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1600 in Harvard is shut down per Feder

L

Link

Feder says in the suntimes today. www.suntimes.com

"* * Without warning, northwest suburban Harvard lost its radio station after 53 years on the air.

Kovas Communications pulled the plug Saturday on WMCW-AM (1600), which most recently had been airing business news.

The move was the latest step by Kovas to free up the top of the dial and reduce interference for its WONX-AM (1590) in north suburban Evanston. "

Thats all for that station folks. I hope 1590 does not get its upgrade. I wouldn't be my retirement on that scenario though.
 
...I woked at WMCW in 2000-01. David Madison mismanaged the place. Someone with even moderate intelligence could do something with it, but Madison had all the smarts of a sprouting potato...
 
This will date me. I worked there in 1988-1989! The Mitchell family owned it back then -- same ones who owned WMT in Cedar Rapids and stations in Galesburg, Illinois.
 
WOW!!!!!!! Dereg is so awesome :mad: Even if was pretty much on life support for the last few years it is sad to see another small comminuty loose its hometown station..... Once again small town radio looses out in the name of a station wanting to increase its coverage area... CC1
 
The station did a good job being local in the year I was there. While it was a small station with limited resources, it was never automated during my tenure, nor did it carry any syndication, save for the occasional MRN race on the weekends.

All weekday hours were local.
 
I got my start in radio there in 1984. Yeah, that dates me, too. Back then, we were the only station that served the tri-county area. The 2 other nearby stations, (Lake Geneva's 1550 WMIR & 850 WIVS from Crystal lake) focussed on their own counties.

The Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin has lost a great radio landmark.

It would serve Kovas Communications right if their upgrade was denied. Messing with 3 (WMCW being one) licenses in order to boost your signal is downright WRONG!! IMHO of course. I guess the FCC dosen't mind.
 
I wonder...if Kovas turns the license in...could someone apply for it and return a station to Harvard????

Anyone know the answer to that one?
 
Kovas DID return the license.

If there is another available freq, you can apply. You'd probably do better finding a more populated, more isolated, more underserved (by other signals) place. Find a county without radio service. There are a few out there.
 
I suspect that this station will return to the air at some point in the future.

Likely the FCC will not allow the station to move to Weston, Wisconsin (at 1180 AM) because Harvard does not have any other stations.

There have been other frequencies in the Chicago area that went silent but eventually came back: 820 Chicago, 1300 Evanston, 1480 Geneva, 1500 Zion, 92.7 Arlington Heights.

I don't understand why Kovas wants to kill 3 AM stations so he can upgrade 1. WONX has a decent daytime signal already that reaches much of the ethnic population the station targets. Also, he could easily simulcast the same programming on all 4 stations without moving any of the stations.

Wouldn't it be easier for Kovas to acquire another AM station that already has farther reach? There were several better AM stations that have changed hands since Kovas came up with this ridiculous idea. He could have had: 750, 820, 850, 950. AM 930 is presently for sale, and AM 850 might be available.
 
There are a number of people (on this board or working in radio) who believe turning off some AM stations is the only way to save the band. Maybe Kovas is one of them.

I wouldn't imagine that WONX can be upgraded beyond 5-7 kw because of the 1590 in Indianapolis. I looked at the proposals some months ago, but don't recall if it stated a certain power for WONX.
 
You can't license new Daytimers. 1600 in Harvard is not coming back. The FCC was letting some daytimers move, but you can't create a new one. I believe Kovas thought if he could upgrade the power for 1590, by buying and shutting down the smaller stations, 1590 would be worth more money. At the pace that this whole thing is going, I think he maybe wrong. He might have made more money by just selling 1590 when he started buying the first of the flea powered trio 1580, 1600, 1600.

Politically this is all happening at the time when (IMO) people are resentful of media consolidation. However even though the little flea power station are all broadcasting crap colon clensing infomercials and are no great loss, IMO media consolidation and control of limited spectrum is what caused the stations to suck so bad that they don't matter. No radio station owners want competition, so these little stations end up consolidated so a brokered broadcaster (no competition) can expand.

Blame former owners that sold them to someone they knew would not compete.
Blame the 96 president and congress who passed consolidation laws that allowed station clusters to be built that no single station (marginal or not) could compete against.
 
WONX 1590 sure could use some upgrading...they are very splattery.
I don't think they have an engineer, or he thinks it's ok to have products on 1550 through 1630.
I have heard other stations that splattered as bad, but I don't think it went on forever.
 
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