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AM Frequency of the Week: 1090

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@Schroedingers Cat ....... after a few years of us working together, an AoR DJ and I were idly yakking and swapping recall of car trips to Florida in the late 60's. We each mutually remembered the only Top 40 AM station listenable then through the nighttime Carolinas off the car radio being WNOX Knoxville.
Before the start of the FM dial's appeal swamping AM's nationwide around 1973, that AM dial through the coastal Dixie States was barren once you got out of the DC area until you got to Florida.
Unlike the Northeast, where there was a constant corridor of some huge stations between, say, Boston and DC, the metros of places that are now huge in the south were much more isolated. In fact, even here in NEPA there were no big local blowtorches in the 60's. Being a nosy-parker ex-NYC radio type having moved out here, I asked several people who have lived here all their lives in isolated coal towns what stations they listened to as teens. The most-often remembered was WKBW Buffalo. with less frequent references to WABC and CKLW.
Your suggestion of WLAC being a Southern go-to station at night for many (if not the MAIN station) has got to be a retro bulls-eye. Good ol' Rock n Roll had to start from *somewhere*. I've read of a few R&B acts who were weaned / inspired by WLAC, plus they sent a huge lobe over Presley's house, most of Alabama and Georgia. Even well into the 1990's, WLAC's quirky signal and programming was the most present nighttime AM signal at my Folks' house near Ocala in Florida. They must've been something in their heyday.
Considering the music and culture mixes from that era and in that region, WSM 650 had to be a major influence as well over a similarly wide area. KAAY and KOMA to the west of it all also linked quite a few dots.
Once a vacationer to (or a resident from) got to cities like Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, etc., sufficient signals, despite most of them being directional, were there to do their thing, day and night.
As a DXer and a former radio guy, I'd always been curious as to what stations were available for youth in places that had no such big AM signals ..... states like Maine, NH, VT, SC, Delaware, etc. All the other big omnis seemed to be programmed for adults.
Many thanks for the nostalgic elbow room provided by your post about Southern stations!
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
@Schroedingers Cat ....... after a few years of us working together, an AoR DJ and I were idly yakking and swapping recall of car trips to Florida in the late 60's. We each mutually remembered the only Top 40 AM station listenable then through the nighttime Carolinas off the car radio being WNOX Knoxville.
Before the start of the FM dial's appeal swamping AM's nationwide around 1973, that AM dial through the coastal Dixie States was barren once you got out of the DC area until you got to Florida.
Unlike the Northeast, where there was a constant corridor of some huge stations between, say, Boston and DC, the metros of places that are now huge in the south were much more isolated. In fact, even here in NEPA there were no big local blowtorches in the 60's. Being a nosy-parker ex-NYC radio type having moved out here, I asked several people who have lived here all their lives in isolated coal towns what stations they listened to as teens. The most-often remembered was WKBW Buffalo. with less frequent references to WABC and CKLW.
Your suggestion of WLAC being a Southern go-to station at night for many (if not the MAIN station) has got to be a retro bulls-eye. Good ol' Rock n Roll had to start from *somewhere*. I've read of a few R&B acts who were weaned / inspired by WLAC, plus they sent a huge lobe over Presley's house, most of Alabama and Georgia. Even well into the 1990's, WLAC's quirky signal and programming was the most present nighttime AM signal at my Folks' house near Ocala in Florida. They must've been something in their heyday.
Considering the music and culture mixes from that era and in that region, WSM 650 had to be a major influence as well over a similarly wide area. KAAY and KOMA to the west of it all also linked quite a few dots.
Once a vacationer to (or a resident from) got to cities like Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, etc., sufficient signals, despite most of them being directional, were there to do their thing, day and night.
As a DXer and a former radio guy, I'd always been curious as to what stations were available for youth in places that had no such big AM signals ..... states like Maine, NH, VT, SC, Delaware, etc. All the other big omnis seemed to be programmed for adults.
Many thanks for the nostalgic elbow room provided by your post about Southern stations!
Click to expand...
I got a booming signal from KAAY in Sarasota, FL when I was there in 1980.
 
I thought of WNOX 990. The major lobe in the pattern is in excess of a 50 kW Class B equivalent toward NC and SC. The pattern doesn't favor Baltimore though, but then again, neither does WLAC that well. Maybe the others were Daytimers around Sunset and in-between Sunsets DA-N Class As. Maybe WVOK, KWKH, and WLAC before Local Sunset. Like you said, most 50 kW stations in the South were Full Service with AC.


