AM transmitter moves that turned out to be the station's downfall

[DanStrassberg]

I haven't seen a thread on this topic and it occurs to me that it might prove fascinating. I believe the history of American radio is littered with the remains of AM stations at which somebody (usually, but not always, a non-technical guy in management) had a GREAT idea about how the station could improve its fortunes by improving its facilities (increase power, new DA, sometimes find a better frequency, etc) and had the guts and personal charisma to push through his idea, only to find that the move was not merely WAY more costly than planned but also provided few of the touted benefits--and often A LOT of drawbacks that didn't exist at the old site.

One example is the 1300 station in Baltimore. I think it is now WJFK, but back in the day wasn't it WFBR? It apparently had a great site somewhere in the Inner Harbor area and got out like gangbusters both day and night. A new site was built and the signal--and the station's fortunes--never recovered. Well, that may not be the real story, but that's the way I heard it. And for sure, the night signal, which used to be incredible for 5 kW up here. 300 or so miles to the northeast, is not merely a shadow of its former self. it essentially hasn't existed for decades.

Anybody have more such stories to tell? Surely, you can either add to, correct, or top the previous story.

 

[nmoore6676]

Don't think the move of WBLY (WULM) 1600 in Springfield Ohio from the site in the valley on West First street to the hilltop Miller Road site was so great for them. From a top rated station in Clark County to barely hanging on and now it is Radio Maria.

 

[littlejohn]

Look at it another way. In 1950, the Bonehead Brioadcasting Company got a license and built out an array on 15 acres west of Metropolis and happily started making money on the radio.
Fast forward fifty years. The third generation of Boneheads are professional people, lawyers, physicians, CPAs. They still live in West Metropolis, which suburb is now The Propoer Address for the well to do of the Metropolis region, consisting of zillion dollar homes, excellent schools, and a tax base which is incredible. Actually, the only perceived problem with West Metropolis is that right in the middle of the place is this field with radio towers in it... an eyesore and they get into the telephones, according to the citizenry. So, the head Bonehead grandchild, who also controls the Bonehead Family Trust, makes the proper decision as trustee.. the property is sold for the 3 million an acre it's currently worth, and another array is built on the scrub and rock East of town. The pattern isn't nearly as good, but it does cover Metropolis as required.. and the Trust doesn't care, they already sold the station to Shoestring Communications. Since they were selling it, the new setup is the cheapest possible, and doesn't really do a very good job. But, who cares?
Sound familiar?

 

[CaptBob92]

How about the former WJBK in Detroit. Started out as a 250 watter on 1490 in the 30's. Years later made a deal with a daytimer in Adrian Mich and swapped frequencies for 1500. Both got fulltime licenses. JBK got 10KW day and 1KW night with three towers. Adrian got 250 watts day and night 1490 nondirectional. Life was good. Then comes the owner, Storrer Broadcasting who wants, no demands that he get a 50KW in Detroit. The engineers do the work and come up with 12 towers at the site, a paralleagram within a parallelagram!

The signal is great North to the thumb but cuts off the burbs to the West where everybody is moving. not to mention it kills all the trees on the North side of the site, just 100 feet from a nearby subdivision. The engineers pull their teeth out trying to keep the pattern in. The station stumbles and is finaly sold to a Christian group.

They go back to 3 towers 10kw day 1kw nights. Life is good again.

 

[CaptBob92]

Got another one. WWBG at Bowling Green Ohio operated two towers directional with 250 watts on 730 khz and tried to program to Toledo. After the towers collapsed in a storm the site was moved to Lime City South of and closer toToledo. That site ran four towers and 1kw. The new 1KW site put less of a signal over Toledo than the 250 watt site although both sites hit the city of license with minimal signal.

 

[pqgeorge]

You want to hear a joke? We basically built a clone of our old transmitter site back in the late 1980's. It was considered a minor modification. It seems that the old site was more valuable as a mini-mall. So we "moved" both our AM and FM facilities to a new site 3 miles away. The original owners spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting the proofs done on the night array. Have FIM will travel. The station eventually passed the proofs. Now mind you, they spent the better part of a half a million dollars getting the new site on line. The owner of the station, owned by the local daily paper said..... "Let's put a water fountain here!", RIGHT in the middle of the ground plain, right between the two towers. It took forever to show this bozo by that doing that, it would destroy the entire antenna pattern, including the ground system. The guy wanted to "beautify" the new transmitter site. He thought it would be an eyesore to do it any other way. Calmer heads prevailed. He never got his water fountain. The AM and FM combo was sold for a cool million and a half to another broadcaster. The new broadcaster sold the FM less than two years later for TEN MILLION DOLLARS! The old owner was bull**hit. But, that was business and there was nothing he could do about it! File that under: "what goes around........".

