Changes at WUMB?

[raccoonradio]

Globe article the other day

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2008/01/24/change_is_in_the_air_at_wumb/

WUMB got a grant and is re-evaluating itself to better serve its listeners; by March 1 shows like
Afropop Worldwide and Mountain Stage may be gone and they may no longer be calling themselves
"Folk Radio". They are conducting listener surveys and may replace some syndicated shows with
live (local?) ones--and may be backing off their "folk" identity. (""Even our heaviest listeners find the word 'folk' very challenging.")

Increases in costs for Public Radio International shows could mean the loss of shows like "Mountain
Stage", even if popular.

 

[blamethemayo]

one thing they could do to better serve their listeners would be to improve their signal.

i live just a few miles outside of boston and wumb cant be picked up inside my house.

 

[raccoonradio]

Coverage map for the main signal:
http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WUMB&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

If you live right near my station, WMWM, you might have trouble but heck I've been in parts of Salem
where you could get both (on a car stereo that is--but as you say, you're talking about "inside your house").
They're also of course at 91.9 in Worc & Falmouth and have that daytimer in Orleans (1170) and
the Newburyport-licensed, Amesbury-based WNEF 91.7 but those may not help you (not sure where you are)

For a brief time when WLYN 1360 was between owners (IIRC) they rebroadcast on the Lynn signal.

 

[Mickey37]

I lost the 91.7 signal on the highway between Andover and Chelmsord last night, but a quick turn of the nob got 91.9, clear as a bell.

I listen to them on the weekends for their Celtic music, which I hope won't disappear with any coming changes.

 

[blamethemayo]

Coverage map for the main signal:
http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WUMB&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

If you live right near my station, WMWM, you might have trouble but heck I've been in parts of Salem
where you could get both (on a car stereo that is--but as you say, you're talking about "inside your house").
They're also of course at 91.9 in Worc & Falmouth and have that daytimer in Orleans (1170) and
the Newburyport-licensed, Amesbury-based WNEF 91.7 but those may not help you (not sure where you are)

For a brief time when WLYN 1360 was between owners (IIRC) they rebroadcast on the Lynn signal.

i live in medford.

wumb is almost impossible inside the house. on the car radio it comes in pretty well.

 

[raccoonradio]

91.5 'MFO might be a factor, then

 

[FPB]

>one thing they could do to better serve their listeners would be to improve their >signal.
>i live just a few miles outside of boston and wumb cant be picked up inside my >house.
>
I was at UMass when they were first working on getting their transmitter going. They were closed-circuit up until that point. At that time I was studying graphic design and I designed their fist logo (very '70's neon affair).

When they were gathering signatures for public support of the transmitter they were focusing on Quincy and the south shore areas. So, at least in the beginning, their mission was to serve primarily south of the city.

I would definately miss their **FOLK** format. Why can't people just grab some granola and relax?

 

[aaronread]

WUMB is not alone in re-evaluating the costs of various national programs. To be perhaps a little blunt, Minnesota Public Radio really threw a wrench into a lot of stations' budgets when they created American Public Media and yanked half of PRI's programming away to fill APM's coffers. I can't exactly blame them for doing it, but it doesn't change the fact that each of these distributors charges a not-insubstantial base affiliation fee on top of whatever fees for individual shows. Typically that base fee is scaled depending on your market and market share, but it's not scaled based on how many programs from that distributor you air. So it gets harder to justify ponying up a base fee if you're only airing one or two shows from that distributor. (shrugs)

As for WUMB's signal, they are - technically - a very small Class A that "survives" because they're right over a very densely-populated area. But 660 watts is only going to do so much...that's why they've tried to acquire so many additional stations across the region; it's not that WUMB has some dark desire to squeeze out everyone else from the spectrum...but rather that doing what they're doing is what it takes to serve an equivalent audience to a WBUR or WGBH; a fiscal necessity if you're going to provide a reasonable quality public radio service, never mind the pretty high-quality service WUMB does. It's a horribly inefficient way to do so (I'm sure everyone at WUMB would much rather have one big signal like 90.9 or 89.7 instead of having five or six little signals) but it's the only way they've got...the Boston spectrum has been locked up tight for two, arguably three decades.

Judging by the applications in last October's FCC NCE filing window, the only places near Boston for new stations are Cape Ann, Amesbury, Leominster, Middleboro, Ware and Milford, NH...plus a few places on Cape Cod. NONE of these applied-for new signals will really put anything into Boston...although it looks like one or two of the 88.5 applications on Cape Ann might actually "reach Boston" if you're on the waterfront and have a really good radio, but obviously that's meaningless to the average listener. None of the other applications will even get inside Rt.128 from the looks of things. So unfortunately WUMB will not be improving their Boston-area signal that way.

