Are the LA stations audible in San Diego?

[BMR]

Forgive the question, but I notice some of the Los Angeles stations appear on the ratings list for San Diego.

I can understand AMers like KFI getting there, but do the FM stations really make it that far?

 

[fybush]

They sure do. The terrain down there does interesting things with signals, especially in the area known as "North County" (from Del Mar north to Oceanside and Escondido and Carlsbad). Even though those areas are in San Diego County and in the San Diego radio market, there's some very significant terrain shielding at play that wreaks havoc with some of the San Diego FM signals, especially the ones that aren't on Mount Soledad in La Jolla.

I have family in Solana Beach, on the north-facing side of a hill, and I can often hear the more powerful Mount Wilson FMs there just as well - and sometimes better - than some of the southern San Diego FMs. There's a pretty clean line of sight from Mount Wilson, more than a mile above sea level, down to many parts of coastal North County.

 

[BMR]

They sure do. The terrain down there does interesting things with signals, especially in the area known as "North County"....

I have family in Solana Beach, on the north-facing side of a hill, and I can often hear the more powerful Mount Wilson FMs there just as well - and sometimes better - than some of the southern San Diego FMs. There's a pretty clean line of sight from Mount Wilson, more than a mile above sea level, down to many parts of coastal North County.

Thanks, Scott

Annoyingly Google Maps doesn't have a straight line distance feature, but it's gotta be a 100 miles or so. Obviously something like KRTH has a pretty chunky 54kw signal which obviously helps.

 

[davideduardo]

They sure do. The terrain down there does interesting things with signals, especially in the area known as "North County" (from Del Mar north to Oceanside and Escondido and Carlsbad). Even though those areas are in San Diego County and in the San Diego radio market, there's some very significant terrain shielding at play that wreaks havoc with some of the San Diego FM signals, especially the ones that aren't on Mount Soledad in La Jolla.

I have family in Solana Beach, on the north-facing side of a hill, and I can often hear the more powerful Mount Wilson FMs there just as well - and sometimes better - than some of the southern San Diego FMs. There's a pretty clean line of sight from Mount Wilson, more than a mile above sea level, down to many parts of coastal North County.

And, per Arbitron, almost exactly 1/3 of the market¿s 6+ population lives in North County, the area you describe. So add up all those fractional shares and it's easy to see why about 6 shares go to LA signals.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

They sure do. The terrain down there does interesting things with signals, especially in the area known as "North County"....

I have family in Solana Beach, on the north-facing side of a hill, and I can often hear the more powerful Mount Wilson FMs there just as well - and sometimes better - than some of the southern San Diego FMs. There's a pretty clean line of sight from Mount Wilson, more than a mile above sea level, down to many parts of coastal North County.

Thanks, Scott

Annoyingly Google Maps doesn't have a straight line distance feature, but it's gotta be a 100 miles or so. Obviously something like KRTH has a pretty chunky 54kw signal which obviously helps.

Actually, Google Maps DOES have a straight line distance feature, you just need to enable it.
Go to the upper right where the gear looking thing is.  Click it, and select Maps Labs from the drop-down menu that pops up.
Then, to the right of the Distance Measurement Tool, select "Enable", then click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the window-inside-of-the-window (that had popped up when you clicked Maps Labs).

I also have Drag'n'Zoom enabled, which lets me draw a box on the map and zoom to that area.
I also find the LatLng tooltip to be nice sometimes - this displays the latitude & longitude in decimal (like 32.775332 -116.955532) when you hold the shift key.
I actually find the LatLng marker more useful, though.  You can drop a marker showing the coordinates, then can copy and paste them, or at least stick them there so you can reference them while you open the FCC Coordinate Converter in another window.

BTW if anyone knows of a better coordinate converter, I'd appreciate knowing about it.  Also is there a distance calculator that has all the distance units that Google Maps has available, and also calculates azimuth?  (Google doesn't have that, as far as I know.)

