• 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

AM Frequency of the Week 1010

I mentioned KLRA Little Rock as a catch in the 1980s and wondered what had happened to it. In 1995, Westinghouse bought it and shut it down in 1995 to enable better nighttime coverage for WINS. It was difficult to trace this, in part because KLRA went through several call letter changes from 1988 to 1995, and in part because Broadcasting or Radio and Records did not appear to cover this acquisition. At least I couldn't find it through the search engine at worldradiohistory.com. (I realize no search engine is perfect so this isn't a criticism of worldradiohistory.com.) I finally found a reference in an Arkansas business journal. The call letter sequence was KLRA -> KHLT -> KBIS -> KSYG, and the FCC history cards for the station can be accessed via "DKSYG".
IIRC, Westinghouse did not buy KLRA (or whatever the calls were). They could not, due to 7/7/7 owner limits, so they paid the station to downgrade. That's why searching for a sale won't find anything.
 
Why does the FCC approve sales of stations to buyers whose sole intention is to turn in the license and take the station dark? How many stations have met their demise in this way?
 
Here in Wood Dale, IL (near NW suburb of Chicago):

Daytime: nothing
Nighttime: CFRB or WINS

DX/Retro: others heard in the past include KXEN (St. Louis, MO), WIOI New Boston, OH), WXYQ (Stevens Point, WI), WKJW (Black Mountain, NC), WJXL (Jacksonville Beach, FL), WHIN (Gallatin, TN), KLRA (Little Rock, AR), KSIR (Brush, CO)
 
Excuse me for butting in, Jim, but unless KLAT is splitting from the simulcast with KQBU-FM in Beaumont, the answer is no. I pick up the 93.3 simulcast partner up pretty here often, and I've never heard it airing Spanish religious programs. I assume it's pretty much a straight feed of TUDN Deportes. That's all I've ever heard on the FM side, since it was paired with KLAT.

I appreciate the info about KLAT, @rosecitymedia. This morning I was able to figure out the mystery. At 6:59 CT I heard the Spanish-language Christian station pop up, and at TOH there was an English "Family Values Radio" ID with a Phoenix reference. That would be KXXT in Tolleson, AZ, coming up at either 9.8 kW (critical hours) or 23 kW (daytime) power. It turns out that the station has a Spanish-language show called Conexion Cristiana from midnight to 7 a.m. local time.
 
IIRC, Westinghouse did not buy KLRA (or whatever the calls were). They could not, due to 7/7/7 owner limits, so they paid the station to downgrade. That's why searching for a sale won't find anything.
The Arkansas publication described it as an outright purchase. It's paywalled, so I can't link to it here.

The limit was raised to 18 each in AM and FM 1992 (for a few months, the limit was 30 in each service but there was Congressional blowback) and to 20/20 in 1994. Reference: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/h...ive-BC-IDX/94-OCR/BC-1994-09-12-Page-0048.pdf
 
This post, fwiw, wound up somewhere else but this 1010 thread. Sorry for the goofup. I just figured to add it then, and now.

>> See, I haven't been back to the mother country of Queens in over ten years, so I don't know if this unique detour of 1010 WINS reception is still occurring. Perhaps someone is aboard here from the NYC Metro and can update it :
A few times when I got off the Verrazano Bridge and drove west on the Staten Island Expressway/278 toward the Goethals, that peculiar null of 1010 WINS was vivid.
The resultant audio racket -- music to my DXer ears -- was a completely garbled, imploded mess as far as my wife's evaluation went. An out-of-phase voice and tragically enfeebled teletype swirled and swished for the better part of a mile.
It was the same cancellation effect present (same wife, too) heard while driving west of the Big Ape 690 Jacksonville's 6 towers one night, and another night when I made a wrong turn and wound up 'behind' WKOK 1070 Sunbury's main lobe.
Same reaction from the wife, too. 'I think your radio is busted.'
I reiterte : It was music to my ears. But that form of entertainment chaos could not be acceptable to many Staten Islanders living in that cone of a null.
And S.I. is one of NYC's certified Five Boroughs!
Here's WINS' *daytime* pattern, Scroll to the bottom.

Here is that WINS daytime pattern from Radio-Locator.

I know that WINS has done some work on their signal over the years. So is that crumpled SSW null still menacingly active ?
 