As for the future of the folk programming, though...the tone I read in that article was that WUMB wasn't planning on actually changing the music per se, just how it was branded. IIRC there was a specific line that people who liked listening to WUMB, would also say they didn't like listening to "folk music" (ironic, eh?).

 

[Eli Polonsky]

one thing they could do to better serve their listeners would be to improve their signal.

Believe me, if there was anything they could do to improve it, they would. Their GM would love to have a 100kW station like WGBH, or a 50kW (equivalent) station like WBUR, and would jump to do whatever it would take to make it happen, if it was possible.

However, the FCC will not allow them to increase their main Boston area signal (which transmits at 660 watts ERP from Quincy) in any way due to interference issues with other stations in the area. If there was any way they could have, they would have done it long ago. The power cannot be increased, and the tower cannot be moved to any better location.

That's why they have relay transmitters on 91.9 in Worcester (760 watts) and Falmouth (6000 watts), 91.7 in Newburyport (1000 watts), 1170 AM in Orleans (1000 watts daytime only), plus a temporary until further notice arrangement with 1430 in Amherst (5000 watts days, 10 watts night), a low power translator that has occasionally been on the air this past year in Gloucester (101.5, 35 watts), and a handful of new applications pending in other outlying areas.

Most stations with weak signals, especially around an urban area, do not choose to have weak signals. They make the best of what the FCC will allow them.

Also, I live in Somerville, just south of Medford, and I get them quite well in analog stereo using a basic rabbit-ear TV antenna on my home receivers. (My HD reception on them is kind of iffy and in and out). You may need a better antenna on your home receiver if you get them OK in the car. However, I can't get them well on lousy receivers such as my Walkman, boom-box and clock radio, so don't expect to get them well on those types of radios where you are.

 

[mgpt6]

I think WUMB has a CP for Class-A in Marshfield on 91.7 and dont they have a time share agreement with WAVM 91.7 FM in Maynard,Maynard High School Radio which also has a CP to go from Class D to Class A.

 

[raccoonradio]

From Fybush http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html :

"(One bit of good news there, by the way - there's word that the station has reached a deal to continue carrying the two Public Radio International shows, "Mountain Stage" and "Afropop Worldwide," that it had threatened to cancel due to increased cost.)"

 

[notlob]

Globe article the other day

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2008/01/24/change_is_in_the_air_at_wumb/

WUMB got a grant and is re-evaluating itself to better serve its listeners; by March 1 shows like
Afropop Worldwide and Mountain Stage may be gone and they may no longer be calling themselves
"Folk Radio". They are conducting listener surveys and may replace some syndicated shows with
live (local?) ones--and may be backing off their "folk" identity. (""Even our heaviest listeners find the word 'folk' very challenging.")

Increases in costs for Public Radio International shows could mean the loss of shows like "Mountain
Stage", even if popular.

This was posted 1/27/08.

...is WUMB's AAA format better serving its listeners?

 

[DavidZ]

I don't know if WUMB is doing any better with their AAA'sh format direction but I have noticed their repeater station (WBPR-FM 91.9) is considerably stronger in the Worcester area.

I get them quite nicely in the car with no real drop outs like in the past. And the scan button will now almost always stop at 91.9. Their signal is also loud and clear at my home about 10 miles south of Worcester.

 

[DanStrassberg]

I get them quite nicely in the car with no real drop outs like in the past. And the scan button will now almost always stop at 91.9. Their signal is also loud and clear at my home about 10 miles south of Worcester.

Wasn't WBPR granted a CP a few months back to move its Tx from a site east of Worcester to Asnebumskit with a considerable decrease in power? The old signal was very directional to the west. The new one is either ND or less directional. I can't recall whether or not the HAAT increase at Asnebumskit would, in theory, have compensated for the power reduction.

 

[DavidZ]

I get them quite nicely in the car with no real drop outs like in the past. And the scan button will now almost always stop at 91.9. Their signal is also loud and clear at my home about 10 miles south of Worcester.

Wasn't WBPR granted a CP a few months back to move its Tx from a site east of Worcester to Asnebumskit with a considerable decrease in power? The old signal was very directional to the west. The new one is either ND or less directional. I can't recall whether or not the HAAT increase at Asnebumskit would, in theory, have compensated for the power reduction.

I thought WICN-FM 90.5 had applied to move to Paxton a few months back. I didn't hear or read anything relative to WBPR.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I thought WICN-FM 90.5 had applied to move to Paxton a few months back. I didn't hear or read anything relative to WBPR.

WUMB has recently moved their Worcester area repeater WBPR from it's old site in Spencer (due west of Worcester) to Asnebumskit Hill in Paxton. The pattern is still somewhat directional, but now appears to favor the east (especially southeast over Worcester itself), with minor "soft" nulls to the northwest and southwest. Despite the reduction in ERP to 370 watts, WBPR is covering a lot more ground and better serving its target area from this additional height. The old signal from Spencer was badly blocked by the Worcester hills, it now serves those areas and beyond from Asnebumskit.

