An article in the Scott County Times reports that WQST-AM has gone dark and management has turned in their license as of December 31,2012. The station will continue programming on the Internet at http://www.850WQST.com playing Gospel Music and airing local sports in Scott County. "The station has not been profitable or cost effective within the last few years" says Howard Clark, one of the shareholders. The Building has deteriorated and their has been issues with the electrical system. Sorry to see them go.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
850 WQST-AM goes dark
- Thread starter richllewis
- Start date
sad to see it go.....Hwy 80 East of Forest was the site of my first radio gig in 1985
There web site http://www.850wqst.com is not working. They are doing a streaming program on Tunein playing Gospel music. I was hoping to get some local school closings and the like. It is like they were still on the air but without the transmitter on. It appears that they could not afford to keep the transmitter on.
The website is actually http://www.850amwqst.com.
I'm trusting an old man's fading memory ... but I worked with Jerry Hughes at WKXI in 1972 ... his dad was GM of the Forest stations ... and I seem to recall the stations were owned by Roth Hook, who owned several stations in Ala & Miss. The AM was originally on 860(?) with maybe 500 or 1000 watts, but moved to 850 to get 10 kw and needed several DA towers to protect WYDE-850 Bham et al. Unfortunately, the site was too far from Jackson or Meridian, and just covered a lot of unpopulated area in between. And wasn't the AM known as WMAG back then? About the same time, I thought the FM upgraded height and power. I recall Jerry joking that once the FM increased its reach, it might go to a black format and be competitive with us in the Jackson market. But he was, apparently, just kidding around.
Curiosity being piqued by this thread, I found an online historic (1982) topo map that sure-enough shows the towers of "WMAG WQST FM".
Four inline towers SSW-to-NNE. Google maps shows no evidence left of the northernmost three towers, just the one by Highway 80. That map also does not show the 1000' tower, so the FM must have still been on one of the AM towers at that time.
I know the current 92.5 tower still has the skirt-wire detuning assembly on it.
UPDATE: Bing Maps birds-eye view found the site. The remaining tower is on the north side of the road at 18844 US-80, Forest, MS. Zoom in, look north-northwest in the field behind it, and you'll see the shells of what had to be the middle two doghouses.
Call it Directional Antenna-tology.
Four inline towers SSW-to-NNE. Google maps shows no evidence left of the northernmost three towers, just the one by Highway 80. That map also does not show the 1000' tower, so the FM must have still been on one of the AM towers at that time.
I know the current 92.5 tower still has the skirt-wire detuning assembly on it.
UPDATE: Bing Maps birds-eye view found the site. The remaining tower is on the north side of the road at 18844 US-80, Forest, MS. Zoom in, look north-northwest in the field behind it, and you'll see the shells of what had to be the middle two doghouses.
Call it Directional Antenna-tology.
The site went to 500w on a single tower around 2000. The old CCA transmitter and directional array were in bad shape, along with the fact that the property owner where the 3 northern towers were located wanted to go up on the rent. I helped with the engineering in 2000 and several times thereafter. Sorry to see it go.
RFB
RFB
Thanks. I stand corrected. I am listening to the internet feed online on 850amwqst.com. And this change means they are going 24 hours a day.
I guess they were not able to generate enough cash from local ads to either repair or buy a new transmitter. According to Dr. Clark, they were losing money.
This internet model they are using may be the model for small town stations that are losing money. This is a unique model. They are streaming on the Internet just like nothing has happened. The only difference is that they are not using the airwaves.
This is where the article is that was in the Scott County Times:
http://www.sctonline.net
You may need to subscribe to the site to read the article.
http://www.sctonline.net
You may need to subscribe to the site to read the article.
WMAG 850 was country in the 70's. WQST FM was some sort of automated pop format. If I remember correctly after WMAG signed off at sunset, the FM station would go live and continue where WMAG left off. Similar to the way the old WRKN would do, by being live on AM during the day and then going live on FM at night.
WMAG changed it's call letters to WJYV and flipped to a RnB/soul format and the country moved over to the FM station. I remember them telling listeners to buy FM converters (remember those?) for their cars so they could hear country music. WJYV eventually became WQST AM and for a while was oldies if I remember correctly. The signal was fairly huge and remember it being quite loud around the jackson area. I used to listen to it while attending Hinds Jr. College in Raymond. For a while someone put a very loud black gospel format on both WQST AM and WRKN AM and WRJH overnights but only lasted a short while. I remember they used to leave 850 at full 10,000 watts way past sunset. It seems the station kind of went downhill after that, and was on the air sporadically and now at low power.j I wish they had kept the classic country format they had several years ago with the simulcast on 970 going. Its a shame to see all these old stations die. They are dropping like flies.