Also, L.A. isn't the limit for hearing FMs while in San Diego.
This is near the top of a ~950-foot hill about 3/4 mile NW of my house near El Cajon: http://www.mediafire.com/?h32rr037ds78ec3
That was recorded with the Tecsun PL-606... and I'll let the audio explain who and where the station is. Decimal coordinates of the receive location are also given in the filename, so you can calculate the distance. This is fairly reliable 24/7 reception.
It's also possible to hear them at my house, at around 550 feet elevation or so on the south side of that hill, but it's weaker.
http://www.mediafire.com/?6n5lh50de022515 - that's them on the roof of my house with the PL-380 and the whip antenna extended last July
http://www.mediafire.com/?tznhf14gca6snp4 - that's with the PL-606 in my back yard within the last couple weeks in the early afternoon, laying on the ground, with the whip antenna compacted & stored.

 

[600kogo]

As for oldies in LA and SD KRTH is so far superior to The Walrus with music that it's not even funny! I listen to KRTH but can only listen to the Walrus during Frank Anthony's show.

 

[pjc1961]

Past threads that have discussed Los Angeles and San Diego radio reception:

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=78490.0

http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=151414.0

 

[davideduardo]

As for oldies in LA and SD KRTH is so far superior to The Walrus with music that it's not even funny! I listen to KRTH but can only listen to the Walrus during Frank Anthony's show.

The listeners don't seem to feel that way. In the last book, The Walrus had a 4.8 12+ share in its market, while KRTH had a 4.2.

 

[Big 121]

At a tech company in Poway, near Community and Scripps Poway Parkway, you could see the snow on Mt. Wilson under the best conditions.

 

[BMR]

They sure do. The terrain down there does interesting things with signals, especially in the area known as "North County"....

I have family in Solana Beach, on the north-facing side of a hill, and I can often hear the more powerful Mount Wilson FMs there just as well - and sometimes better - than some of the southern San Diego FMs. There's a pretty clean line of sight from Mount Wilson, more than a mile above sea level, down to many parts of coastal North County.

Thanks, Scott

Annoyingly Google Maps doesn't have a straight line distance feature, but it's gotta be a 100 miles or so. Obviously something like KRTH has a pretty chunky 54kw signal which obviously helps.

Actually, Google Maps DOES have a straight line distance feature, you just need to enable it.
Go to the upper right where the gear looking thing is. Click it, and select Maps Labs from the drop-down menu that pops up.
Then, to the right of the Distance Measurement Tool, select "Enable", then click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the window-inside-of-the-window (that had popped up when you clicked Maps Labs).

Ooh, thanks. Very handy for radio geekery.

 

[Lopaka]

By the same token some SD stations come in surprisingly well in LA, I can think of KGB and 91X for example. As a kid I grew up in the signal shadows of Mt. Soledad, the only TV stations we got were from LA, I grew up watching Sheriff John (who a neighbor says was as nice in real life as he was on TV--she had been a neighbor of his 50 or so years ago), Skipper Frank, Engineer Bill--all the LA kids show hosts, I thought LA was just up the road, around the next bend. We even got KEYT from Santa Barbara routinely. My problem with KRTH has been that their play list seems pretty repetitive, I find more variety on the Walrus. There was a time when it seemed pointless to listen to anything besides KLOS. And in the AM era people went out of their way to tune in KFWB and KRLA. Of course you had XERB booming up to the Sunset Strip back then, too. I think the high mountain peaks for FM and the ocean conductivity for AM tended to make So. California more of a homogeneous market than a similar sized area would be in other parts of the world.

 

[600kogo]

Gleason please,

A 4.2 share in LA is like a 20 share in San Diego, they are not even comparable. Depending on demos KRTH is number one in some of them or number 2, Walrus is not number one in any demo or number two for that matter!

 

[SDRadio]

The listeners don't seem to feel that way. In the last book, The Walrus had a 4.8 12+ share in its market, while KRTH had a 4.2.

David

Two markets, even in super sunny Southern California, do not compare in music, talk radio, and public stations. When the cume in la LA is measured in millions and hundreds of thousands here. Even with a 4.2 share in la LA, KEARTH 101 has a larger audience than San Diego combined.

KFI-AM 640 has a larger share of the Sandy Eggo audience than KFMB-AM 760. It's quality, not quantity.

Thanks David,

 

[Big 121]

Lopaka-Sheriff John? And his birthday cake song ? Wow, another SoCal'er with a good memory. How 'bout Andy Devine and Froggy...LLoyd Thaxton
record show. Steve Allen, live. Amazing incident one summer night, bleary-eyed at 1 am or so, this teen saw the sign-off of KTLA 5, and the call
letters were red and green on a white background. Why amazing? It was a black and white Emerson.
Years later, I learned KTLA used a rotating, slotted wheel in front of the camera lens, tricking the eye to see "color"!