As for how their format switch from folk to "rootsy" AAA almost two years ago is serving their listeners, I think that many of their former folk listeners they had alienated and lost with that change back then have tuned back by default, because there was nowhere else for them to go full-time. Though there are many excellent folk/roots specialty programs on various other area Public and college stations isolated at certain times on their schedules, there is still nothing else on terrestrial radio in the area offering a full-time format anything close to roots (still including some folk) music that WUMB does, so people who want to hear that type of music in the background all day will tune to it and put up with the pop-ish AAA tracks in order to also hear the genuine roots and folk music that's still included in the mix, while the more serious folk aficionados will make the effort to remember and seek out the deeper, more specifically folk/roots (non-pop) isolated specialty shows on stations like WGBH, WICN, WMBR, WBRS, WMFO, WHRB, WZBC, WCUW, etc... plus Sandy Sheehan's great Saturday night "Traditional Folk" specialty show on WUMB has its own audience for what he does.

As for WUMB attracting a whole new larger, younger demographic since their switch to "rootsy" AAA as their hired consultants had promised them, I haven't seen any evidence of that happening to a significant degree over the nearly two years since the switch.

 

[DavidZ]

Thank God for Asnebumskit Hill in Paxton! Now if we can only get WAAF to move back there.

 

[pqgeorge]

Have they finally added Stereo to WBPR? You'd figure that a music centered format like the WUMB stations should have all of their repeaters to operate in Stereo. After all, Worcester is the largest city in Central Massachusetts. And a signal from Asnebumskit is quite sufficient.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Have they finally added Stereo to WBPR?

I don't know whether they've added analog stereo to WBPR, I assume they must have, but I was told that it did go HD digital! All of WUMB's FM stations are now in HD.

I question the financial wisdom of their investing in the expenses of HD at this time, especially on relatively low power parent signals that have very small range in HD, and especially on a station that keeps crying poor so many times per year. For most of this year, their weekend airstaff was not being paid, but I heard that their pay has been reinstated recently. I'll venture a guess that they may have gotten a grant earmarked specifically for the HD.

I have also noticed that they are now occasionally using the liner "Boston's NPR Music Station", which sounds like WBUR's "Boston's NPR News Station". I saw the GM say in an article that they want WUMB to be "where WBUR's listeners go when they get tired of the news", or something to that effect.

 

[notlob]

With a background in folk music production and definately not a fan of WUMB's switch from folk to "music mix" I have been enjoying reading your posts, thank you all.

I have two questions about other "WUMB radio network"* projects.

1. I live an a town adjacent to Maynard; Maynard high school has a low strength (10 watts?) FM station that broadcasts at 91.1fm. Seem to remember WUMB was to have donated funds for new equipment, with the stipulation its signal would be broadcast when the school station was off air. Any news?

2. From my NEFolknNews group, post 8321 [urlhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/NorthEastFolknRoots/message/8321[/url]:

I had heard a bit about this but am not fluent enough to express the background. Have asked Ed Perry and Pat Monteith to post their positions here.

If anyone else has any factual background information, please share.

Source http://www.959watd.com/news.php?Marshfield-DPW-board-votes-on-WUMB-antenna-proposal-1914

I had heard a bit about this but am not fluent enough to express the background. Have asked Ed Perry and Pat Monteith to post their positions here.

If anyone else has any factual background information, please share.

Marshfield: DPW board votes on WUMB antenna proposal

The board voted 2 to 1 to allow the University of Massachusetts Boston NPR radio affiliate WUMB to install a repeater transmitter and antenna on the town's water tower, to bring in Marshfield listeners. The station is offering the town just 1200 dollars a year to use the tower; a paltry sum considering the market value for renting antenna space is about 30 thousand dollars a year.

However, our own Ed Perry owner of WATD, questions the fairness of giving the non-profit FM station, what amounts to a free deal to compete for listeners, while WATD supports the town as a taxpayer and by donating free antenna space for the town's emergency services.

Perry offered to lease antenna space on WATD'S tower at market value, but WUMB'S chairman says they just can't afford it.

The board is now charged with negotiating with WUMB on a final price to rent anntenna space.

WUMB's desire to take resources from the reading for the blind seems pretty mean-spirited to me. Any developments?

========

"WUMB radio network" are the words WUMB uses in its (defunct? last entry is dated 11/21/08) facebook group -
http://www.facebook.com/pages/WUMB-Radio-Network/23985746031?ref=ts
...very appropriate given its propensity to take over transmitters/translaters/stations in Amherst, southern New Hampshire, Marshfield and Maynard.