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fullabaloney
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WDDZ 550/AM sold to Salem Commucations for $550K. Salem Communications=Christian radio.
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riradio02842
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Bummer - there's already enough Christian Radio in Providence. Was hoping for something else on this frequency. Oh well...
That looks to be a steal for them to get them into Southeast New England. Don't be surprised if they try buying another facility. They like having at least 2 stations in a market; one for teaching/preaching and another for the conservative talk they run from TRN. I wouldn't put it past them to also try and upgrade the facilities.. maybe reviving the 4.6 kW-D, 2.5 kW-N DA-2. Or perhaps finding a way to get a 5 kW DA-2 on the air...
DG02816 said:
Dave:
If I remember correctly....that CP for 550 to increase to 4600 watts days / 3400 watts nights would have required a third tower to be erected at the John Street Cumberland site, which due to environmental regulations, proved impossible in that wetland/marsh.
If Salem really wanted to get this done, it's going to mean them sinking some money into a new transmitter site.
As for Salem potentially wanting a second station?....I don't see where they could go. 990/1320?.....Peter Arpin appears to be clutching on to those two dogs for dear life....and I can't for the life of me see any other possibilities.
Dighton:
I'd heard they'd sniffed around 990 a few years ago; their 990 here in Philly is what WALE has to protect. If they could pry 990 loose from Arpin, they could do there what they do down here. They own WFIL 560 as well as WNTP
990 here ,and 560 is diplexed into the 990 array here. It runs 7.3 kw-D, 8.1 kW-N, as the 990 towers are very short for 560(51 degrees tall at 560)and the higher power levels turn out to be roughly what 5 kW into quarter-wave towers at 560 would produce.
I'd heard they'd sniffed around 990 a few years ago; their 990 here in Philly is what WALE has to protect. If they could pry 990 loose from Arpin, they could do there what they do down here. They own WFIL 560 as well as WNTP
990 here ,and 560 is diplexed into the 990 array here. It runs 7.3 kw-D, 8.1 kW-N, as the 990 towers are very short for 560(51 degrees tall at 560)and the higher power levels turn out to be roughly what 5 kW into quarter-wave towers at 560 would produce.
Dighton Rockhead said:
The former studio building (now transmitter building only), as well as the towers, are in the Blackstone River flood plain. The transmitter area is sufficiently elevated so there's no problem except for getting their by boat in time of flood. The tower bases are submerged during flooding but the tuning "doghouses" are questionable. I can remember one season where there was water inside them though it did not reach the platforms with the tuning components.
Given that the lower portions of the tower have been submerged many times over the years and that I recall them being made from tube stock, there's some possibility they're not in very good shape.
All that said, the concept of a new transmitter site to get up to 5-kW might not be a bad one. 5 on 550 would not only sit up and speak; it'd sit up and SCREAM!
So, consider the Burrilville site of WALE. If that could be downgraded to maybe 20 kW with a much simpler directional array diplexing on a subset of some possible array might be attractive. It would require a purchase price for 990 similar to that alleged for 550. Some of the cash might come through selling off the 550 John Street site - surely there is some environmental outfit overflowing with federal cash to "rehabilitate" a wetland!
Of course there is the thought that the ground conductivity of the Burrilville site is sort of like that of really rocky gravel pit....
VelvetR said:
Yeah, on a REALLY good day, 20 kW on 550 from the 990 site ought to produce a signal almost (but probably not quite) as good as 550 now gets with 1 kW ND from its current site;>( OTOH, Salem really has a thing for owning a low-dial AM and a mid-dial AM in the same market. They've done this in A LOT of important markets: Boston (590, 950), New York (570, 970), Philadelphia (560, 990), Tampa Bay (570, 860, 910), Chicago (560, 1160)... I can't believe that I haven't left out a few significant markets. Preaching/teaching usually goes on the low-dial station with conservative talk usually (but not always) on the mid-dial station.
JIBGUY said:
Most of what "commercials" there are on WQOM (and there aren't many commercials altogether) are VERY low-key "institutional" ads. I've yet to hear any sort of product pitch except for the subliminal "we're here and we appreciate your business" sort of thing. From a commercial standpoint, WQOM makes NPR's underwriting credits sound like wall-to-wall infomercials;>(
I hope this market doesn't end up like Jacksonville where there are about 20 religious stations in-market. 2 are too many! I hope WARV remains THE religious station.
Anyway, here's a link to the R.B.R. article: http://www.rbr.com/radio/radio_deals/radio-disney-spins-another-am.html
Anyway, here's a link to the R.B.R. article: http://www.rbr.com/radio/radio_deals/radio-disney-spins-another-am.html
Dighton Rockhead said:
On-The-Other-Hand......
What if Citadel could be per$ueded to part with 790? Would there be enough room at 790's site to put up that third tower to do the 550 upgrade?
OR
If CC were per$ueded to part with 920...same question applies.