 

[Lopaka]

Among my most precious memories of early Southland TV, and I do apologize this is a bit off topic but its too good to let go by...almost every week, Freddie Blassie smashing the sign for Lou's Garage over Dick Lane's head on Wednesday night wrestling on KTLA. Now THAT was class!

 

[davideduardo]

Gleason please,

A 4.2 share in LA is like a 20 share in San Diego, they are not even comparable. Depending on demos KRTH is number one in some of them or number 2, Walrus is not number one in any demo or number two for that matter!

"Share" indicates the level of instantaneous listening to any given station out of all stations being listened to. As such, a 5 share in LA means the same as a 5 share in Victorville: one out of every 20 listeners has selected that particular station.

So a 4.8 share in LA is "like" a 4.8 share in San Diego... or, for that matter, a 4.8 in Peoria.

Rank is a function of the competitive array. As an example, during this year there have been books where neither country station in Phoenix has been in the top 10 25-54, but were there only one country station it would be #1 or #2. San Diego and LA are not unalike in number of viable signals... LA has 29 and SD, including those stations in English in Tijuana, has 27.

Rank does not translate into rates. Share (which is the same as rating or AQH persons, expressed in different ways) does. Share tells you how many, and ad rates are based on audience delivery.

I looked at the standard sales demos. KRTH is nowhere near #1 or #2 in any of them. It's 11th in 26-54, tied for 13th in 18-49 and 13th in 18-34. In fact, in the last 9 books, it has been inside the top 10 25-54 only twice, once at 8th and once at 9th, and averages 12th in that demo.

 

[Signal Geek]

On many days, many of the Santa Barbara stations can be picked up in San Diego as well. At my house I can usually pick up 103.3 KVYB and 99.9 KTYD. 106.3 (smooth jazz) and 91.9 (KCSB) come in sometimes as well. And KUSC's Santa Barbara full-power repeater on 88.7 often overpowers the Tijuana public FM on the same frequency.

What's interesting is that KTYD's signal is sometimes stronger than KVYB, even though KTYD's ERP is lower.

 

[the golden boy]

Don't forget about KBIG's monster signal (at least, when compared to most other L.A. signals). I got KBIG's signal the best in San Diego. From my experiences, you can really start picking them up even better from about Mission Valley northward.

 

[goriajk]

By the same token some SD stations come in surprisingly well in LA, I can think of KGB and 91X for example. As a kid I grew up in the signal shadows of Mt. Soledad, the only TV stations we got were from LA, I grew up watching Sheriff John (who a neighbor says was as nice in real life as he was on TV--she had been a neighbor of his 50 or so years ago), Skipper Frank, Engineer Bill--all the LA kids show hosts, I thought LA was just up the road, around the next bend. We even got KEYT from Santa Barbara routinely. My problem with KRTH has been that their play list seems pretty repetitive, I find more variety on the Walrus. There was a time when it seemed pointless to listen to anything besides KLOS. And in the AM era people went out of their way to tune in KFWB and KRLA. Of course you had XERB booming up to the Sunset Strip back then, too. I think the high mountain peaks for FM and the ocean conductivity for AM tended to make So. California more of a homogeneous market than a similar sized area would be in other parts of the world.

The Same Can Be Said For SD Stations Coming Into LA - The Ones I Listened To Growing Up Near Inglewood-LAX Area in the 1980's was KiFM 'FM-98', 101 KGB-FM, Z90 (When It Was AOR) and 91X - The stations came in better as I was driving down to College at Long Beach St. - At the now defunct 'BEST' Store I worked for in Torrance, people would come to me in the Electronics dept where I worked requesting antennas to pick up 91X from their apartments in Redondo Beach and PV. Those were the days!! Joe G

 

[davideduardo]

Don't forget about KBIG's monster signal (at least, when compared to most other L.A. signals). I got KBIG's signal the best in San Diego. From my experiences, you can really start picking them up even better from about Mission Valley northward.

Remember, KBIG pulled back from its 105 kw to 65 kw a few years back due to RF issues on Wilson.

That is still the highest commercial ERP on Wilson, but is within a tiny difference with the other high range stations up there, KLOS, KTWV and KRTH.