 

[DanStrassberg]

How about the former WJBK in Detroit. Started out as a 250 watter on 1490 in the 30's. Years later made a deal with a daytimer in Adrian Mich and swapped frequencies for 1500.
They go back to 3 towers 10kw day 1kw nights. Life is good again.

Except it didn't happen that way. Ask Tim Sawyer, the consulting engineer who redesigned it and got it working right with nine towers about 50 years after it was built. It's a very long and convoluted story. The original nine towers grew to 12 and the power grew from 10 kW-D/1 kW-N to 50 kW-D/5 kW-N. Then part of the land was sold, reducing the array to nine towers once again, but of those, only six were members of the original nine. The night power had to be reduced to 3.3 kW. It was only years later that the night power was increased to 10 kW because KSTP and (then) WTOP got the FCC to agree to let both of the Class A AMs' patterns out a bit, which increased their skywave in Detroit and increased the Detroit station's (by then it was WLQV) NIF quite a bit. That capsule leaves out A LOT, but right now I have no time to write more.

 

[gr8oldies]

I don't know what WULM (WBLY)'s tower move would have had to do with WULM's situation...their problems were inept ownership.

 

[charlestondxman]

In Charleston, WSCC 730 had one. They had a good daytime rig, then went to 10kw daytime for their "Newsradio" format around 1999 to compete with WTMA. They had a huge signal, able to be heard all the way from Jacksonville to Cape Hatteras and some great programming.

They got good ratings, and kept with it before they went to FM. Now, 730 says they have 5kw, but it sounds less than that. Now, they have a black gospel format that has almost no local stuff. They are pretty much the lowest rated AM in town now.

 

[radiorob2.0]

590 Atlanta moved their site back in the eighties since the original plant was worth more as property. The new site was too far from Atlanta to overcome a bad ground conductivity.

1190 Dallas is another that shot their signal to cover Ft Worth at night and missed areas north of Dallas where the population landed.

A similar situation with 1500 Detroit happened in LA. A 1490 allocation moved to 1500 for that 50,000 watts on the letterhead. They were better off with a graveyard frequency after all of the nulls.

 

[ChiefEngineer]

WUSI in Evansville. Alwyas heard it well until thye moved out of Evansville to the West part of the county. Now apparently no ground system and on rocky land.

WGBF in Evansville. In 1980 something the ground system had a minimall constructed within 100 feet of their tower ON the ground system. Not good enough? They added an asphalt parking lot OVER the ground system. There is a protective fence around the tower and the asphalt parking lot covers the entire ground system. I heard the station in Indianapolis regularly before this change. Now I am lucky to hear 5kw in Princeton.

We drove to the site a few months back. Due to the need for more parking the lot has grown again. WW II era site has the 2 self supporting towers at either side of the transmitter building. The parking lot goes from the transmitter building to the highway East of the tower. I wonder what rf concerns might be for such a site? Do they mark parking spaces that are within 5 feet of the tower with special "heated location" signs?

 

[nmoore6676]

I don't know what WULM (WBLY)'s tower move would have had to do with WULM's situation...their problems were inept ownership.

Did not mean the Urban Light management, though they were the giant bale of straw on the camel's back. Public records in Ohio showed that RAY broadcasting had tax problem and there were other signs of decline. Ron Yontz sold it and that was that but the downfall could have had something to do with signal while still owned by the son of Smilin' Bob, that is all I meant. The tower move was a good thing while they had the co-owned FM as it put a good signal into Dayton on 102.9, but was not a good thing for a stand alone AM which is what WBLY became later.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Cheif: You mean WSWI, formerly WIKY-AM? I thought the old tower on Mt. Auburn collapsed, leading to the new tower site?

 

[DanStrassberg]

I wonder what rf concerns might be for such a site? Do they mark parking spaces that are within 5 feet of the tower with special "heated location" signs?

If the fences surrounding the tower bases are far enough away from the towers themselves that the field intensity in the area that is accesible to the public does not exceed the maximum specified by the BRH (Bureau of Radiation Hazards--or is it Bureau of Radiation and Health), station management is in the clear.