Dighton Rockhead said:
I'm not intimately familiar with the 790 transmitter site but from having seen it about 30-years ago I'd speculate that it may have a wetlands problem similar to 550's OR that real estate at the location is sufficiently spendy that it would not be attractive.
As to the 920 site, a wetlands issue whose whose scope (given the affluent community surrounding it) would make the 550 problem look like a cake-walk. A sleeper in all this is the WSAR site which once had four towers, now has two but the real estate is still station-owned. There has been speculation that it's available at the right price. More, the towers for WSAR's 1480 dial position are pretty tall and, though not perfect for 550, would be more easily adapted to diplexing. It might be that the two existing towers are in the wrong alignment to constitute 2/3rds of the 550 need but certainly one of them would be usable and there's plenty of real estate for two more. Consider also that the depressed real estate market makes it likely that the vacant land adjacent to the site (if needed) might never be cheaper since nobody's likely to want to build on it in the next 10 or so years. Understand that the WSAR site is NOT wetland but is very close to Lee's River which connects to Mount Hope Bay and the ground conductivity is about as good as it gets without being in a swamp!
Carry that a bit further and, due to Canada shifting its' AMs to FM, there might (MIGHT) be some possibility of getting a power increase for 1480 and make use of the additional tower or two that might be needed for a diplexed 550 to bend the pattern to make that workable.
All speculation, of course, but it's going to be fun to see if Salem does run true to form and have a Bible-thumper and a talker in the Providence Market....and which frequency will thump and which will talk.
VelvetR said:
The WSAR towers are 80 degrees at 550--more than adequate (550's existing towers are only 60 degrees), except for the ground system, which would have to be extended. As the original post stated, it is unclear whether more than one of WSAR's towers would be useful to 550. Also, 550 must protect WDEV at night and the WSAR towers are not in a good place for that because WDEV is to the north and a protection to the north would almost surely make it impossible for 550 at the WSAR site to deliver an NIF signal to Pawtucket.
As for the disappearance of Canadian stations making it possible for WSAR to improve its facilities--probably not because Canadian AMs that go dark remain notified to the US, which means that US stations must protect their signals as if they still existed.
DanStrassberg said:
There's plenty of land on the existing WSAR site for one or two more towers, probably at near a right angle to the line of the existing towers. Land might be tough for the ground system but there's a large parcel adjacent that would accommodate that. As to the COL issue, at some point the owners of 990 solved that by changing the COL to Greenville. I could see an argument for a city-of-license change to Swansea which presently is growing but has no local signals. Trick would be to get it away from Pawtucket, the present 550 COL, which is otherwise unserved... not that 550 has ever served any local interest there.
On the Canadian side, they DO periodically clean up their notification tables. It was one such notification change that allowed WSAR to tear down the four original towers on their present site and put up the two existing ones with a much cleaner pattern. Were there a third or fourth tower on the site it might (MIGHT) be possible to work some directional magic to boost 1480 power with a 3 or 4 tower array that could support higher power. I'm not saying it is so; rather that it would be something for someone with a conviction that AM is alive and well to consider.
Overall, I think the 990 possibility has the greatest promise, particularly in light of Salem linking a low-mid dial setup. Land is probably even cheaper in Burillville than in Somerset, too.
Couple bits of trivia that came to mind: this wouldn't be the first time 550 and 590 were tied together.
Do any of you remember 550 as WPNW, with biz-talk? Outside of the local RI stuff, they took programming from WBNW, which was on 590 post-WEEI Newsradio, and pre WEZE. This also makes 550 and 1590 again similar:
according to VelvetR, they both ran Beautiful Music-style formats for awhile.
Do any of you remember 550 as WPNW, with biz-talk? Outside of the local RI stuff, they took programming from WBNW, which was on 590 post-WEEI Newsradio, and pre WEZE. This also makes 550 and 1590 again similar:
according to VelvetR, they both ran Beautiful Music-style formats for awhile.
VelvetR said:
Maybe a Providence station could be paid off to change its CoL to Pawtucket, thus clearing the way for 550 to change its CoL. WRNI has been suggested.
I'm aware of only one case where Canada dropped an international notification for an AM that went dark without moving to an adjacent channel and thus making its former allocation unusable. The one case I'm aware of was in North Bay ON where an unbuilt allocation for 820 was preventing WCPT (near Chicago) from building the night facilities it wanted. WCPT's consulting engineers showed that a 770 could be built in North Bay instead of an 820. So there is now an unbuilt 770 in North Bay instead of an unbuilt 820 and WCPT was able to run 1500W at night instead of 1 kW.
The 990 towers are kind of short for 550 (~48 degrees) but as much as 16 degrees of top loading could be added, bringing the electrical height to 64 degrees, which would be OK. If only the four corner towers were used, you'd have a rectangular array with the towers spaced 110 degrees along the front-to-back axis and 102 degrees along the side-to-side axis. Probably not suitable for creating a teardrop pattern like WALE's but very likely something that could be used.
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