• 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: 800

Status
Not open for further replies.
DavidEduardo said:
First, WOR-FM in NYC was never like KHJ or KFRC or or WRKO or WHBQ or CKLW or even KAKC or KGB. It was a modified format for that market and it was not truly successful. All the others were (Except for trying to make a 250 watt station in Cincinatti work against WSAI).

RKO did not develop a format; they hired Bill Drake as consultant and Drake brought in Ron Jacobs for KHJ and Tom Rounds for KFRC. RKO did that because they were clueless on what to do with their stations. Drake had developed his format in Fresno competing wiith Jacobs, in fact.

For the actual KHJ story, see BOOKSHELF: Programming - Personalities - Techniques and look for "Inside Boss Radio" by Jacobs on the first line of listings.

Drake did not do a tighter Top 40. Drake and Jacobs developed a much faster and precise presentation with very short and aggressive jingles and avoidance of what Drake called "the Bakersfield sound" where jocks rambled and had poor pacing and excitement.

In fact, Drake and Jacobs in LA developed a format that had more precise use of gold, expanding the "just 40 songs" list to very strong older songs.
Click to expand...
In the case of CKLW, they had been top 40 for several years, but it was "The Bakersfield Sound" "The home of the happy fellas". Very loose and unfocused. In April 1967, Paul Drew instituted a "fake Drake" format as "Fun Radio 8". Drake signed the national contract to program the RKO top 40 stations in July, CKLW became The Big 8 with the Johnny Mann jingles and the whole package in July 1967.

WOR-FM was interesting. It musically was the live version of the syndicated "Hit Parade" format. Same jingles (except "The Big Town Sound" replaced jock jingles, 20-20 news (straight but upbeat newscasts) and eventually morphed to top 40.
WOR was so successful that Drake was never going to get the AM, though a head-to-head Drake/Sklar battle would have been epic.
 
Day: Splatter from local KYTY on 810.

Sunset: PJB starts to come up amidst the splatter.

Night: The splatter is reduced just a bit, and XEERG in Guadalupe, NL, mixes in with Spanish-language sports talk/games. It’s usually dominant over PJB, although the latter will come to the fore occasionally.

Sunrise: It’s just XEERG.

DX/Retro: Before XEZR in Zaragosa was retired, it put a decent signal into San Antonio during the day. And, of course, XEROK used to be a regular from sunset to sunrise before its departure.

My one-time loggings include WSHO in New Orleans (night), KDDD in Dumas, TX (sunrise), KREI in Farmington, MO (night), and CKLW (night).
 
jim-satx said:
Night: The splatter is reduced just a bit, and XEERG in Guadalupe, NL, mixes in with Spanish-language sports talk/games. It’s usually dominant over PJB, although the latter will come to the fore occasionally.

Sunrise: It’s just XEERG.
Click to expand...
Interesting - I should be hearing XEERG as well. I need to check again. After XEROK went off I would tune by 800, hear Spanish, assume PJB, move on. A good reminder to never assume!
 
KXIC Iowa City all day and night. Sometimes CKLW or some other signal will be partially audible but I have a hard time nulling KXIC at night.
 
icybluelake said:
KXIC Iowa City all day and night. Sometimes CKLW or some other signal will be partially audible but I have a hard time nulling KXIC at night.
Click to expand...
Where are you located? The reason I ask is KXIC doesn’t come in well in some parts of Iowa City at night, from what I’ve heard.
 
radiofan2023 said:
Where are you located? The reason I ask is KXIC doesn’t come in well in some parts of Iowa City at night, from what I’ve heard.
Click to expand...
One of the nulls goes to the South toward much of Iowa City. Not that bad with 1000 watts. It's shallow, but with 199 watts Night, not much IDF goes that way. From the History Card, it looks like they chose the site when they applied for 250 watts nondirectional, then decided to go with 1000 watts DA. Maybe they wanted to target the area to the North and East, like Cedar Rapids? Seeing that Daytime stations on Clear Channels, especially Mexican Clear Channels, often selected sites without consideration that they would become full time stations, and not whether the signal would reach the Community of License well at Night.


