City with the lowest Number of local FM stations?

[dxer2_2000]

OK, we know that most cities on earth have a packed FM band these days. Which city would have the lowest number of FM stations? (ie a fairly open FM band) ?

I'd doubt that would include any European or North American cities

Darwin NT in Australia for eg only has 13 FM stations
(plus any unlisted LPONs - Low Powered Open Narrowcast stations which aren't listed in the ACMA listings) - possibly 3 extra - 87.6/87.8/88.0 would be used around the city?) - so a possible total of 16.


dxer2_2000

 

[fybush]

OK, we know that most cities on earth have a packed FM band these days. Which city would have the lowest number of FM stations? (ie a fairly open FM band) ?

I'd doubt that would include any European or North American cities

Depends how big a city you're looking for.

You could be in Bishop, California, an incorporated city of about 3500 people in the eastern Sierra 250 miles north of LA, where the entire FM dial consists of three local signals and a couple of translators. That's "packed," by the way, when you compare it to the way that same dial sounded when I lived there 20 years ago - back then, it was one local FM signal and a couple of translators!

I suspect that's about as empty as the FM dial gets these days in any place big enough to be incorporated as a city.

 

[vibe]

Scott F. is correct-I checked with radio locator.com-there are 9 FM stations of local to fringe strengt for Bishop CA 5 are either religious or Christ. Contemp. Probably appropriate for a place named Bishop. But could one erect an outside antenna for FM (as the most distant station listed on R-L- is only 30 mi) or is the location too remote for stations from , say, 80-100 mi away.
Maybe off topic but I'm curious as to how far FM signals go out into the outback or really fringe areas of Oz?

 

[fybush]

There are no FM stations 80-100 miles away from Bishop. The Sierra Nevada mountains rise 14,000 feet over the city to the west, forming a solid wall that blocks out anything that would come from the Central Valley. Reno is about 200 miles to the north, too far for any kind of routine reception. The nearest other stations to the south are in Ridgecrest, a good 100 miles south with some terrain blockage. And to the east there's a lot of very empty Nevada.

I lied slightly in my previous post: when I lived there 20 years ago, it was not in Bishop proper but in an even more isolated desert valley 25 miles to the east. I did put up a yagi just to see what I would get, and there was some interesting, and fairly reliable, knife-edge propagation over the Sierras and the White Mountains that brought in very weak, but often usable, FM signals from San Luis Obispo, of all places!

There was even more sporadic reception of a handful of Fresno FMs. Never any sign of Reno or Vegas or LA.

 

[KTN Corp]

How about on the MW band?

 

[fybush]

There's just one AM station in Bishop, 1000-watt KBOV 1230. There had been a second AM in the Owens Valley, KNYO 600 Independence, but it went dark right around the time I got there. (The tower still stands and is used by several cellular carriers.)

KBOV just barely made it over the White Mountains to where I was, 25 miles away. There was no other really usable daytime AM reception. At night, it was the usual western skywave stuff; I think I heard WHO, but nothing further east.

I was back out that way in April and scanned the dial again. With a good radio, I could just barely bring in some audio from a couple of the Vegas AMs (670 and 720) by day, but not much else.

 

[trusty]

You're really gonna have to say how large a town has to be to become a "city". Radio-Locator shows Marfa, TX (pop. 2121) to receive 1 FM (public radio), 1 LPFM (religious) and 1 AM, while Slapout, OK (pop. 3) receives 4 full power FM stations.

Maybe use the top 100 markets and skew a per-capita thingy.....

 

[RMarino]

Fields, Oregon.

Never been there, but from what I understand the dial is completely open. I've heard the same thing about an area in Nevada, about a couple hours north of Las Vegas.

 

[radiorob2.0]

As a community of license Evansville, Indiana, a city of 150,000, until the late nineties had more non-commercial radio stations than commercial. Now it is even, three and three. The rest of the dial composing the metro are drop-ins.

Atlanta is a metro built by drop-ins since the city grew beyond the original allocations.

 

[ddsparxx]

Baltimore would have 15 stations if translators, DC and Annapolis stations are not included.

I agree about Fields, OR--a very small town in the middle of nowthere. I'm pretty sure the FM band is completely empty when turning a radio on, unless there is any FM DX.

 

[BMR]

OK, we know that most cities on earth have a packed FM band these days. Which city would have the lowest number of FM stations? (ie a fairly open FM band) ?

I'd doubt that would include any European or North American cities

Darwin NT in Australia for eg only has 13 FM stations
(plus any unlisted LPONs - Low Powered Open Narrowcast stations which aren't listed in the ACMA listings) - possibly 3 extra - 87.6/87.8/88.0 would be used around the city?) - so a possible total of 16.


dxer2_2000

Most UK cities have less than that. My home city of Derby (pop 250,000) has 10 stations on FM, 40 miles up the road and Stoke on Trent (pop 200,000) has eight.

