rdcuffpa1 said:
Looks like they're going HD as well.
That station was airing HD (IBOC) even before the format flip and call letter change. The constricted, telephone handset-quality audio in the analog channel (what we receive with a non-IBOC radio) made the oldies format painful to listen to, as the audio bandwidth in the analog component is limited to 5 kHz bandwidth. WKAP sounded dull and lifeless, although that shouldn't matter with the hellfire and brimstone religious hucksters on the new WYHM lineup. Meanwhile, the digital hiss from WYHM's IBOC sidebands trashes WAZL (1490 kHz) just 10 miles from Hazleton, where WAZL is located.
From a technical standpoint, the best sounding AM station in the Lehigh Valley is WEST. That station sounds bright and clear on my stock Dodge car radio.
There is some historical irony in religious programming appearing on 1470. Under its original callsign of WSAN, this station was founded in 1923 by the Musselman family to serve as a mouthpiece for fundamentalist Christian religious views. The call letters stood for the Sound of America Now. Later, WSAN became a dual NBC/CBS affiliate in the "Golden Age" of radio, later dropping CBS, but it still carried a lot of religious programming. The chapel at Muhlenberg College had an old hymnal in its office, dating back to 1937, that promoted a church service on WSAN. Even during its progressive rock days in the 1970s, Bud Musselman made sure that WSAN aired plenty of religious programming on Sundays. Anyone remember "Bob Wetzel, The Gospel Singer"?
In the early days, WSAN shared time with another station, WCBA. WCBA also aired its share of religious programming. When I lived in Allentown in the 1970s, I remember seeing "Radio Station WCBA" painted in gold leaf on a window above the entrance to a row home on Tilghman Street. I also remember the old WSAN studio on North 10th. Street in downtown Allentown, with its marble facade and a logo showing an old RCA DX-77 microphone, the WSAN call letters, and the phrase, "Broadcasting in the public interest".
Unfortunately, AM has become the throwaway band of corporate radio. Paid religious programming is the cheap and easy way to a quick buck, while the oldies listeners have become "too old" for the ad agencies and media buyers. That's why the oldies have given way to an assortment of "dollar a holler" preachers. The more ethical of those preach to the choir while the less ethical ones smile sweetly while conning lonely old ladies out of their life savings and running their little hate clubs that are typical of the religious right. Meanwhile, Clear Channel's sales staff in Allentown can concentrate on pitching the FMs to prospective advertisers, as FM is a much easier sell, especially with the formats airing on CC's FM stations. But WYHM will make money, even if it ends up with a flyspeck-sized audience that barely, if at all, shows up in the Arbitron book.
Oldies fans can still hear oldies on WOGL (98.1 MHz, Philadelphia). Those to the north can hear oldies on WARM (590 kHz, Scranton). WEST seems to air a mix of soft oldies, light AC, and standards.
I understand that WHOL is for sale and WTKZ (or whatever the present call letters on 1320 are) may be. Anyone for pooling some resources and buying one of those stations for an oldies format? 1320 was the original WKAP.
