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1700 WJRG-AM Endicott, NY?

They call themselves Tiger Radio,has anyone heard of this station? I looked up the calls on fcc.gov and didn't find anything. Is it a low power school station or what?
 
Justin Case said:
They call themselves Tiger Radio,has anyone heard of this station? I looked up the calls on fcc.gov and didn't find anything. Is it a low power school station or what?
Mabe it's an Indepedant station for the Union Endicott School District. The last I knew, they are the "Tigers"..Look into it!
 
It took me 2 minutes to use the web and find out it's a student run radio station at Union-Endicott High school. Hope the transmitter on 1700khz meets with Part 15 standards. Regardless, ladies and gentlemen, this kind of operation is where the future radio people will come from. There's no more part time jobs to develop air personalites and operators any more. We "real" broadcasters should be encouraging and helping these kids, especially to learn how to do things right.
 
cowabunga said:
It took me 2 minutes to use the web and find out it's a student run radio station at Union-Endicott High school. Hope the transmitter on 1700khz meets with Part 15 standards. Regardless, ladies and gentlemen, this kind of operation is where the future radio people will come from. There's no more part time jobs to develop air personalites and operators any more. We "real" broadcasters should be encouraging and helping these kids, especially to learn how to do things right.
Glad to help :)
 
I googled it after I asked and followed up... Union-Endicott's stance on it is, "it may be students of UE, but it's not a school station." Upon further review, I found out some female student runs the station, her ititials are the calls and found online articles in the student run paper that says she would like to sell the station to the school upon graduation. This station has also been online and on several frequencies since its inception on her birthday last year.
 
I still don't know if its operating under an rules.. though those calls are definately not licensed.
 
While I seriously doubt those call letters are actually "legally" licensed, I love the conceptof a high school student run radio station. While I was attending high school in the SouthernTier, we initiated the idea at my school...but it never got off the ground. This medium is the breeding ground for the interest and talent of our next generation. I would love to see this ideaactually get passed legally through the district...to my knowledge, you can count the number of actual student run radio stations (that the disctrict funds) in the country on one hand. I doubt the call letters are legally binding with the FCC. I have heard through the grapevinethat they are being called "vanity" call letters...JRG standing for Justing R. Grate, the student who seems to run it. Her father is no stranger to the Clear Channel folks, when it was located on Country Club Road in Endwell. He is the man that sold "his version" of the the infamous STAR 105.7 Britney Spears incident to Inside Edition. He was a board operator for WENE-AM, and occasionally was a sidekick for the night jock on WMRV. At that time, I was also working part time in the building.It seems to me that he bought her a small AM transmitter and just started broadcasting. Anyone know the signal strength on it? Though a good idea, I hope the boys at the FCC don't catch on. -W.H.E.
 
Justin Case said:
They call themselves Tiger Radio,has anyone heard of this station? I looked up the calls on fcc.gov and didn't find anything. Is it a low power school station or what?
I figure that since this is us, I should probably respond. First, before I say anything - thanks for generating a ton of hits to the station's website yesterday - wow. I haven't checked the logs to see if it translated to online listeners, but even if it didn't, I'm glad someone took an interest.WJRG (vanity call letters were requested and issued in 2003) has served as a community radio station that is owned and run by Justine (my now 15 year old daughter) and her friends. Prior to her getting her name on it, it was a Christian Rock station, with the maximum of a listener (and that includes online). I think it started on 590 when it was Christian Rock, moved to 1610 in October 2004 when Justine rebuilt the transmitter and got an approved Part 15 antenna, and finally moved to 1700 on New Year's Day (with a cute little promotion to go with it). The reason she moved it from 590 to 1610 was that the new antenna was specifically built for the upper end of the spectrum and limits broadcast distance to the specified range. However, it was immedietely discovered that someone in the area was also broadcasting on that frequency, so after a little research (and a long discussion with the only other radio station broadcasting on 1700 in this part of the country), it was moved.Currently, the station is on "automation" due to the summer, but last semester, we had over 20 kids working here at one time, and expect twice that next semester. Dr. Coons (the UE Superintendent) expressed interest in creating a bridge between the station and the school (not physically) and will over internships and community service credit, for kids who work at the station (during 2005-06, six students benefited from this program with community service credits).As advisor (I'm the one that signs the checks and makes sure the weekly music report goes to CMJ and the stores where we either have or may soon have endcaps [Sound-Go-Round, K-Mart, Coconuts and Hot Topic] and checks the computer to make sure there are on glitches), I hope the kids will learn something and that when they go into college, they have some experience and can get started early (it's sort of like an AP program, without accreditation, tests, or any other other not-fun stuff) on the air. All kids are trained for a minimum of 15 hours on all studio equipment and basic on-air procedure. During it's first real year broadcasting, no one stepped out of bounds (at least not in a way the FCC would object) and we even had a few successful promotional events. In the upcoming school year, we plan on being a part of the Endicott Centenial festivals, UE Homecoming, and many other such activities - however, it's all up to the kids and the community.As for the change from UE Tiger Radio to just 1700am, there's not really a long story about that. We were (with school permission) using Tiger Radio (the UE had been dropped from everything but the website url). However, after an incident at a local show, we realized that any assossiation with the school might make people think it was a high school station, and this would cause bad "mojo" for the school. So, on April 23 (the day after Tigerfest), we dropped the Tiger and notified the school. The school was happy and we were happy.If you have any other questions (I'm sure I didn't answer them all), feel free to ask (however, I won't discuss my time at Clear Channel) and I might even be able to answer them.Rev. David R. Grate (aka Doc Tag)
 