WMAG changed it's call letters to WJYV and flipped to a RnB/soul format and the country moved over to the FM station. I remember them telling listeners to buy FM converters (remember those?) for their cars so they could hear country music. WJYV eventually became WQST AM and for a while was oldies if I remember correctly. The signal was fairly huge and remember it being quite loud around the jackson area. I used to listen to it while attending Hinds Jr. College in Raymond. For a while someone put a very loud black gospel format on both WQST AM and WRKN AM and WRJH overnights but only lasted a short while. I remember they used to leave 850 at full 10,000 watts way past sunset. It seems the station kind of went downhill after that, and was on the air sporadically and now at low power.j I wish they had kept the classic country format they had several years ago with the simulcast on 970 going. Its a shame to see all these old stations die. They are dropping like flies.
To follow up on my prior comment, I went back and looked at some old Broadcasting Yearbooks. The 1975, 76,77,78, and 79 editions all list WMAG 860 with 500 watts D (CP 10 kw DA on 850). I'm sure the CP was built earlier, and assume the listings was not updated in timely fashion.
I remember listening to WMAG 850 with a powerful signal back in the mid 70's. Im pretty sure it was 10,000 watts. It had a pretty mean signal all the way through Jackson. At 500 watts it doesn't reach much further than Pelehatchie. In Brandon, its mostly static. Some of those books are prob. outdated. There are also lots of outdated information on Radio-Locator.com also. I wonder why the didn't try to sell it. If they could have gotten a low power FM for it, even if only a few watts may have saved it. It was the only station left in that area. unless you count the old 92.5 which isn't local anymore.
I often thought the Mathis guys inspired other small-town broadcasters to build big signal AMs. They, after all, went from a 500 watt daytimer in Magee to a fulltimer with 50 kw day ... and they evolved to a 50 kw day monster in Houston MS also. This may have been what tempted WMAG to build out that big DA. One has to stop and think about the cost of building 3 or 4 towers... you gotta paint them periodically, you gotta light them nightly, you got to insure them all the time, and you gotta pay a lot of engineering costs to keep them within tolerance. Maybe in the 60s there was still enough confidence that AM would remain dominant, but as we went thru the 70s it became more and more certain that AM would become the stepchild of an FM. All that expense got your signal into adjacent small town but you still could not get a high enough ad rate to cover that antenna farm.
Every time I drive along the Miss coast, I think of the expense incurred in making fulltime facilities out of daytimers like WROA 1390 and WVMI 570.... those and the WOKJ 1550 six tower debacle are some of the worst examples.
Every time I drive along the Miss coast, I think of the expense incurred in making fulltime facilities out of daytimers like WROA 1390 and WVMI 570.... those and the WOKJ 1550 six tower debacle are some of the worst examples.
wish I still had one ... used to have a bunch of them. Actually the one they had on the rate card was bogus ... it was exaggerated. We turned it in to the FCC and they had to correct it. The day and night patterns were similar ... like a butterfly ... one wing to the NW and one due east during the day ... the night one had one wing to the NW and the other one was kinda E-SE.
Couldn't listen to it in Canton, Terry, or Vicksburg during the day... and when you headed SE on US 49, it was gone completely before you got out of Richland. Not listenable on the Tougaloo campus at night.
Daytime it protected Senatobia to the north, Shreveport to the west, Mobile (WMOO) to the SE, Baton Rouge to the south.
As I discussed in an earlier forum, its coverage was better on 1590 5 kw D , 1 kw DA-N ... but the mere ability to claim "50 kw" back then caused ad agencies to buy the station, as the ratings services back then didn't have much demographic/daypart detail. The move brought in an increase in business, but made it very vulnerable to competitive attack.
Mobile is no longer on 1550, Shreveport 1550 is dark now, and Senatobia has moved off 1550 ... so if anyone were foolish enough to resuscitate the station, it would have a better situation than it did back then, but it would still be a disaster.
Couldn't listen to it in Canton, Terry, or Vicksburg during the day... and when you headed SE on US 49, it was gone completely before you got out of Richland. Not listenable on the Tougaloo campus at night.