Milton Keynes has only seven, but doesn't count as a city despite having a population nearly as big as Stoke's. That's a big problem- definitions of 'city' vary wildly worldwide.

Another problem is what do we class as 'local'? A good car radio in Derby will pull in stations from Birmingham, for example. That's obviously not going to be the case in Darwin, or in many places in the USA.

 

[dxer2_2000]

C'mon guys. you need to use common sense. Does a "small town in the middle of nowhere" constitute a city.....?? Neither is a small country town. I mean major population centres / Urban areas / Metropolis.

 

[dxer2_2000]

you have the right idea BMR. Derby would constitute a city with that sort of population. A city would have a population of 100,000 or more

 

[BMR]

you have the right idea BMR. Derby would constitute a city with that sort of population. A city would have a population of 100,000 or more

OK- But if you are equating lack of local stations with an open FM band, forget anywhere in England. One of the many reasons most UK cities have so few stations is interference from other cities nearby, coupled with hyper-conservative frequency planning. Most of north-west Europe has similar problems

So we need to think about cities in the middle of nowhere. Possibly with sea on at least one side.

 

[kenglish]

Could we keep his topic quiet (among ourselves)?

If any of those religious broadcasters find out there's a vacant channel somewhere, they'll all file on it like a pack of spectrum vultures. ;D

 

[MarioMania]

The FM band here is Crowded.

Mostly SF Bay Area & Sac Stations

 

[BRNout]

Well, if you look at major markets and how many stations are assigned to each, then Baltimore (as mentioned above), Boston and Hartford are among the lesser served cities. Smaller cities that are similarly underserved would be Springfield, MA, Allentown/Bethlehem, PA and Wilmington, DE. However, I must point out that - in each case - there are many signals from adjacent markets that can be heard easily on FM so their respective dials are actually relatively full.

Fact is, there aren't many markets in the US that don't have pretty full FM dials. At one time, Salt Lake City may have qualified - now it features more signals per capita than anywhere else. Reno, NV doesn't have a lot of FM signals; but it does have FAR more than the few that they had a mere 20 years ago. Many Canadian cities didn't have a lot of FM variety until relatively recently - but that's changed too now. I remember places like Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg have relatively few FMs; however, on my last trips to those places, they were pretty packed with FM choices too.

So, we can chat about stretches of highway between Battle Mountain and Eureka, NV as being bereft of FM stations - but when it comes to cities most seem to have plenty.

 

[w9wi]

As a community of license Evansville, Indiana, a city of 150,000, until the late nineties had more non-commercial radio stations than commercial. Now it is even, three and three. The rest of the dial composing the metro are drop-ins.

Clarksville, Tennessee, 2008 population estimate ~124,000 and not a suburb of any larger city, has *no* commercial FM stations.. three commercial AMs (one of which is silent and unlikely to return) and two non-commercial FMs.

There are however three commercial FMs licensed to other communities that are for all intents and purposes Clarksville stations. Also, two Hopkinsville, Kentucky stations that also serve Clarksville and have a significant signal there; a FM translator relaying the HD2 of a Nashville station; and "rimshot" signals from most major Nashville stations.

Atlanta is a metro built by drop-ins since the city grew beyond the original allocations.

Quite common in the South.

 

[MR5229]

There's just one AM station in Bishop, 1000-watt KBOV 1230. There had been a second AM in the Owens Valley, KNYO 600 Independence, but it went dark right around the time I got there. (The tower still stands and is used by several cellular carriers.)

KBOV just barely made it over the White Mountains to where I was, 25 miles away. There was no other really usable daytime AM reception. At night, it was the usual western skywave stuff; I think I heard WHO, but nothing further east.

I was back out that way in April and scanned the dial again. With a good radio, I could just barely bring in some audio from a couple of the Vegas AMs (670 and 720) by day, but not much else.

If 580 KMJ aimed more of their signal east towards the Sierra Nevadas, then I would imagine that they would be receivable in Bishop.

 

[fybush]

If 580 KMJ aimed more of their signal east towards the Sierra Nevadas, then I would imagine that they would be receivable in Bishop.

Maybe...but that's not what KMJ's new facility was designed to do. It's a fairly directional flamethrower meant to put a huge signal over the Central Valley, which is indeed what it does.

Thing is, you've got 14,000 feet of Sierra Nevada mountains separating the Central Valley (Fresno) from the Owens Valley (Bishop), with all the lousy ground conductivity you'd expect from mountains. Nothing much gets through the Sierras, even with 50 kW.

They may look close on the map, but there are no road connections and no natural cultural connections between the two areas. It's much easier to get to Reno or LA or Las Vegas from Bishop than it is to get to Fresno. So even if KMJ did somehow put a signal into Bishop, that audience would be of little or no use to Fresno advertisers.