I am listening in Houston online. I just an heard a Legal ID. Is the classic cool on the internet 24/7 while it still shares format time with Relevant Radio on the air?
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950 AM THE AVENUE?
- Thread starter radiotower40
- Start date
Stormy01, wasn't that station dark for a while? When did they turn it back on?stormy01 said:
TR1992 said:
WZRK has been of the air for about a year, according to an earlier message on this site. I believe that in order for the licensee of a radio station in the U.S. to keep their facility licensed the licensee must have it on the air at least once per year, or the license is deleted. 'ZRK has been off since about November of last year, so that makes sense that it was reactivated. It was Tuesday Nov. 3 that I first noted 'ZRK was on, I don't scan the AM dial every single day, but often. I have no idea how long WZRK will stay on, if one wants to know, contact Sovereign City. I believe there is contact information on the Avenue 950 website, www.avenue950.com [email protected]
Thanks stormy01.stormy01 said:
TR
klutch00 said:
From reading this thread from the beginning, my understanding is "The Avenue" is only on the air from 6PM-5AM. The rest of the time they run brokered programming. And the overnights aren't counted in the ratings. Therefore despite being on the air 11 hours/day, in the ratings world they're only on 6 hours.
The Avenue 950 was listenable the last couple of nights here in the Crystal Lake area, and so was WNWI 1080, but no sign of WRTO on 1200. Are they on the new 4.5kW night power & pattern yet?
I'm sure atmospheric conditions had almost everything to do with it - what a shame, the station is 5kW at night, albeit highly directional, and only about 40 miles away, yet most of the time it sounds like it's much further away. Too bad WNTD won't/can't move the transmitter site further west - from the looks of the signal map on radio-locator.com, http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WNTD&service=AM&status=L&hours=N, about 2/3's of their primary coverage is wasted over Lake Michigan - great in the summer for those boaters listening to Avenue 950! If WNTD would move their transmitter site somewhere near Joliet similar to where WYLL has their transmitter/towers, they would have almost complete coverage of the Metropolitan area!
Hint, Hint - WNTD Engineering: Move the transmitter site further west, and get that wasted 2/3's of your signal on land!
I'm sure atmospheric conditions had almost everything to do with it - what a shame, the station is 5kW at night, albeit highly directional, and only about 40 miles away, yet most of the time it sounds like it's much further away. Too bad WNTD won't/can't move the transmitter site further west - from the looks of the signal map on radio-locator.com, http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WNTD&service=AM&status=L&hours=N, about 2/3's of their primary coverage is wasted over Lake Michigan - great in the summer for those boaters listening to Avenue 950! If WNTD would move their transmitter site somewhere near Joliet similar to where WYLL has their transmitter/towers, they would have almost complete coverage of the Metropolitan area!
Hint, Hint - WNTD Engineering: Move the transmitter site further west, and get that wasted 2/3's of your signal on land!
"Hint, Hint - WNTD Engineering: Move the transmitter site further west, and get that wasted 2/3's of your signal on land!"
Stormy, I dig the station too when I visit Chicago. In fact their night time towers are literally in my sister's backyard between Cal City and Burnham.
The thing is, there are 6 towers there. It would be a tad difficult to roll in a Mayflower moving van and pack up the towers, transmitter and phaser and move them west. The FCC might not be too pleased with it either.
And I doubt that the owner has the $$$ to finance such an undertaking if it were possible.
Great programming idea and I hope it continues!
Stormy, I dig the station too when I visit Chicago. In fact their night time towers are literally in my sister's backyard between Cal City and Burnham.
The thing is, there are 6 towers there. It would be a tad difficult to roll in a Mayflower moving van and pack up the towers, transmitter and phaser and move them west. The FCC might not be too pleased with it either.
And I doubt that the owner has the $$$ to finance such an undertaking if it were possible.
Great programming idea and I hope it continues!