KWKH 1130 appears to have had some Top 40 format periods, but their are few available Surveys, and none around 1976. This is the closest to that era I could find.

KWKH_1971-01-23_1.JPG
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
I thought of WNOX 990. The major lobe in the pattern is in excess of a 50 kW Class B equivalent toward NC and SC. The pattern doesn't favor Baltimore though, but then again, neither does WLAC that well. Maybe the others were Daytimers around Sunset and in-between Sunsets DA-N Class As. Maybe WVOK, KWKH, and WLAC before Local Sunset. Like you said, most 50 kW stations in the South were Full Service with AC.

Click to expand...
Maybe it was just a good song lyric.
 
In Pickerington, Ohio, a weak WKFI by day and very little to replace it at night.
I've heard WBAL here, but extremely weak. The times I've heard KAAY, it's been stronger than WBAL. Those instances mostly happened a few years ago when KAAY was non-directional for a while. I heard it put adjacent channel slop onto WTAM a handful of times.
Think I mentioned this in another thread recently, but WBAL is one of the strongest daytime signals where one of my best friends used to live in Gaithersburg, Maryland. It completely disappears at pattern change, as it should given the null toward Little Rock. No trace of WBAL there, roughly 35 miles southwest from the tower. And given their westerly null, it's probably inaudible at night where he now lives in Hagerstown as well.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I guess KAAY wasn't one of the "Southern Stations" heard by Starbuck on Chesapeake Bay in "Moonlight Feels Right", due to WBAL. I really could never figure out what "Southern Stations" you could hear there, that had Top 40 formats. Maybe WLAC? Others were probably AC or Full Service by then.

KAAY_Coverage_f.jpg
Click to expand...
WBT? They were pretty much top 40 in mid-70s timing of that song (and I'm pretty sure they played it) - and they certainly put a nice big clean skywave signal up and down the entire east coast at night.
 
1090 here is a mix of Seattle and Tee-huh-wanna. Before the TJ station lost a tower, they dominated hardcore and Seattle was sometimes audible under them... now the stations often mix, sopmetimes with Seattle winning.
 
Boise ID
Day nothing
SR SS: KFNQ Seattle & used to be DKNCR. KMXA Aurora CO
Night:
XEPRS used to dominate.
KBOZ still using 1.25 kW non-directional under an STA. Over XEPRS most of the time.
 
East-central Iowa: daytime KNWS Waterloo, IA. Nighttime is usually KAAY. Weaker now than before but still usually present. The only other stations I've ever caught have been WAQE from Rice Lake, WI and KMXA Denver. Not sure why I caught WAQE, since as far as I knew it was always a daytime operation. Probably during critical hours.
 
Regarding "Moonlight Feels Right", I recall reading somewhere that the founders of the band Starbuck were from Mississippi and were based in Atlanta. That's probably part of the "southern stations" reference. As suggested earlier, it also just fits into the vibe of the lyric and the rhythm (they needed a 2 syllable word there!).
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
@Schroedingers Cat ....... after a few years of us working together, an AoR DJ and I were idly yakking and swapping recall of car trips to Florida in the late 60's. We each mutually remembered the only Top 40 AM station listenable then through the nighttime Carolinas off the car radio being WNOX Knoxville.
Before the start of the FM dial's appeal swamping AM's nationwide around 1973, that AM dial through the coastal Dixie States was barren once you got out of the DC area until you got to Florida.
Unlike the Northeast, where there was a constant corridor of some huge stations between, say, Boston and DC, the metros of places that are now huge in the south were much more isolated. In fact, even here in NEPA there were no big local blowtorches in the 60's. Being a nosy-parker ex-NYC radio type having moved out here, I asked several people who have lived here all their lives in isolated coal towns what stations they listened to as teens. The most-often remembered was WKBW Buffalo. with less frequent references to WABC and CKLW.
Your suggestion of WLAC being a Southern go-to station at night for many (if not the MAIN station) has got to be a retro bulls-eye. Good ol' Rock n Roll had to start from *somewhere*. I've read of a few R&B acts who were weaned / inspired by WLAC, plus they sent a huge lobe over Presley's house, most of Alabama and Georgia. Even well into the 1990's, WLAC's quirky signal and programming was the most present nighttime AM signal at my Folks' house near Ocala in Florida. They must've been something in their heyday.
Considering the music and culture mixes from that era and in that region, WSM 650 had to be a major influence as well over a similarly wide area. KAAY and KOMA to the west of it all also linked quite a few dots.
Once a vacationer to (or a resident from) got to cities like Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, etc., sufficient signals, despite most of them being directional, were there to do their thing, day and night.
As a DXer and a former radio guy, I'd always been curious as to what stations were available for youth in places that had no such big AM signals ..... states like Maine, NH, VT, SC, Delaware, etc. All the other big omnis seemed to be programmed for adults.
Many thanks for the nostalgic elbow room provided by your post about Southern stations!
Click to expand...