I listened to the station for a few minutes. Sounds pretty cool!:)Do you have a direct email address? I have a few questions or suggestions Id rather not mention on the site here...
 
Um, One problem Rev. Call signs are not issued to Part 15 operations...and there's no such thing as a "Vanity Call" for legitimate broadcast stations. Vanity calls are issued to Ham radio operators so they can have their initials in their call sign or some other combination that's special to them. Perhaps you and Justine should seek the advice and guidance of a local broadcast professional to make sure your operation is legal. It's certainly an admirable project. BCC and Tompkins-Cortland Community College have excellent broadcast programs that the students may be interested in when they graduate.
 
It's definetely legal. That's been checked out a couple of times (each time we moved frequencies) and the JRG is a learning facility that happens to have broadcast capability. We don't accept money from advertisers (even though we legally could) and everything (including rights and such) are paid up completely. The on-air ability is just a fringe benefit.
 
WJRG-AM is a learning facility. While we do have a low-power transmitter (with a decent antenna) and a great streaming deal, our focus is on training students on air. While our computers are top-notch (we use SAM 4 as our "radio-in-a-box") and we have a Behringer mic and mixing board, we don't have anything else that might be found at a radio station (tables, chairs, desks, on-air lights, boards, speakers, racks, etc).
 
Fake call signs

I guess as long as there isn't another WJRG-AM in the US, or another service with the WJRG calls nearby, there shouldn't be much of a problem. Here in Louisville, Kentucky, we have a TV station that uses the fake calls of "WYCS". There's an Internet-only radio station based in Wisconsin, WLXQ, that changed their "calls" after WILV went on the air in Chicago.
 
Wow, what a cool story. When I started jocking at 17 I could barely tie my shoes, much less build a low power transmitter--and I went on to get a First Ticket (that's Old School Talk for an FCC First Class license). An earlier poster hit the nail on the head, though: the part-time jock gigs we worked to get our chops down (Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, weekend overnights, etc) don't exist anymore because of all the automation & networking in small market radio. There's nowhere to learn--in commercial radio or public radio. So this is exactly the kind of thing the broadcast industry should be encouraging. Despite all the perceived threats to terrestrial radio--XM/Sirius, internet radio, iPods--conventional radio ain't disappearing anytime soon. But if we don't have human beings who know how to do this stuff, it ain't gonna be pretty! (PS: the cluster where I work--AC/Country/News-Talk--has no jocks under the age of 40; average age=50). Duh.
 
William_Yeager said:
They all have fake call letters.

Not really. But even if they do, what is your problem with it? It's a bunch of kids trying to learn how to program and run a radio station. Why do you have to bring htem down?
 
wjrgam said:
William_Yeager said:
They all have fake call letters.

Not really. But even if they do, what is your problem with it? It's a bunch of kids trying to learn how to program and run a radio station. Why do you have to bring htem down?
I don't think anyone here has a problem with young people learning to program and run a radio station. The old Boy Scout Explorer post that dates back over 35 years that was hosted by then WNBF-AM-FM-TV taught a number of young people to become broadcasters, many of whom are active today. It's a nice goal. The problem you see, is that you are VERY evasive about whether or not the station has a valid FCC license. You see Reverend Sir, the way one gets a license is to APPLY to the FCC for one, and they either approve or deny. So either you have one or you don't. The "it's been checked out" answer is not an answer. Apparently the people here who can operate the FCC data base better than I can, seem to be saying that they can't find ANY proof of legal operation. Cowabunga is quite correct that "vanity" calls are not assigned to Part 15. So..if you have a license simply say so. If you don't you're a pirate operation, and that's a pretty poor thing for a Reverend to endorse and teach to young people. If you are legal, I wish you the best. If you're not..............
 
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