The Arkansas publication described it as an outright purchase. It's paywalled, so I can't link to it here.

The limit was raised to 18 each in AM and FM 1992 (for a few months, the limit was 30 in each service but there was Congressional blowback) and to 20/20 in 1994. Reference: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/h...ive-BC-IDX/94-OCR/BC-1994-09-12-Page-0048.pdf
But I can find nothing on that station being sold with the ensuing FCC approval. What they did was pay the owner to shut it off. To a lay reporter at a small market newspaper, that is certainly a purchase. To radio folks, it is paying the owner to turn his business off.

You are right, when they did the deal (before the actual closing of the station) they could have bought it within the new FCC rules but all they wanted was to turn it off, not to own it. Remember, the three-way transaction between Group W, CBS, and NBC, was unfolding between the summer of 1994 and the summer of 1995 so they likely did not want any other pending item at the Commission,
 
Boise Idaho
Daytime:
Weak but readable KIHU Toolely UT.
Sunrise/sunset The other west coast AMs. KIHU way on top when not on night power/pattern.
Night it's all CBR Calgary except when a station with Mexican Ballads messes them up, forgetting to be on night pattern/power. Looping N~S.
Hardly hear KOOR Miwaukie OR.
 
But I can find nothing on that station being sold with the ensuing FCC approval. What they did was pay the owner to shut it off. To a lay reporter at a small market newspaper, that is certainly a purchase. To radio folks, it is paying the owner to turn his business off.
The publication was "Arkansas Business", based in Little Rock. Little Rock is no Chicago or St. Louis, but I wouldn't call it a small market, either.

You are right, when they did the deal (before the actual closing of the station) they could have bought it within the new FCC rules but all they wanted was to turn it off, not to own it.
Yes, that was clear at the time. The only question really would be, whose lawyer wrote the FCC to turn in the license?

Between the time the history cards stop in 1981 and the 2000s, information on station activities now seems to be hard to come by from official FCC sources. There's really only a bare minimum of information during that period. So one has to search through secondary sources which aren't always complete. Especially for the 1990s, this is odd, since the FCC opened up its systems and databases to the Internet fairly early on. I remember writing programs to extract information from the FCC databases, but my focus at the time was on Missouri and Kansas.
 
The publication was "Arkansas Business", based in Little Rock. Little Rock is no Chicago or St. Louis, but I wouldn't call it a small market, either.
If Arkansas Business is like its Connecticut equivalent, the Hartford Business Journal, joining its reporting staff is the next step up for business reporters at area newspapers. This helps the HBJ avoid many of the errors made by general-assignment reporters at newspapers, who get thrown into all sorts of specialized news coverage with no background at all.
 
Why does the FCC approve sales of stations to buyers whose sole intention is to turn in the license and take the station dark? How many stations have met their demise in this way?
because its legal.. once you own the license, you can do whatever you want with it, including lighting it on fire, throwing it away and having it deleted.
 
East-central Iowa: These days, 1010 is a messy frequency with seldom anything audible -- almost like a graveyard frequency. The station I'm most often able to pick out is CFRB Toronto. I also sometimes hear CBR Calgary, KSIR Brush, CO, and WPCN Stevens Point, WI. I've heard WINS New York (from my other hometown) from a few other places nearby, but never from home. It's frustrating when you know you're getting signals from all over the place, but you can't identify them.
Daytime is sometimes a weak KRNI from Mason City, IA, from an area with outstanding ground conductivity, so that station makes it out quite well. It used to be a daytimer but now powers down at night to a weak signal, so I haven't heard it at night.
 
From NW San Antonio:

Day: A fairly good signal from 10 kW KBBW (Christian talk) in Waco, which is 168 miles to my northeast.

Sunset: I had not listened to this frequency in quite a while and was surprised at how much reception varies in my location depending on propagation. In addition to KBBW, the following stations come up to varying degrees: KLAT "TUDN" in Houston, TX, KDJW "St. Valentine Catholic Radio" in Amarillo, TX, KXXT "Family Values Radio" in Tolleson, AZ, and WJXL "1010XL" in Jacksonville Beach, FL. (The latter is a new recent logging.)

Night: As with sunset, reception varies a lot based on propagation. KBBW and especially KXXT are heard a lot less (and are a lot weaker). Aiming E/W, KLAT is heard most often, but it sometimes disappears and/or is taken over by WJXL. Sometimes the frequency is like a graveyard for minutes at a time.