The Wikipedia article tells an interesting story about losing part of the land they planned for upgrading to 5000 watts to Interstate 80 constuction. In the case of WLS, they rerouted US-45 and the US-45/I-80 interchange around the entire WLS ground system. You can see it clearly on the Satellite Photo.
 
Last edited:
radiofan2023 said:
Where are you located? The reason I ask is KXIC doesn’t come in well in some parts of Iowa City at night, from what I’ve heard.
Click to expand...
Cedar Rapids. KXIC may very well not be very clear in some parts of IC at night. It's audible in Cedar Rapids, to the exclusion of other signals, but not really listenable in the sense of being pleasant.
 
icybluelake said:
Cedar Rapids. KXIC may very well not be very clear in some parts of IC at night. It's audible in Cedar Rapids, to the exclusion of other signals, but not really listenable in the sense of being pleasant.
Click to expand...
I;ve spent several nights in the Amana Colonies area, about 25-30 miles west of Iowa City (IIRC). KXIC doesn't send much juice that way, but the night signal is still listenable, but with CKLW and other stuff underneath. In Iowa City itself (where two of my kids went to college), KXIC is pretty good just about everywhere, as far as I can tell.
 
cyberdad said:
I;ve spent several nights in the Amana Colonies area, about 25-30 miles west of Iowa City (IIRC). KXIC doesn't send much juice that way, but the night signal is still listenable, but with CKLW and other stuff underneath. In Iowa City itself (where two of my kids went to college), KXIC is pretty good just about everywhere, as far as I can tell.
Click to expand...
I never heard CKLW underneath it but funnily enough, CBW 990 came in day and night in Iowa City.
 
It would fade in and out during the day but when it faded in, it was solid. It probably helped that there weren’t any adjacent local/Cedar Rapids stations to interfere with it.
 
radiofan2023 said:
It would fade in and out during the day but when it faded in, it was solid. It probably helped that there weren’t any adjacent local/Cedar Rapids stations to interfere with it.
Click to expand...
Farther south, there was WCAZ in Carthage, Illinois in the daytime whose 1,000 watts propagated well, so, of course, that would've blocked any reception from Winnipeg.
 
It possibly would have come in even better outside of Iowa City, but I never tried. I also once got 1130 CKWX from Vancouver late at night in Iowa City, which so far is the furthest Canadian station i’ve DXed.
 
tvnut said:
Wow! 630 miles as the crow flies! A great example of the power of 5O kW combined with conductive soul.
Click to expand...
Perhaps some sort of daytime skywave anomaly. That would explain the occasional fading. Daytime where I was, 45 miles south of Iowa City was all WCAZ. And, indeed, WCAZ benefitted from the area's fantastic ground conductivity (as dpes CBW).
 
Got a newie 800 just before, on the patio, Labor Day morning, GE SR2, me with coffee and feeding the birds.
WPEL, Montrose PA. 1000 omni in the day, near the PA-NY border. At 7AM they were in SRN News (whatever that stands for) and when that ended a young guy IDed and went into local news.
Was trying for downstate / metro Philly's WTMR Camden, but no luck.
And in a session of some half hour, they were the only actual call letters I heard !
 
@schmave
Upon hearing that 'WPEL' call, I did a mental back-somersault for a moment or two. I don't remember them on 800, but from some other dial spot. Don't ask why, but the frequency 1250 came to mind.
I re-checked with an old, tattered NRC logbook, with its missing pages, coffee cup rings and footprints on it from 48 years ago. Yup. WPEL. 1250. Locust & High Streets, Montrose PA. 1000 watts daytime only then, omni.
They appear to be in flattish, farm country -- perhaps NY's southern Wine Region -- and might make a nice SRS or SSS add for some folks here.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


Back
Top Bottom