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AM Stations that alternated frequencies and days

route56 said:
@Mark Roberts started, and I have added a bit to, an article about time-sharing AM stations:

www.route56.com

Time-Sharing Stations

Time-sharing arrangements among AM stations date back to the earliest days of broadcast regulation in the late 1920s. Especially after a massive reallocation of stations on November 11, 1928, small…
www.route56.com www.route56.com

In reviewing the article, I looked up the current situation between the last known AM time-share and found that there has been a change.

In Decorah, Iowa, commercial station KDEC and Luther College station KWLC have been sharing time on 1240. In reviewing the stations' record, I found that there has been a change in the situation out there...

The KDEC site has been sold (OpenStreetMap indicates the area has become residential, not exactly a place where an AM radio tower would be desirable) and, after briefly broadcasting with a wire antenna, reached an agreement to feed use KWLC's transmitter. The documentation associated with this chage also state the hours for each station: KWLC's hours are 10 pm to 1 am on weekdays and 7:00 am to 12:30 am on weekends, with KDEC operating from 6:00 AM to 10:00 pm on weekdays. Neither station broadcasts in the overnight hours.
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The schedule has changed on weekends from what I remember from a visit to Decorah (which is a really delightful town, by the way) about 11-12 years ago. KWLC had all the hours on Sunday then. At the time, the transmitters were separate. Subsequently, they consolidated on KWLC's transmitter. Interestingly, KDEC was licensed for 930 watts and KWLC, which never moved from its original site, was licensed for 1,000.

A few years ago, Luther College applied for an LPFM but it appears they didn't build it.

I see that KDEC now has an FM translator, K235CT. I wonder how that works: does it go off the air at 10 pm weeknights or does it stay on until 1 am?
 
The WFAA/WBAP thing was insane. It should never have lasted as long as it did. I don't see what benefit it really was to either station to keep swapping frequencies like that daily. It had to have driven Dallas radio listeners berserk.
 
Mark Roberts said:
The schedule has changed on weekends from what I remember from a visit to Decorah (which is a really delightful town, by the way) about 11-12 years ago. KWLC had all the hours on Sunday then. At the time, the transmitters were separate. Subsequently, they consolidated on KWLC's transmitter. Interestingly, KDEC was licensed for 930 watts and KWLC, which never moved from its original site, was licensed for 1,000.

A few years ago, Luther College applied for an LPFM but it appears they didn't build it.

I see that KDEC now has an FM translator, K235CT. I wonder how that works: does it go off the air at 10 pm weeknights or does it stay on until 1 am?
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Am stations that gooff air at night can keep the translator going as long as the am comes back within 24 hours
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
Am stations that gooff air at night can keep the translator going as long as the am comes back within 24 hours
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KDEC is not a daytimer!

The station simulcasts on two translators, one in Decorah and one in Waukon (not to be confused with Waukee). There's also a simulcast on an HD-2 channel of a sister FM station.

The station itself says at Meet Us:

1240 AM in Decorah is a unique "shared frequency" between KWLC and KDEC. KWLC operates 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM Monday through Friday, and 7 AM to 12:30 AM on Saturday and Sunday. KDEC operates 6:00 AM to 10 PM Monday through Friday, and does not operate on Saturday/Sunday.
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Based on that wording, it's likely that the translators continue. Since the programming is also on KDHK-HD2, that can be the primary station for the two translators, bypassing the question of the AM station's operating hours.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Since the programming is also on KDHK-HD2, that can be the primary station for the two translators, bypassing the question of the AM station's operating hours.
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K235CT was an Auction 99 station, which means it's permanently tied to KDEC. You appear to be correct that the exception to the rule against translators originating programming does not apply. In other words, there's no way to avoid a mandate that K235CT be off when KDEC is.

[That issue does not apply to the Waukon translator, K256CS. KDHK-HD2 should be the primary station]

WRLL has a translator, W252AW. It started rebroadcasting WRLL while it was still sharing time with WCEV. The FCC issued a Consent Decree dinging W252AW for operating while WRLL was off-air.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
Am stations that gooff air at night can keep the translator going as long as the am comes back within 24 hours
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The wording of the FCC rule on that applies ONLY to class D stations.

And there's an interesting case study from Chicago, where a complaint was filed against one of the share-time stations that used to be on 1450. WRLL, the surviving half of the share, was running its translator 24/7 even when WCEV was on 1450.

A certain frequent FCC gadfly decided he needed to complain about it, and the Commission
 
fybush said:
The wording of the FCC rule on that applies ONLY to class D stations.

