to be giving out vital information for Spartanburg or Asheville or wherever.
There's still this idea that emergency information can only be relevant if it's on AM, and in an era when so much of the audience doesn't even know AM exists, it's hard for me to see how that plays out in the real world.
In short - serving the listener means meeting the listener where they are now. The whole point of moving WBT to 107.9 was exactly that, wasn't it?
Attachments
But the ground conductivity in that area of the south is between bad and awful. A good example is WSB in Atlanta, where their FM does just about as well as the AM.
Correct, ground conductivity is really is bad down here. It's not like the midwest where WHO, WLW, KMOX, WBBM, et al carry far beyond the FM stations in their markets. When Asheville's WWNC received well-deserved press for their coverage after Helene, most stories ignored the fact that most listeners were actually tuned to the simulcast on WKSF 99.9.
It’s interesting you mention that. When I lived in PA, I could get WSB clear as could be just about every night. No noise, no fade, like it was a local for me.
Now I live in Charlotte? Hardly ever get it.
Not sure if they’re nulled to the east to protect something, but just seems odd I’m 8 hours closer and barely get it.
Yes still at 1 Julian Price Place WBTV-WBT-WFNZ when last I knew.
I'm in Charlotte and can hear WSB 750 just fine at night.
While I agree in spirit the storm will be mostly a weekend event. They won't be Live & Local at that time no matter if it's AM or FM.
You are talking about night AM signals that "skip´" into distant areas. Unfortunately, AM listening, in severe decline in daytime hours, is negligible at night. And it is subject to static, lightening bursts and fading. Who wants that if they can get clean and clear audio on FM or, even better, on their phone or tablet from a stream?
Most of the signal at night of WBT (AM) goes in directions that protect the co-channel AM in Omaha, but at 80 miles you may get groundwave vs. skywave cancellation, making reception rather obnoxious.
That included people in Savannah. They have another station at 107.9, even if WBT's signal could go that far.
Nevertheless, it has been a common practice over the years for those who can't watch TV. I don't know if it's still done but there have been ordinary newscasts that did this. I was annoyed by not being able to listen to America's Best Music from 5 to 5:30. No, I don't know why it wasn't the 6:00 news. Maybe more people would be on the road without a TV at 5.
This was even done by a 100,000-watt FM at one time in the Greensboro area.
And then you had all the TV stations on channel 6 back in the analog days, whose audio signal was right around 87.5 mHz. You could pick it up on many car radios. I used to listen to WECT Wilmington when I would be on the way to my parents' house in Myrtle Beach on Friday evenings, and could listen both to the WECT news and NBC Nightly News. I always appreciated that. (And WCBS Newsradio 880 used to simulcast the CBS Evening News, don't recall if it was 6:30 or 7 pm. That was good too.)
Just guessing, I would say that newscasters realize that a certain percentage of their viewers are either blind or have low vision, and keep their news shows reasonably accessible to them. Normally, weather maps are more or less described as well as being depicted.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Here we go again.
Chimp, with all due respect to you as a listener, one of these days you really need to wake up to the fact that radio stations are not programmed to your specific wants and tastes.
The constant stream of "I don't like" and "this annoys me" is getting really tedious. The radio business does not revolve around you, and RD exists as a general discussion board, not as your personal gripe outlet.
I really, really wish you could find a way to look at the business from a broader perspective. I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts that might be useful, but they unfortunately get lost in all the noise from your complaining.