317C50KW said:
In a perfect world, all of the stations in Chicago would have had the foresight to cover "The Metro" and not just the city proper before other cities like Detroit upped their power. It is good to listen to the stations like The Avenue when I'm in or near the city, but so sad to hear it get lost in the jumble of out-of-town signals by the time I get near my area, less than 40 miles from the transmitter site. I hope the powers that be at "Sovereign City" will someday have the resources to improve that 950 signal. After all, 110kHz is a long way from 890 to 1000!!!! (theoretically there should be two metro-grade signals in that range) Of course, it is an expen$ive proposition to build a tower site, but what were they thinking, only in terms of covering the city proper, but not the metro??? - way more than half of the overall "metro" population lives in the "burbs" and that's where the people with money to spend live! I'm sure some very creative and gifted engineers could get a much better signal on 950 to the entire metro, notwithstanding WWJ, albeit at a price that someone other than Sovereign City is willing to pay!
stormy01 said:
Huh? Are you talking about stations licensed to the same community? (Although it would now theoretically be possible for AMs licensed to the same community to be 30 kHz apart, there are no instances of such spacing that I know of--and not even any applications that I know of. The FCC apparently does not want to tamper with the 40-kHz, spacing, which has been the rule for 70+ years.) With 40 kHz spacing, between 890 and 1000, you could have 930 and... whoops--970 doesn't quite fit! If you are talking about stations licensed to multiple communities, then, sure, you could have 930 and 960.
stormy01 said:
Detroit was there first.
Until early 1941, WLS was on 870 and the station that is today WMVP was on 970. (the station we're talking about today, then known as WAAF, was on 920. Most stations changed frequency in early 1941.) Even under today's rules, you couldn't fit two Chicago stations between 870 and 970. When the assignments were made in the late 1920s, it was even less possible, as the necessary spacing between stations in the same city was 50KHz, not 40. Besides, you had out-of-town stations to worry about. For example, Madison's WHA on 940. 910 was a Canadian Clear, not available to U.S. stations.
There was an earlier Big Shift in 1928. Before this shift, WAAF/Chicago was on 770 sharing time with WBBM and WJBT. The Detroit station was on 850 sharing time with St. Louis' WEW, but WEW belonged to St. Louis University and didn't have a very extensive operating schedule. (24/7 broadcasting simply didn't exist at the time, and it was common for stations to not even broadcast every day) So WAAF had fewer hours on their old 770 frequency, and when they got shifted to 920 along with Detroit, WAAF ended up with a daytime-only license. At least they could operate all day, every day! -- I'll bet that wasn't possible when they were sharing a frequency with WBBM...
Mysteriously, 950 The Avenue has been much more listenable at my location in the evening. No changes to my receiving equipment. Have no idea if it's because the soil around their towers has been wetter due to the snow, or one of their towers are not suppressing signal in my direction (shhhh...don't tell the engineers...let them leave it that way forever!!!)
Yes, they are on the new tower's both day and night, with no hiss right now! I am able to hear AM 1180 WSQR moststormy01 said:
of the day and I live on the border of Chicago and Oak Lawn, only a few miles from their site. I hope they don't turn the
HD back on.
stormy01, you probably were getting better coverage from them with their old pattern. If you look at Radio-Locator, they
have actually sent more of the signal over the to the east, over the lake and towards NW Indiana. The old pattern was
shown as city grade right up to Arlington Heights at night, now it stops a few miles to the east. So even with the higher
power at night they were more interested in making the station stronger in the city, than in the NW suburbs. I know they
target the Hispanic population in the city, but, maybe they didn't get the memo that Hispanic's also live, work, and drive
in the suburbs.
On WNTD, the nightime array was built in the early 80's by Johnson Publishing Company, when they were WJPC. They
had an ERP of 5.5kw. This question was brought up before, about the nightime pattern changing over the years, and it
has. I listened to the station during the 80's and 90's, and the nightime coverage was practically the same as the daytime.
