50,000 Watts, .1 Rating

[ToddJenkins]

I have a 4 year old girl. And she hates FM radio. With her short attention span, when the 7 minute stopset comes on, I hear her yelling, "Daddy! Come here! The music is gone again!" I retune to another safe station (oldies, AC, etc) and then I hear her yelling for me again in a few minutes.

But things have changed in the past month. She's become addicted to Pandora on my Blackberry.

No joke. She begs for it.
And now, she refuses to listen to the AM/FM radio in her room.

These days I type in "Phineas and Ferb" on Pandora, lock the Blackberry keypad, and hand her the phone. She gets hours of safe kids tunes, without 5 to 8 minute stopsets, and I get the joy(?) of knowing that corporate radio just lost another ear.

 

[MarcB]

A friend of mine was freaking out last night when I told him 1550 Radio Disney in Hartford was going off the air for good on Thursday until I told him that as far as I know it's still gonna be on satellite.

 

[davideduardo]

Thats the problem,the corporate suits have taken the fun out of radio.
Theres no happy go lucky DJ .
He doesnt announce the songs anymore.
He doesnt pick the songs anymore.

On most stations the DJ has not picked the songs since the late 50's and early 60's.

A good example of why they don't takes us back to the free form progressive rock stations of the late 60's and early 70's... as soon as Lee Abrams and others developed structured album rock formats the progressive rockers and the DJs with the obscrue deep cuts declined and disappeared.

Theres no variety.

It's interesting that the stations that have the higest perception of variety tend to be CHRs that play less than 100 songs in full rotation.

NOTHING breaks format.
So how would you ever hear anything different?
BORING!
Back to my Sirius and Ipod.

Most people don't want a lot of "different." That's why Law & Order is not into its 4th version, CSI has spawned an offshoot, CSI has three versions, etc. That's why 80% of new non-franchise restaurants fail. That's why all but a reduced subset of the population wants famiiar favorites, not the unknown.

 

[stevewillett]

Kids do know Radio Disney. My 2 oldest boys (now 15 and 12) used to beg me when they were 5 and 8 to flip it over to AM because we discovered Radio Disney. We lived 200 miles from New York City and would have to listen to AM on long travels. They figured out AM on their little walkmans and tried to tune it in at the house. Funny hearing kids saying flip it over to 1560 AM.

 

[Ai4i]

We lived 200 miles from New York City and would have to listen to AM on long travels.

You must have been traveling southeast of NYC

 

[oldies76]

On most stations the DJ has not picked the songs since the late 50's and early 60's.

Interesting, at KWVE 107.9, we picked our own music to play throughout the late 80's and early 90's, until playlists were developed later in the decade. Otherwise, it was your picks basically, as long as nothing was frequently repeated. Yes, it's a small Christian format station, but it's radio.

I believe DJ's should pick their own music, under guidelines. It's what radio was meant to be.

 

[Barry]

The Northeast Radio Watch website reports that Radio Disney will be shutting down its broadcasts this week on WDZK in Bloomfield CT, and WDDZ in Pawtucket RI. It mentions that Radio Disney has been getting out of some small and medium markets, while hanging onto its stations in the large ones.
The article points out that it is still broadcast from a number of stations in the region.

 

[MarcB]

The Northeast Radio Watch website reports that Radio Disney will be shutting down its broadcasts this week on WDZK in Bloomfield CT, and WDDZ in Pawtucket RI. It mentions that Radio Disney has been getting out of some small and medium markets, while hanging onto its stations in the large ones.
The article points out that it is still broadcast from a number of stations in the region.

Even at 5 KW day and 2.4 KW at night WDZK has an iffy signal. Probably nulled because of WQEW 1560. 550 AM in Pawtucket has a kick-azz signal. I can sometimes pick them up in the car up here in Central Connecticut. When I can pick them up it depends on where I am as to how strong they are. As I mentioned on the Providence Board I wonder if the new owner will put up with the station going off the air a lot during very heavy rain events like we had this past March. The tower site gets flooded out a lot. I think they're either on an island or in a very low-lying area.

 

[MarcB]

Personally I'd like to see 1560 WQEW sold and go Country, but it's a big risk owning a stand-alone AM even one that's 50KW.

 

[tothedj]

When a AM station in the #1 market gets only a .1 rating, it might be time to pull the plug.

 

[Ai4i]

This was bound to come up in this thread, so I will be the one to redirect it.
Everyone: You win a state lotto and come across a great deal on WQEW.
What do you do with it? Me first.
Country would certainly have an immediate following, but...
I might just push my views, as many do, with something like Liberty Radio.

 

[davideduardo]

Personally I'd like to see 1560 WQEW sold and go Country, but it's a big risk owning a stand-alone AM even one that's 50KW.

Keep in mind that 50 kw on 1560 gets about the same coverage as 1 to 2 kw on 550...

WMCA, except for the nulls towards Syracuse and Philadelphia, has better coverage at 5 kw than the 50 kw on WQEW.

In today's noisy AM world, this is not an overwhelmingly good signal.

 

[Ai4i]

In today's noisy AM world, this is not an overwhelmingly good signal.

Agreed.
Not that I have a few extra notes laying around, but as two FM's recently sold for $45 million and $11.5 million, where would you place the 1560 stick value?

 

[davideduardo]

In today's noisy AM world, this is not an overwhelmingly good signal.

Agreed.
Not that I have a few extra notes laying around, but as two FM's recently sold for $45 million and $11.5 million, where would you place the 1560 stick value?

That would be a superior facility for some kind of ethnic or brokered programming... but it is anybody's guess as to value. It might be between $20 to $30 million and the variable is the land where the directional system sits. Which brings up, again, that some AM stations have land worth more than the station itself and so are in that "worth more dead than alive" situation. AMs, particularly directionals, that get displaced may never rebuild for that reason.