AM Radio Downgrading

[PHIL Z]

In Reading DX News this week 7 AM stations are going to U1, Reducing Day and Greating Reducing Night power. ie 690 WIST New Orleans From 10k day 5k night to 9100 day 108 night.and closer to home WCED Dubois 5k day 500 night to 4200 day 5 night. Can the Eng crew on this Board Respond. When I was Stationed in Biloxi Ms. 690 WTIX Was the Station Every one tuned to.

 

[fybush]

Directional arrays are expensive to operate and challenging to maintain, especially if they've been allowed to deteriorate for a while. Especially if you have an FM translator to augment your AM signal, why maintain a huge plot of land and multiple towers if it's not showing any return on the bottom line?

Expect more of this in the years to come as even more AM stations find the land under the towers is worth more than the signal coming out of the towers.

 

[cd637299]

I believe you can add WBMQ 630 Savannah & KWKH 1130 Shreveport to that list.....correct?

cd

 

[fybush]

WBMQ, yes. KWKH, no - they've been operating non-D at reduced power at night from time to time while doing tower work, but they're still licensed with directional 50 kW facilities at night and I don't see that changing any time soon.

 

[NoTimeForSleep]

Some of those stations may have lost their tower sites / were forced to move. Once that happens, it's almost a guarantee that the station will loose power levels, especially at night.

 

[PHIL Z]

How is the Daytime Power and Nighttime Power Dertermined when these Stations Drop the directional Antenna's ?

 

[secondchoice]

IIRC, If you downgrade to class D you still have to cover your city of license daytime, easily done if the station is directional night time only. The nighttime service on class D's is based on "interference" not covering your city of COL. If the station is directional daytime too then the daytime signal (usually one tower) has to cover the COL. Engineering wise this could be difficult: if the city of license has grown a lot, and or tower is not close to the COL, and or bad soil conductivity, and or if there is interference issues with the station(s) that caused the down grading station to be directional daytime in the first place. An example of one station that can never be class D with one tower daytime without "help" from another station is WFLI:

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=wfli&x=4&y=5&sr=Y&s=C

Unless WAPI downgrades:

http://www.radio-locator.com/info/WAPI-AM

 

[PHIL Z]

Could 1360 WMNY Become 100 watts nighttime from the Brownshill Road Daytime site?with maybe 500 watts 6am to sunrise?

 

[NoTimeForSleep]

Short answer, No. Too many limiting factors.

 

[kenhawk1160]

In Reading DX News this week 7 AM stations are going to U1, Reducing Day and Greating Reducing Night power. ie 690 WIST New Orleans From 10k day 5k night to 9100 day 108 night.and closer to home WCED Dubois 5k day 500 night to 4200 day 5 night. Can the Eng crew on this Board Respond. When I was Stationed in Biloxi Ms. 690 WTIX Was the Station Every one tuned to.

WCED lost one of it's 3 towers in a storm a few years ago. it was Non Directional day, but 3 towers at night.. they operated Non Directional at night for awhile.. and rather then spend a shitload of money rebuilding an array for an inferior signal, they added 2 FM translators for alot cheaper..... You can hear the FM 107.9 quite a ways too.

Not surprising. Jay Phillipone is a very shrewd businessman. He really didn't need to buy this station to stay competitive, because his FM was doing the job quite nicely. Nonetheless, it's a great station to have in your portfolio.

 

[WCWalker]

Electricity rates are going to skyrocket in a couple of years thanks to new legislation that is taking a lot of old coal burning power plants offline all over the country. I would not be surprised to see a lot of stations reduce power in an effort to keep their utility costs in line with their revenue. Worse still, some could go dark as a result of a doubling to tripling of power prices in the years ahead.