Here in Boston, we have a 50 kW station with a four-tower array in which the ground radials of two towers are covered by blacktop. Almost 30 years ago when the site was built, I watched the guy who was grooving the blacktop so that a strip of it could be removed to enable burial of the AC lines to the light standards that illuminate the parking lot. His diamond saw was also cutting the station's ground radials. Those ground radials had been bonded to the steel framework of a three-story office building that was being constructed atop a portion of what had been the ground system. I pointed this out to him, which made him quite angry. He responded with "What's it to you? and "Get the f**k out of here." I felt lucky to escape without having my head handed to me.

 

[radiorob2.0]

Cheif: You mean WSWI, formerly WIKY-AM? I thought the old tower on Mt. Auburn collapsed, leading to the new tower site?

Chief can add further details, but 820 was already at SWI (USI Today) when the tower came down. 820 has coverage now that it is modulating again.

1400 Evansville had its radiator atop of a building downtown and a ground lead attached to a city water main. Supposedly 1400 had a better signal with that facility than it does within site of the river. The signal at Mt Auburn these days is full of skywave at night. It makes you wonder how they could hear the signal at night during the Rozie days up on the hill.

Not a transmitter move but a bastardization involves WOMI Owensboro. The owners and station manager decided to one up their new competition with a 400 plus foot sectionalized self supporting tower. Each leg had an insulator at 75 feet and the radiator was 5/8 for 1490. Years later, the owners gave up on the AM and decided the tower was worth more as vertical real estate. Also, the ground system was covered with blacktop and a strip shopping center. Eventually WOMI would radiate from a skirt antenna attached along the legs of the tower. The signal is as to be expected.

 

[KE4KLS_Radio]

CharlestonDXman said:
"In Charleston, WSCC 730 had one. They had a good daytime rig, then went to 10kw daytime for their "Newsradio" format around 1999 to compete with WTMA. They had a huge signal, able to be heard all the way from Jacksonville to Cape Hatteras and some great programming.

They got good ratings, and kept with it before they went to FM. Now, 730 says they have 5kw, but it sounds less than that. Now, they have a black gospel format that has almost no local stuff. They are pretty much the lowest rated AM in town now. "

When they when to 10 kw back in the 90's IIRC that also required them to purchase WMBL 740 in Morehead City NC and take it dark...

 

[gr8oldies]

Worst I'm aware of locally is WCIN (now WDJO) which once had a great 5KW days and respectable night signal...after a tower move and low power non directional at night...pretty bad

 

[greg.hahn]

Look at it another way. In 1950, the Bonehead Brioadcasting Company got a license and built out an array on 15 acres west of Metropolis and happily started making money on the radio.
Fast forward fifty years. The third generation of Boneheads are professional people, lawyers, physicians, CPAs. They still live in West Metropolis, which suburb is now The Propoer Address for the well to do of the Metropolis region, consisting of zillion dollar homes, excellent schools, and a tax base which is incredible. Actually, the only perceived problem with West Metropolis is that right in the middle of the place is this field with radio towers in it... an eyesore and they get into the telephones, according to the citizenry. So, the head Bonehead grandchild, who also controls the Bonehead Family Trust, makes the proper decision as trustee.. the property is sold for the 3 million an acre it's currently worth, and another array is built on the scrub and rock East of town. The pattern isn't nearly as good, but it does cover Metropolis as required.. and the Trust doesn't care, they already sold the station to Shoestring Communications. Since they were selling it, the new setup is the cheapest possible, and doesn't really do a very good job. But, who cares?
Sound familiar?

That sounds very familiar. Excellent post.

 

[boiseengineer]

50 kW Class A. ND-D and a three tower DA-N
“Had” to move after a school was built next to the array.

The new site chosen has a very basic problem. The conductivity between it and the city of license is poor, It’s all volcanic with a fairly deep river valley.

Now directional day with a lobe towards the city of license to try to make up for it.

One tower is 225 deg electrical height (on the high end of the dial) that results in selective fading IN the city of license’s north end (20 miles away). The other 2 towers are 165 deg and 180 deg high.

 

[DanStrassberg]

50 kW Class A. ND-D and a three tower DA-N
“Had” to move after a school was built next to the array.

You say HAD to move. I'm guessing, though, that the station was forced to move by locals who said that they didn't care that the BRH said the field strength in the school was not a hazard. The line of reasoning in such cases is usually that the gummint always lies to the public and we all know that the gummint is out to kill our kids. Am I right? That would certainly be the prevailing point of view in eastern Washington and Idaho. Did this happen during the Clinton administration or the GW Bush administration? In that locale, it would have been more likely to happen during a Democratic administration. The locals MIGHT trust Republicans, but Democrats--never!