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1550 WZUM

Unregistered said:
That said, with the longer daylight hours of summer before us maybe a subtle format change biasing towards "summer songs" might bring in more listeners. I always have 1550 on when the backyard pool is open and in use. Everyone knows every song and loves to reminisce. Yes, that puts us in the same category as the former WJAS audience but they still write letters to the papers.
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Please send the names of the songs you think should be added and we will take a look at your list. Send them to [email protected]. The format requires the song to have charted on the Billboard R&B top 100 and the Billboard Hits top 100. There is one exception and that would be if the song was a major hit in Pittsburgh.

Thanks for listening. We appreciate it.
 
Word of Mouth is a powerful force at times. We were lucky to receive ad money for promoting the Earth, Wind, and Fire concert. Their ticket sales were very strong and caught the attention of a lot of people. The next weekend we ran ads promoting a bus trip to a jazz concert and it got very close to being a sell out. The bus trip promoter discussed his success with using WZUM with another concert promoter. We just received a small order for ads promoting the George Benson concert in two weeks.

I really appreciate the Word of Mouth promotion of our little station.

Thanks,
Ed
 
Phil Z

You should work with Alex Mellon he promotes concerts on W LS W but their signal is not good in Pittsburgh I thin you two would be a good team Alex Mellonproductions and WZUM radio.
 
The famous Phil Z from this very discussion list was one of the winners of tickets to the George Benson concert in Pittsburgh this weekend. Thanks for listening Phil!

We started with five pairs of tickets and the promoter just gave us another five to give away between now and Friday. Something must be working.
 
1550 WZUM and 660 WAMO were off the air overnight and this morning due to a power failure. Last night's storm caused a tree to become one with the power lines down the road from the transmitter site. We run all of the equipment and both transmitters off of a Best UPS. The outage exceeded the battery capacity. Given 660 was off the air and 1550 was on low power (4 watts), the UPS would have run for a long time. Just not long enough to handle today's outage.

Ed
 
Phil z

The George Benson concert was fabulous! Thank you for the tickets. Who won the Mother's Day contest?
 
1550 WZUM has changed formats!!!!

We are now the EAS Broadcasting service. It seems that way at least. The EAS has taken over the station with very redundant weather alerts. We hit five in one hour basically reporting the same information. I know warning folks about bad weather is important but there isn't need to over use the system.

Anyone listening to an AM radio statin like 1550 WZUM over the air already knows there is a bad storm in the area.
 
I Dropped Sirus XM in my Truck, Yesterday Diving to Indiana Pa. I had WZUM 1550 on all the way Through Kittanning., The Signal Became Unlistenable On Rt 422 half way Between Indiana and Kittanning, Saving Money An Enjoying the Same the Soul Town Experience [XM 49]. Thank You WZUM Keep up the Good Work.
 
Back to full power. We lost one of the two 500 watt power modules in our BE transmitter. The fix was simple. Stephen found a 10 amp fuse that looked fine but measured open. The fuse was replaced and the module is back online. I know a 3DB difference should not make much difference but listeners did notice the lower power. I did too.

Don't worry, the 4 watt night signal was okay and stayed at full power! :)
 
I hope the 10 amp fuse didn't blow for a reason. If it happens again, I'd certainly call BE and get some help.
 
frankberry said:
I hope the 10 amp fuse didn't blow for a reason. If it happens again, I'd certainly call BE and get some help.
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Thanks for the suggestion but the fuse didn't "blow". If you look through the glass, the fuse looks okay but it shows open. If there was an electrical problem, you would expect the metal in the glass to have melted open. It is possible the fuse was defective or suffered a mechanical failure due to years of fan vibration.
 
PHIL Z said:
Do you have a separate transmitter for the 4 watt's or do you use the main transmitter?
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We have one transmitter. It is a BE-1 which is an early solid state one kilowatt transmitter. It has two 500 watt power module. One module can go offline and the transmitter will continue at half power. It had the AM stereo module when we got it but the module has been removed. Given its age, it has been reliable. We looked into getting a 4 watt transmitter but that would also require a coax switch that could be controlled from the remote control. Other than thinking about it, we never did anything.
 
We sold our tower to the owner of WAMO 660KHz. This gives us more working capital and solves a property lease problem we have had since we took over the station. The lease issues are taken care of and we have a sublease that makes a lot of sense for us. The change in ownership is better for WAMO too. They have a bigger investment and can not afford anything to happen to the transmitter site. If things go bad for AM Guys, we can pull the plug and take our toys home. This would be very bad for WAMO. Both parties are happy with the agreement.

We now need to increase our revenue to cover the new lease expense. Sometimes you need to hit the lottery to operate a small AM radio station in a large market. Maybe we should start accepting donations.
 
Apple Made Me Do It!!

I sat down in front of the Simian automation system to fix a problem. The system was almost 10 minutes short and needed more content. I added a few songs and a jingle to the current hour at the end of the hour's playlist. As one song was beginning, my Apple Watch band caught on the numeric pad Enter key causing the system to jump to the next highlighted item which was a song I added at the end of the hour. I let it play and reset the system to play the song it should have been playing. I removed the song that played so it would not play again in the same hour.

This has never happened before and I was surprised the automation would respond to the Enter key that way. I never use that feature. I blame Apple since I have not worn a watch for many years until last month. Hopefully, I have learned to be more careful.
 
I'm listening to it right now! And brother, thank God for its internet stream. They have to power down to protect the signal of CBEF in Windsor, Ontario. After the sun goes down, you can count on their stream to keep you rocking and rolling with that song.
 
This would be a good day to ignore the AM signal and listen to the audio stream. We are having issues with our T1 line from the studio to the transmitter. The problem occurs when it rains and has been a problem for years. I think they have run out of clean pairs of copper so we might be stuck with what we are using.

It might be time to look for plan B. The problem is neither FiOS or Comcast passes by the transmitter location.
 
We were wondering what was going on we were driving on McKnight Road and lost your signal few times. Good luck hope you can find a cure, we love your station.
 
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