Some odd signals got some popularity because of that. WCSC on 1390 had some listenership in the Eastern Carolinas at night, and WTMA in some spots. But the Carolinas were pretty barren with major AM signals playing top 40.

WBT and WPTF were the major ones throughout that era, but they were more known for their college basketball coverage at night than really anything else. Frank McGuire, the coach at North Carolina at the time (who was from New York City), was a big advocate for WBT carrying the Tar Heels games on the radio because everybody on the East Coast who were college basketball fans could hear their games for recruiting purposes back when there were very few games on national TV. This continued through most of the Dean Smith era.

WPTF usually carried NC State’s games being the station for Raleigh. Duke didn’t have a clear channel signal. Now, both WBT and WPTF carry UNC games, not like many people listen to games on AM radio in 2024 when they are readily available almost anywhere now.

WSB was basically clear in this area, but they were AC/full service like their FM sister station until 1990 when the moves to news-talk started happening everywhere. They also had a huge sports presence with the Braves, UGA, and the Hawks. A lot of people complained when the Braves moved to much weaker 640 WGST in I think 1992. A lot of folks lost coverage of Braves games at night. It lasted 3 years before they went back. The Braves network added a bunch of low-wattage stations to cover every nook and cranny of Georgia and South Carolina.

WHAS was huge as well, and they had nighttime talk and that Joe Donovan oldies show (which stuck until 1997!). They also had a ton of sports with Louisville and UK. WLAC had Tennessee Vols games for decades also.

WWL had those trucker and religious shows overnight plus LSU games. A big reason why SEC football got so big in the South starting in the 1950s and later was because of all these stations. LSU was the first team to play most of their games at night and they developed a major fan following. Basketball sprung off of that especially with UK. 1530 Cincinnati, another major signal in the South has carried them for decades.
 
A few thoughts:

As for "Barefoot in Baltimore" and "Moonlight Feels Right" sounding similar, it's probably only because of the pronounced use of the marimba.

However, Starbuck were indeed formed in Atlanta. They recorded the album "Moonlight Feels Right" at Studio One in Doraville just NE of Atlanta. So, definitely a Southern band which would lead to the lyric about the Southern stations. WERC was the first station to play their song, and it almost immediately exploded on the charts.

Now, Strawberry Alarm Clock had a bass and 6 string guitar player named Ed King. In 1968, they were on tour and had a band called The One Percent open for them. The One Percent later became Lynyrd Skynyrd and in 1972, Ed King joined them on bass and later, 6 string. They recorded "(Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd)" and "Sweet Home Alabama" at Studio One in Doraville while Ed King was one of the guitar players.

Here's my part. In my 20's, I was in a band called Feedback. We were bad, not good. My bandmates decided they wanted to try to get some reduced rate studio time. We had like 3 songs and they weren't good and we were poor. Reduced rate better be pennies per hour. So I got drunk and we went to a studio and I plopped on a dirty couch and waited for them to quit wasting my time so we could go get some more beer.

I looked around. Receptionist who was obviously paid to look hot and not talk so much. Dirty carpet. The aforementioned dirty couch. Gold records on the wall? I got up and started looking at those. Starbuck, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Atlanta Rhythm Section, .38 Special. I came to the realization that I would never make it as a paid musician but I had reached the pinnacle of my musical career. I had made it to Studio One in Doraville.
 
Nutley, NJ
Daytime: right between the very strong Meadowlands AMs and the very strong 2 AMs in Clifton, a mess of 1010 WINS and 930 WPAT

Night: WBAL
 
Mitch Brewer said:
A few thoughts:

As for "Barefoot in Baltimore" and "Moonlight Feels Right" sounding similar, it's probably only because of the pronounced use of the marimba.

However, Starbuck were indeed formed in Atlanta. They recorded the album "Moonlight Feels Right" at Studio One in Doraville just NE of Atlanta. So, definitely a Southern band which would lead to the lyric about the Southern stations. WERC was the first station to play their song, and it almost immediately exploded on the charts.