Daytime it protected Senatobia to the north, Shreveport to the west, Mobile (WMOO) to the SE, Baton Rouge to the south.
As I discussed in an earlier forum, its coverage was better on 1590 5 kw D , 1 kw DA-N ... but the mere ability to claim "50 kw" back then caused ad agencies to buy the station, as the ratings services back then didn't have much demographic/daypart detail. The move brought in an increase in business, but made it very vulnerable to competitive attack.
Mobile is no longer on 1550, Shreveport 1550 is dark now, and Senatobia has moved off 1550 ... so if anyone were foolish enough to resuscitate the station, it would have a better situation than it did back then, but it would still be a disaster.
For those of you who have wondered about 850AMwqst.com, they had an outage with AT+T for a few days but their Internet station is back on the air and playing gospel music. I wonder what the difference is from regular DSL and what they have. I assume it is a different connection from the regular hi-speed DSL that AT+T provides.
flytrap said:
Here you go:
http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BC-YB/1969/B 1 Radio 1969 BC YB.pdf
Scroll down to page B-95.
I would say this was their day pattern. I have an older NRC Night Pattern book that shows their night pattern, and it's pretty much the same, but tighter. As I posted much earlier on here, I could hear WOKJ at night on I 25 in Colorado between Pueblo and Colorado Springs, so that pretty well tells where the west lobe pointed.
The station in Mobile would sometimes obliterate WOKJ early in the morning. At night you hear the Shreveport station in the background of WOKJ. There is also a powerful station in Huntsville on 1550. Not sure if that one was around back then, but some nights it comes in strong around Jackson, and would have caused WOKJ problems if it had been. Several years ago there was an application on the FCC site for as new jackson station on 1550, but no where near 50 kw. I believe it was more like 1,500 watts but it never got built. Looking at that link by the other poster, I see dozens of stations that are no longer around.
In the old days (pre 1961) 1550 Huntsville was there (WHBS, then WAAY), as was Shreveport (back then it was KENT, later KOKA). FCC changed policy on the freq, and began accepting apps ... Birmingham asked for a new 50 kw DA-D; 1570 Selma asked to move to 1550; Mobile asked for a new 50 kw DA-D (NW by SE figure 8 -- the NW lobe aimed right at Jackson); Baton Rouge asked for new 5 kw D; Senatobia asked for 5 kw D; Jackson asked for 50 kw/10kw DA-2 moving to 1550 from 1590. And Shreveport asked for increase from 1 kw to 10 kw Day (500 nite). A lot of this was mutually-exclusive. They all got together and agreed to accept each other's interference, FCC granted 'em all and sat back to see who would build the CPs. Selma never made the move, Birmingham was never built (sandwiched between Huntsville and Selma it was doomed).
WOKJ had a severe null down US 49 to the SE ... you could hear Mobile past Mendenhall, and the other nulls were pretty deep too.
That map shown in the Bcstg Yrbook is exaggerated, as was one the station (under original owner John McLendon) put out - it was free-handed. The Rodens bought the station when McL died, and continued using the coverage map. We (owners of WKXI) had a consulting engineer draw the actual one (complete with interference inside the 0.5 mv/m which would ordinarily be interference-free), and overlaid it on the McLendon one - submitted it to the FCC, and the Rodens had to stop using it.
WOKJ used to put out a night coverage map which showed no contours, but instead highlighted counties - in Miss, Ala, Ga, Ark, Okla - where they had gotten listener mail. Often wondered if one piece of mail in a 5 year period qualified a particular county.
WOKJ had a severe null down US 49 to the SE ... you could hear Mobile past Mendenhall, and the other nulls were pretty deep too.
That map shown in the Bcstg Yrbook is exaggerated, as was one the station (under original owner John McLendon) put out - it was free-handed. The Rodens bought the station when McL died, and continued using the coverage map. We (owners of WKXI) had a consulting engineer draw the actual one (complete with interference inside the 0.5 mv/m which would ordinarily be interference-free), and overlaid it on the McLendon one - submitted it to the FCC, and the Rodens had to stop using it.
WOKJ used to put out a night coverage map which showed no contours, but instead highlighted counties - in Miss, Ala, Ga, Ark, Okla - where they had gotten listener mail. Often wondered if one piece of mail in a 5 year period qualified a particular county.
- Status