1140 still up all night?

[mrbeasley]

Was travelling through Conroe after sundown this evening and noticed that 1140 was still running their transmitter long after time for it to be off the air. No program on it, though. Just a dead carrier. Couldn't DX KWKH in Shreveport because of these bozos. Does anyone have any insight on what's going on with this outfit? Leaving a transmitter up all night has to be running up a hell of a light bill for an otherwise marginal operation.

 

[everydayguy]

Same owner as 1060-AM in Austin and similar FCC violation -- as a true daytimer, KFIT-AM should be signing off at local sunset, but it keeps running full power every night well past 10 p.m. even in the winter -- usually playing Spanish language religion or Black Gospel -- this has been going on for several years yet nothing from the FCC.

Does anyone have any idea how Martin Broadcasting of Houston gets away with doing this?

 

[purpledevil]

I have an idea, and a pretty good one at that. You have a city that doesn't have an active FCC field office, and a station owner that has a limited amount of technical radio knowledge. If you think that the FCC is paying any attention to the radio stations in this market, roam around the AM dial at the top of any hour. Half of our AM's don't even bother to ID, or run an illegal ID. It boils down to the FCC not having the manpower to enforce the rules that go along with having a broadcast license, and these small time owners or ownership groups knowing it.

Every Martin station, except one, in SE Texas has had problems of one variety or the other. KYOK had audio problems for well over a year. Now they are on the air day and night. KANI-Wharton was off of the air for months at a time. KZZB-Beaumont doesn't cover 1/3 of The Triangle when it's on the air, if it's on the air. Here we have problems with KFIT-Lockhart going all night long. The lone exception to this is KWWJ-Baytown. Of course, it's the flagship station of Darrell Martin and I suspect the only one in the cluster any true concern is given to.

 

[mrbeasley]

Well, and like so many other companies that originate programming in one market and send it out into other markets; I fail to see how he can serve the public interest of any of the other communities where he has stations. What I have heard on his stations in the past was so unintelligible that you wouldn't know if it was anything that meaningfully served the community or not.

I would venture to say that they don't even have public files in those markets, either. But, if you have a waiver of the location for your public file; you don't have to have one in each locale any longer.

 

[jd]

The lone exception to this is KWWJ-Baytown. Of course, it's the flagship station of Darrell Martin and I suspect the only one in the cluster any true concern is given to.

Darrell Martin owns a couple of stations in East Texas, and the last time I checked the one in Tyler sounded pretty good. It appears that KGLD 1330 also is operating at their licensed power of 1kW and cuts it back to 77 watts each night at the designated times. But as for the other legalities I couldn't say. Martin's Salt of the Earth Broadcasting is also the licensee of KEES 1430 in Gladewater/Longview, which supposedly is programmed separately from KGLD, but I'm not within listening range so I can't confirm that. Oh, and in case you're thinking of checking out the KGLD website don't do it! It may cause your browser to crash if you're using Firefox or IE. What's up with that?

 

[purpledevil]

I wonder if they employee the same engineer for the Tyler/Longview stations as they do for this area? I'd be interested to know why those stations don't have problems while ours do, especially considering the difference in market size between Houston/Galveston and Tyler/Longview. You would think the stations in market 6 would be afforded a bit more attention than what they seemingly get.