Now, Strawberry Alarm Clock had a bass and 6 string guitar player named Ed King. In 1968, they were on tour and had a band called The One Percent open for them. The One Percent later became Lynyrd Skynyrd and in 1972, Ed King joined them on bass and later, 6 string. They recorded "(Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd)" and "Sweet Home Alabama" at Studio One in Doraville while Ed King was one of the guitar players.

Here's my part. In my 20's, I was in a band called Feedback. We were bad, not good. My bandmates decided they wanted to try to get some reduced rate studio time. We had like 3 songs and they weren't good and we were poor. Reduced rate better be pennies per hour. So I got drunk and we went to a studio and I plopped on a dirty couch and waited for them to quit wasting my time so we could go get some more beer.

I looked around. Receptionist who was obviously paid to look hot and not talk so much. Dirty carpet. The aforementioned dirty couch. Gold records on the wall? I got up and started looking at those. Starbuck, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Atlanta Rhythm Section, .38 Special. I came to the realization that I would never make it as a paid musician but I had reached the pinnacle of my musical career. I had made it to Studio One in Doraville.
Click to expand...
The other similarity is that the theme of both is a couple spending time in Baltimore and around Chesapeake Bay. Both have the marimbas. It's surprising that those marimba players sound so similar. Somebody in our High School Band took up marimbas, and was about as talented as those two. Played in local clubs after HS. He might have been one of the local musicians who ended up working in Nashville. It seems like the key to playing marimbas is coordinating and alternating the Left and Right brain hemispheres, and the nerves and muscles in the Left and Right arms. Not the same as the piano though, as you are playing different parts and clefs on the piano.
 
I've heard "Moonlight Feels Right" a million times and still love it. I used to own that Strawberry Alarm Clock album and have heard "Barefoot In Baltimore" more than a few times but I don't really like it and have never paid attention to the lyrics.

Here's my part, I've lived in GA and FL most of my life but I was actually born in...Baltimore.
 
Clifton, New Jersey

Days: Some of my more sensitive radios receive weak imaging from 1010 WINS New York, NY. The transmitter is only 6 miles away from me, which could be what causes the imaging on 1090.

Nights: I receive WBAL "Newsradio Newsradio 1090 and FM 101.5", which airs News/Talk programming. Reception varies between decent and good.

DX/Retro: On 11/28/2020, I received KAAY Little Rock, AR mixing with WBAL. It was airing a Christian song followed by a bible teaching program.
 
East SFBA:

Daytime: Slop from KFAX 1100.

Nighttime: Either XEPRS "The Mightier 1090," or KMXA, with it's unique tone present after 11 PM Pacific most nights for quite some time a couple months ago.

c
 
@MichaelD1972
Even from the most distant spot in the Five NYC boroughs removed from those countless towers and blinking lights of Meadowlands signals, our quartet of high school DXing punks were subject to a few image-mixing blemishes.
Here's a sample station map of one such station that sent it's main lobe at Columbus Circle -- the population spot seemingly every station wished to inundate.
When the bunch of us DXed, the calls were WBNX.

WKDM-AM Radio Station Coverage Map

radio-locator.com radio-locator.com
From our radios (behind the letter 'k' in 'New York') seemingly all of the NJ directional signals plus whatever incestual spurs and RF litter got scooped up en route along that southeast direction at Times Square got to include, well, us, too.
Because of the distances, we were more out of range than you are, of course.
Still, on some of the best radios we used, the 'RF gain' controls couldn't be cranked very high. And even using restraint that way there remained some annoying mixes. WINS 1010 and WHN 1050 both came in on 1090, maybe even audible enough to make the occasional ratings. And WNEW 1130 plus WLIB 1190 could override WMTR Morristown on 1250 with toots and whistles when the the RF and the antenna tunings got tweaked too high.
From one of the guys who later moved to the west side of Midtown Manhattan with his nice DX radio, was his gag about him once having to tweak the set's sensitivity way down to minimize a WADO 1280 image to hear WADO. On 1280.

(Anyway -- merely a long-faint recall from a non-techie here ; might mean next to nothing. Yet I do seem to remember that the tube radios we used (Atwater-Kent, Zeniths, American-Bosch) had fewer spurs and better filtering than the newer solid-state rigs (a few Lafayettes, Radio-Shacks) we used. No doubt, the engineer folks here can explain if such a muse has any validity or is just fooey memory on my part.)
 
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