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Canadian AM stations switching to FM

K

Keith_Lake

Guest
Over the past few years, many Canadian AM signals have gone silent as they moved to FM frequencies.

Why can't stations in the USA do that? Most AM daytimers are relics and if the owners had the chance to legally ditch the AM and upgrade to a fulltime FM signal of equal coverage, they'd probably jump at the chance.

Or is it because there aren't enough vacant FM allocations in the USA to make that practical? I may have just answered my own question.

KL<P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
> Over the past few years, many Canadian AM signals have gone
> silent as they moved to FM frequencies.
>
> Why can't stations in the USA do that? Most AM
> daytimers are relics and if the owners had the chance to
> legally ditch the AM and upgrade to a fulltime FM signal of
> equal coverage, they'd probably jump at the chance.
>
> Or is it because there aren't enough vacant FM
> allocations in the USA to make that practical? I may have
> just answered my own question.

No, it's because the corporate greed to own as many stations as possible in a market have made it impossible to free up FM allocations for AMs to migrate.

Now, if the FCC had the sense to take television channels 5 and 6 after the digital TV transition, expand the FM band down to 76MHz, and reserve the new frequencies for AMs that agreed to go dark after the first x number of years (like the way they handled the expansion of AM to 1700kHz), that would be a good thing.<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
> > Over the past few years, many Canadian AM signals have
> gone
> > silent as they moved to FM frequencies.
> >
> > Why can't stations in the USA do that? Most AM
> > daytimers are relics and if the owners had the chance to
> > legally ditch the AM and upgrade to a fulltime FM signal
> of
> > equal coverage, they'd probably jump at the chance.
> >
> > Or is it because there aren't enough vacant FM
> > allocations in the USA to make that practical? I may have
>
> > just answered my own question.
>
> No, it's because the corporate greed to own as many stations
> as possible in a market have made it impossible to free up
> FM allocations for AMs to migrate.
>
> Now, if the FCC had the sense to take television channels 5
> and 6 after the digital TV transition, expand the FM band
> down to 76MHz, and reserve the new frequencies for AMs that
> agreed to go dark after the first x number of years (like
> the way they handled the expansion of AM to 1700kHz), that
> would be a good thing.
>
If any of those daytimers are commercial stations, then the FCC would need to reallocate the commercial band to bring it down to maybe 90.1, maybe even 89.1, then reserve the expanded commercial band for the daytimers first willing to go to FM. But in a situation like that, some of the non-commercial stations would need to be relocated further down to accomodate the change, especially if a market has plenty of non-commercial stations operating on low power and same frequencies and adjacent frequencies. Much of the non-commercial band in the Chicago market from 88.1 & 89.9 are operating mainly low power stations, whether class D, or class A over 100 watts. That would have to be taken into consideration as well.
 
Reallocation of bandwidth

Instead of making everybody go out an buy a new radio if they want to hear their favorite NPR station, why not just take that new bandwidth and allocate it for digital-only broadcast. Let the AM daytimers have the option to offer a digital simulcast/extended service in the new frequency area. That helps them, pushes the migration to digital technology, and doesn't screw the existing non-coms by putting them into an area that can't be picked up on current receivers.
 
> Over the past few years, many Canadian AM signals have gone
> silent as they moved to FM frequencies.

One of these was CHSJ 700, St. John, NB, which moved to FM. I used to
get 700 "like a local" up on Cape Ann in Mass.
<P ID="signature">______________
News and views about Boston and New England Radio:

http://www.livejournal.com/community/boston_radio</P>
 
Re: Reallocation of bandwidth

> Instead of making everybody go out an buy a new radio if
> they want to hear their favorite NPR station, why not just
> take that new bandwidth and allocate it for digital-only
> broadcast. Let the AM daytimers have the option to offer a
> digital simulcast/extended service in the new frequency
> area. That helps them, pushes the migration to digital
> technology, and doesn't screw the existing non-coms by
> putting them into an area that can't be picked up on current
> receivers.
>
Eureka 147 anybody
 
> Why can't stations in the USA do that? Most AM
> daytimers are relics and if the owners had the chance to
> legally ditch the AM and upgrade to a fulltime FM signal of
> equal coverage, they'd probably jump at the chance.
>


That won't work for some of the daytime AM stations. There is a daytime AM here in Columbus (880 WRFD) that is 23,000 watts! To get that same coverage on FM it would have to be at least 300,000 watts just to cover the local coverage! WRFD's local grade is Wilmington to Mansfield, and their distant coverage is Cincinnati to Cleveland and Ft. Wayne Indiana to Parkersburg West Virginia(that's over 200 miles either direction). That FM would have to have some serious height AND power to get that coverage. It's a good idea to use the Channel 5 and 6 frequencies to expand the FM band and move some of the AM's to FM, but I don't see the FCC doing that anytime soon. They can make that part of the band commercial, along with dropping the "non-comm" band altogether and make the whole thing intermixed with commercial and non-commercial. (there is a non-comm here in Columbus at 101.5 FM, so it's not that restricted)
 
What might have been smarter would have had daytimers or other AMs pick up some of those 80/90 FMs rathr than insist that these new allocations all be independently owned, especially in small towns.<P ID="signature">______________
Did the Corinthians ever write back?</P>
 
Perhaps I should have been more specific in my original post. I was thinking more in terms of little 250/500 watt daytimers in markets that don't have an FM allocation, or those that have an FM that ignores its city of license to rimshot the nearest big city. Those are the ones that would jump at a chance for an FM signal (LPFM II?) of equal coverage as an alternative to going dark. Obviously the ones that run 50kw in the daytime already have as much coverage as they need and would not be eligible for such an upgrade.

KL


>
> That won't work for some of the daytime AM stations. There
> is a daytime AM here in Columbus (880 WRFD) that is 23,000
> watts! To get that same coverage on FM it would have to be
> at least 300,000 watts just to cover the local coverage!
> WRFD's local grade is Wilmington to Mansfield, and their
> distant coverage is Cincinnati to Cleveland and Ft. Wayne
> Indiana to Parkersburg West Virginia(that's over 200 miles
> either direction). That FM would have to have some serious
> height AND power to get that coverage. It's a good idea to
> use the Channel 5 and 6 frequencies to expand the FM band
> and move some of the AM's to FM, but I don't see the FCC
> doing that anytime soon. They can make that part of the band
> commercial, along with dropping the "non-comm" band
> altogether and make the whole thing intermixed with
> commercial and non-commercial. (there is a non-comm here in
> Columbus at 101.5 FM, so it's not that restricted)
> <P ID="signature">______________
</P>
 
>
> That won't work for some of the daytime AM stations. There
> is a daytime AM here in Columbus (880 WRFD) that is 23,000
> watts! To get that same coverage on FM it would have to be
> at least 300,000 watts just to cover the local coverage!
> WRFD's local grade is Wilmington to Mansfield, and their
> distant coverage is Cincinnati to Cleveland and Ft. Wayne
> Indiana to Parkersburg West Virginia(that's over 200 miles
> either direction).

While out of market coverage may be important to a handful of stations with paid religion or farm programming, 99.9% of stations don't care at all about coverage outside the metro market surveyed by Arbitron. This is because the vast bulk of ad buys are made in the local market and outside coverage is not paid extra for.

Yhe reason most AMs that can increase poer do so is to improve reception in the home market. You just can't make money from outside coverage.
 
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