And there's an interesting case study from Chicago, where a complaint was filed against one of the share-time stations that used to be on 1450. WRLL, the surviving half of the share, was running its translator 24/7 even when WCEV was on 1450.

A certain frequent FCC gadfly decided he needed to complain about it, and the Commission
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What did the Commission do?
 
Strange as it may seem, once upon a time all commercial stations shared one frequency (833KHz, 360 Meters), and they all had to go silent for two minutes at the top of the hour to listen for distress calls.
 
Jean Luc said:
Strange as it may seem, once upon a time all commercial stations shared one frequency (833KHz, 360 Meters), and they all had to go silent for two minutes at the top of the hour to listen for distress calls.
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Not quite: "If a station was situated near an ocean or major waterway, it was required to sign off briefly at the top of every hour while the operator listened for emergency calls on the 600 Meter marine distress frequency."

The Radio Historian

History of radio broadcasting
www.theradiohistorian.org
 
So is WNZK 680/690 "Detroit" still the only split-frequency operation?

BTW, one of the FM NCE share-times is about to go away. In Oregon, a major airtime license holder (KMWV) is selling out to the minority holder (KTUP) for 98.3 in Dallas, Oregon (Salem area). The station will become a fulltime community-oriented, Spanish language station. (Yes, there are far more FM NCE share-times out there, especially with LPFMs.)
 
RF101 said:
So is WNZK 680/690 "Detroit" still the only split-frequency operation?

BTW, one of the FM NCE share-times is about to go away. In Oregon, a major airtime license holder (KMWV) is selling out to the minority holder (KTUP) for 98.3 in Dallas, Oregon (Salem area). The station will become a fulltime community-oriented, Spanish language station. (Yes, there are far more FM NCE share-times out there, especially with LPFMs.)
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Last I knew, yes
 
Bongwater said:
The WFAA/WBAP thing was insane. It should never have lasted as long as it did. I don't see what benefit it really was to either station to keep swapping frequencies like that daily. It had to have driven Dallas radio listeners berserk.
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The "benefit," if you can call it that, was the 50,000 Watt signal on 820. Neither wanted to give it up, even if they only had it part-time. There was prestige and probably a sales benefit to the stronger signal.

570 only had 5,000 watts. But eventually WBAP's owner bought out WFAA's use of 820 and WFAA ended up on 570 full-time. (Sorry I'm just seeing this so long after your post.)
 
A lot of things can be blamed for this. Incompetent management and / or under-capitalized ownership, the general decline of AM radio, the 80/90 docket, poisoning of the well by the local newspaper, pick your fave excuse.
 
Surfdude1061 said:
A lot of things can be blamed for this. Incompetent management and / or under-capitalized ownership, the general decline of AM radio, the 80/90 docket, poisoning of the well by the local newspaper, pick your fave excuse.
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Could you advise which post you were answering, so we know which "this" you are assigning blame to? This thread has wandered in so many directions it's totally unclear without quoted text.
 
IKHNetworks said:
I remember a station that was on 680 during the day and then it was on 690 at night
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That has happened a handful of times over the years. Usually it's a situation where the protection requirements for other stations on the same frequency preclude directional patterns and/or power from being used, but one frequency will work for days and another for nights.

There was a discussion about this back in 2022:

Schroedingers Cat said:
You're probably thinking of WNZK 690 Days/680 Nights, in Westland, MI near Detroit.
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That's one example. Here's the FCCdata.org page on WNZK:
 
WNZK has 8 towers total, a West row of 3 towers in a line, and an East row of 5 towers in a line. The Day/Night pattern change is accomplished by shifting to the North 3 of the 5 Day, and the South 3 of the 5 Night. This cleverly shifts the maximum IDF direction of the major lobe from NNW Day to NNE Night.

FCCInfo Results

FCC Info is a Radio and Television Station Search Engine provided by Cavell, Mertz & Associates, Inc.
fccinfo.com
 
There was WSAJ in Grove City, PA, about an hour north of Pittsburgh. It was operated by Grove City College, and was one of the oldest radio stations in the United States operated by a college or university. They were on 1340 with a very limited broadcast schedule (7-8:30PM Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 7 to 8PM Sundays). Years later a station signed on in Oil City, about forty miles away, also on 1340. It would be WOYL for most of it's life. For some number of years WOYL was required to sign-off for those brief windows of time so that WSAJ could have the frequency. At some point the FCC decided that the co-channel interference was not a problem and the de-facto timeshare ceased.. Grove City College eventually landed an FM, and in 2004 they let the AM license expire. Forever Broadcasting took WOYL dark in 2009 due to repair cost issues.
 


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