I spoke to the late Charles Mootry who ran the station back then, and he transferred me to an engineer who told me he
worked very hard to develop the pattern too virtually mirror the 1kw daytime pattern. He said it was very complicated,
but, he did it, when they switched from the daytime tower to the nightime tower's, each night the signal quality in my
area was identical day and night. Now we get to about 1992(give or take a couple), and one day I'm listening as they
switch to the nightime pattern and it is totally different. The signal was considerably weaker where I live. Where as
before my radio at home would stay in the same position, at night I had to move the radio and face it to the east
towards Burnham to hear a very choppy degraded signal. I just assumed it was a temporary problem, but after a
month of this I got on the phone and asked what was wrong. At that time I spoke with Jay Allen who was at that
time the PD of WJPC 950 AM, which was a rap station at the time, and I was younger then and really liked the station
and listened daily. Jay told me that they were receiving a lot of complaint's from out my way about the signal, which
I explained to him was great before, but, now was awful to listen to at home or in the car. It would drift in and out
in the car in my area and all but disappeared in the Palos-Orland Park area. He said he did not know what the problem
was and assured me that they did not lower the power or change the pattern in any way. This was not true, because
as someone who listened to the station for years, there could be no other explanation. Now fast forward through the
format change to 106 JAMZ, where 950 AM once again became a total simulcast of 106.3 FM.
The station was then sold to what would soon become Clear Channel, and then was sold again due to ownership
limits. The FM to Crawford, the AM to One on One Sports. At that time the AM signal changed again, it got stronger
in my area and was somewhat improved in the car. It was also again audible in the area's I mentioned before where
it disappeared a couple years before. The signal was still much tighter, and not even close to what it was when it was
designed.
At the same time that they originally changed the nightime pattern, WWJ 950 AM in Detroit built their new towers
and went 50kw. Also at that time WAUR AM 930 in Sandwich,Il. was given a CP to boost their nightime power to 4.2kw
at night, build a fifth tower to their 4 tower array, and change their pattern. They were previously 2.2kw at night.
Sorry for the long history lesson, but, 950 AM used to have a good signal day and night, in the city and suburbs, but
they either altered it for either the upgrade of WWJ or WAUR. I have been told on this board that the nightime
pattern has not changed since it was built, and as anyone who read what I posted, or has listened to the station
over the years, knows that is not true. If there is anyone out there that actually knows what really happened, could
you please tell us what and why it happened.
The Avenue is a good station, it's a shame that the signal is not as good as it once was.
It is probably not possible to move the nightime towers that far west due to WAUR. They could however
change the WAUR signal a bit, which would allow 950 AM to loosen up their nightime pattern a bit so they
could be heard better to the W/NW. I don't know that they could do all that much though due to WJR.
It's possible that the equipment that creates the directional pattern had a component fail and that in turn caused the pattern to change. If the engineer didn't correct the problem and didn't mention it to the PD then of course the PD would believe that nothing has changed.
Also, over the years, the background noise level on the AM band has increased quite a bit and listeners in fringe areas often cannot hear a once listenable signal. Nearly everything we use has a computer chip in it these days and those chips are like miniature interference generators. Put your radio next to your running PC and see what I mean. :
Also, over the years, the background noise level on the AM band has increased quite a bit and listeners in fringe areas often cannot hear a once listenable signal. Nearly everything we use has a computer chip in it these days and those chips are like miniature interference generators. Put your radio next to your running PC and see what I mean. :
klutch00 said:
Although AM's use of higher power at night than during the day has, in the last ten years or so, become more common than it used to be, such stations have been around in the US for many decades. Besides WNTD, two stations that I can think of that had such facilities back in the '70s or earlier were 1) what was then WHOT 1330 Campbell (Youngstown) OH, back then. a dual-site operation (500W-D six towers/1 kW-N five towers) and 2) KFMB 760 San Diego (5 kW ND-D/50 kW-N three towers). WHOT is no longer WHOT and it now operates from a single site with lower power than than it had back when it ran more power at night than during the day.
Two-site operations can be expensive, especially if one or both sites are leased. And maintaining two sites with their associated microwave links can consume twice the engineering time as maintaining one site. Managements don't like such expenses, especially if the station isn't making money (a common problem with AMs these days). So there is a lot of pressure to give up one of the sites. Downgrading from Class B to Class D is a common way out as Class Ds can operate at night with low power and are not required to cover any part of their CoL at night.
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