Sunrise: The mixing and mess continues but with KBBW, KDJW, and KXXT (with Spanish-language programming) all stronger at day power/pattern. Also, if I aim NE, I can usually hear a weak WHIN in Gallatin, TN, for a bit with its mix of classic and current hits when it goes to day power.

DX/Retro: My one time loggings include XEPA "Ke Buena" in Puebla (nighttime) and KXEN in St. Louis (sunrise). Also, I've heard XEHL "Radio Cañon" in Guadalajara twice at night.
 
Last edited:
In Wilkes-Barre(Northeast PA). Daytimes it usually a faint signal of 1010 WINS, which is best received using a loop antenna pointing in the NE direction. Nights, it's a mixture of WINS and CFRB out of Toronto, with WINS having the stronger signal than the latter.
 
(Boise Idaho) With a storm system coming in, CBR Calgary's been showing up mid-days with a slow and steady fade up and down.
Utah occasionally in & out.
 
Sometimes those phasing problems have as much to do with reradiation from high tension towers as they do with the nulls in the pattern.

The thing that I can't figure out is why WINS 1010 comes in much stronger in parts of Michigan than CFRB 1010, and as strong as WABC and WCBS much of the time. I also don't know how they get away with interfering with CFRB, when CFRB is supposed to be a protected skywave Class A, and only a few hundred miles away. When the Canadian government took over their Clear Channels, CFRB moved from its Class I-A frequency of 690, which was moved to Montreal. I don't think they were too happy about that.

WITL 1010 in Lansing had to use a three tower array with 500 watts to protect the Canadian border to 5 microvolts per meter ground wave because of CFRB. They were restricted on the other side by WCFL/WMVP 1000. Because of CFRB, they could only get 13 watts Night to limit the skywave to 25 uV/m in Canada, and they turned in the license. I wonder how many AM stations regret turning in their AM licenses now that they could have FM translators.

They only time WITL 1010 came in well in Genesee County is when they moved to a different site and were doing nondirectional proofs of performance on the DA. For a long time, the old three tower array stood, and had a WITL billboard on the site, which always confused me, because the signal was weak there. At the other site on Pine Tree Rd., it was weak going by on the expressway interchange. I finally figured out that it was because it was in the wide arc of the nulls toward Canada.
 
Last edited:
Schroedingers Cat wrote ... "When the Canadian government took over their Clear Channels, CFRB moved from its Class I-A frequency of 690, which was moved to Montreal. I don't think they were too happy about that."

I'd always wondered what happened so finally have looked it up via Newspapers.com – CFRB was on 860, CJBC on 1010, each with 10 kW. CBC wanted to control every clear-channel allocation in Canada, so at least as early as early 1947 announced it wanted to switch the stations, plus take over CKY Winnipeg (owned then by the province of Manitoba) and CFRN Calgary. (At this point, both CBL 740 and CJBC 1010 broadcast in English, heading the Trans-Canada and Dominion networks of the CBC respectively.)

There was some howling, but in early 1948 a July 1, 1948 switch date was announced. And each station would go up to 50 kW. CFRB would be the first privately-owned Canadian 50 kW station, albeit directional. The switch was delayed to Sept. 1, 1948, because CFRB was installing its 50 kW rig for 1010.

All this was decided after hearings by ... the CBC. Then, the broadcaster also controlled radio (and eventually TV) licenses in Canada. Eventually the CRTC was formed and the playing field was leveled.
 
@Schroedingers Cat
@tvnut
Just the other day I conversationed someone on-board here about WINS and its seemingly dynastic strive to send more signal and prestige West. Like a reverse Venezuela. WINS's sticks are 115 miles East of my town, yet WINS is weakly present here in the day, and often dominant at night, for reasons not immediately recognizable from their day and night coverage maps.
One presumes that, on good radios West of even here, *something* should come in on 1010. But WINS? All the time?

'Tis the season to tuner-clean the Hamilton Beach can opener/radio that came with the house. It's tuned year 'round to 860 so we can hear the 12/24 eve programming from CJBC while we cook things to empty out the fridge and bring them to various friends' places. Less expensive than sending cards nowadays.

In the meantime: Happy start of Hanukkah to all !
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom