Classic Hits 92.9 Audio Drop Out Problem To Be Resolved Soon

[MHVRadiofan]

I e-mailed PD Randy Turner and GM Jason Finkelberg about the audio drop out problem and received a surprisingly rapid response from both . So these guys are indeed interested in what the listeners have to say. Kudos to them . These are there responses :

Hi Warren...
First, thanks so much for listening to our new station, Classic Hits 92.9, and for taking the time to send us an email. It's a thrill for me, as well, to have a station that I enjoy so much.
The last two months have been a frantic rush to build studios, build our programming and get a connection from our facility in Beacon up to the transmitter site in Saugerties. Studio, check!, Programming, check! Broadcast connection ... well two out of three ain't bad, huh?? I wish I could say that it's some new ingenious programming or marketing scheme ... but, it's not.
We are temporarily using an ISDN line (a really high quality and fast digital phone line connection) to get the programming from our studio in Beacon to the transmitter site in Saugerties. When we finally put the station on the air last Thursday, we discovered that there is, indeed, a periodic drop-out problem with that connection. How horribly embarrassing for our first few days on the air, huh!??! Our engineering teams are aware of the problem but have been unable to locate the source of the problem so far. The only thing we do know is that it's not our modems 'cause we switched to a second pair and the problem continued.
We now have all the paperwork to finalize our microwave connection from the studio to the transmitter site and hope to have that switched over in the next few days. So ... bear with us for just a few days and we should have it resolved.
Randy Turner


I have a tower crew up right now getting the problem fixed. We’ve been running over an ISDN line, starting tomorrow, we’ll be on an STL so there shouldn’t be anymore annoying drop-outs.
Jason Finkelberg

 

[sharksfan]

Sweet!

 

[disney fanatic]

Thanks to former WCZX (Oldies 97/Mix 97) jock and now PD of Pamal Randy Turner for eliminating the annoying drop-outs. Audio drop-outs on 92.9 stinks!

 

[warm590]

Turner has a promo proclaiming/ stressing the fact that repitition is bad and you won't have it on 92.9. Thats a breath of fresh air; I have always felt that there is no excuse for repitition when you have a library of thousands of songs from 3 decades. If 92.9 delivers on this promise they will walk away with the spring book.
Lets see if they come across. I'm tired of these clowns and their narrow "safe" playlists. Sounds like pamal gave Turner a free hand here. Go for it! ;D

I know listeners that are not radio geeks that complain about repitition. So its not just us!!!

warm590

 

[sharksfan]

The audio drop out problem still exists... Hopefully the new system is up and running before the storm hits as I'm sure upgrades will be delayed otherwise.

 

[musicradio2005]

I assume you are referring to drop out over the air and not drop out streaming...I did not see their streaming avilable yet on their website...Did they announce when they will start their live streaming ?

I e-mailed PD Randy Turner and GM Jason Finkelberg about the audio drop out problem and received a surprisingly rapid response from both . So these guys are indeed interested in what the listeners have to say. Kudos to them . These are there responses :

Hi Warren...
First, thanks so much for listening to our new station, Classic Hits 92.9, and for taking the time to send us an email. It's a thrill for me, as well, to have a station that I enjoy so much.
The last two months have been a frantic rush to build studios, build our programming and get a connection from our facility in Beacon up to the transmitter site in Saugerties. Studio, check!, Programming, check! Broadcast connection ... well two out of three ain't bad, huh?? I wish I could say that it's some new ingenious programming or marketing scheme ... but, it's not.
We are temporarily using an ISDN line (a really high quality and fast digital phone line connection) to get the programming from our studio in Beacon to the transmitter site in Saugerties. When we finally put the station on the air last Thursday, we discovered that there is, indeed, a periodic drop-out problem with that connection. How horribly embarrassing for our first few days on the air, huh!??! Our engineering teams are aware of the problem but have been unable to locate the source of the problem so far. The only thing we do know is that it's not our modems 'cause we switched to a second pair and the problem continued.
We now have all the paperwork to finalize our microwave connection from the studio to the transmitter site and hope to have that switched over in the next few days. So ... bear with us for just a few days and we should have it resolved.
Randy Turner


I have a tower crew up right now getting the problem fixed. We’ve been running over an ISDN line, starting tomorrow, we’ll be on an STL so there shouldn’t be anymore annoying drop-outs.
Jason Finkelberg

 

[dx1ng]

Glad to know the drop-outs will be taken care of shortly. I'm sure the snow/sleet storm hampered installation of the microwave link.

I love the variety on the station. My first taste of the station on Feb 1 was their coming out of a Cowsills song and right into Lynyrd Skynyrd.... I thought that was just too drastic. But since then, I haven't found such extremes back to back. And there is very little repetition. In fairly frequent listening over the past two weeks, I think I've heard only two records repeated: Brenda Carlisle's "Leave a Light on For Me" and Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay." And my music is the music of the 60's and 70's up through the mid-80's, so if this station continues to deliver, I'll be listening. What is really scary is just about every song is in my personal record/CD collection.... I've never had a station that so completely relected my tastes.

A couple of negatives: they promote "fun "... but I don't hear any fun on the air. When I've tuned in the morning show, I have found it devoid of fun, and generally lacking... not much better than music with segued liners. Much of the time WBPM is jockless. ((I miss Tom Kent in the evening!!! Now THAT show was FUN!))
I will say the afternoon female DJ on WBPM sounds really good... but again, there's not much of a "fun" factor.

 

[Roger]

Can some one get a aircheck of Jack Hammer and J.J. Carter and post them online?

 

[disney fanatic]

Glad to know the drop-outs will be taken care of shortly. I'm sure the snow/sleet storm hampered installation of the microwave link.

I love the variety on the station. My first taste of the station on Feb 1 was their coming out of a Cowsills song and right into Lynyrd Skynyrd.... I thought that was just too drastic. But since then, I haven't found such extremes back to back. And there is very little repetition. In fairly frequent listening over the past two weeks, I think I've heard only two records repeated: Brenda Carlisle's "Leave a Light on For Me" and Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay." And my music is the music of the 60's and 70's up through the mid-80's, so if this station continues to deliver, I'll be listening. What is really scary is just about every song is in my personal record/CD collection.... I've never had a station that so completely relected my tastes.

A couple of negatives: they promote "fun "... but I don't hear any fun on the air. When I've tuned in the morning show, I have found it devoid of fun, and generally lacking... not much better than music with segued liners. Much of the time WBPM is jockless. ((I miss Tom Kent in the evening!!! Now THAT show was FUN!))
I will say the afternoon female DJ on WBPM sounds really good... but again, there's not much of a "fun" factor.

I know that you mentioned Tom Kent when he was on the former Cool 92.9, WTRY in Albany still carries Tom Kent every night.

 

[MHVRadiofan]

A couple of negatives: they promote "fun "... but I don't hear any fun on the air. When I've tuned in the morning show, I have found it devoid of fun, and generally lacking... not much better than music with segued liners. Much of the time WBPM is jockless. ((I miss Tom Kent in the evening!!! Now THAT show was FUN!))
I will say the afternoon female DJ on WBPM sounds really good... but again, there's not much of a "fun" factor.

When Classic Hits 92.9 WBPM promoted they were going to be about fun I envisioned the personality driven radio of days long gone, along with lots of great music. However, they also said while the other morning shows are talking bal, bal, bal we are playing great music. What a novel idea a morning show with music. While I like the idea, they need to let their headliner Jack Hammer, loosen up a bit, because his show is no different from JJ Carter or the afternoon drive jock, basically reading liners and introducing songs . He did say starting on Monday he would be featuring “are you serious” a light side of the news. So perhaps it is a work in progress.
I also miss the Tom Kent Show it is high energy ‘fun’ radio. It’s too bad the new WBPM didn’t keep him on, instead of the automation now on .But then again they promised to be local. I heard a promo today saying WBPM was “independent radio” with programming decisions made locally not by someone in a corporate office. So I guess PAMAL did give Randy Turner a free hand. Overall he has done a great job; the music is great, if you have a suggestion e-mail him I think he will listen.

I know that you mentioned Tom Kent when he was on the former Cool 92.9, WTRY in Albany still carries Tom Kent every night.

Unfortunately, probably due to copyright rules they don't stream Tom Kent. Instead WTRY .com has an on line exclusive WTRY 50’s & 60’s dance party. So unless you live in the Albany area you are out of luck. Their signal to the south is terrible. It stops well north of Catskill / Hudson ,So this information does those of us in the mid-Hudson Valley no good.


PS Speaking of JJ Carter his voice sounds familiar to me. Was her perhaps on the air in this area under another name.

 

[Roger]

J.J. Carter is new to the area. I was talking with him on the phone.

 

[bilvihur]

The audio drop out still exists, but less frequently. I guess it's going to take a while longer to resolve? ???

 

[coolpapa-j]

they said the storm cut the repair job short. they expect it fixed next week.

 

[derekm]

I emailed the station tonight just saying that I like what I hear so far and made a suggestion about something. I received an email back from Randy Turner within an hour! It's nice to see that a program director actually cares about the station they're running and what the listeners think of it. I think we've seen too little of that in the Hudson Valley recently. I'm glad that Pamal has control of this station now, because it seems to be following Pamal tradition so far. Keep up the great work, and here's to hoping that audio problem is fixed soon.

 

[MHVRadiofan]

I Keep up the great work, and here's to hoping that audio problem is fixed soon.

It's still not fixed. I've been wondering since the distance between the Beacon studios and the transmitter, south of Saugerties, probably about 45 miles ,might complicate matters, because the STL would have to be relatively high to clear any obstructions. That is an unusually long stretch; in fact they must have used some high end equipment to get under the FCC rule that the signal must be receivable off the air at the studio location. Perhaps they would use K104's stick. I also recall posters on this board complaining for some time about audio problems when PAMAL took over 107.1 in Briarcliff Manor.

 

[sharksfan]

I Keep up the great work, and here's to hoping that audio problem is fixed soon.

It's still not fixed. I've been wondering since the distance between the Beacon studios and the transmitter, south of Saugerties, probably about 45 miles ,might complicate matters, because the STL would have to be relatively high to clear any obstructions. That is an unusually long stretch; in fact they must have used some high end equipment to get under the FCC rule that the signal must be receivable off the air at the studio location. Perhaps they would use K104's stick. I also recall posters on this board complaining for some time about audio problems when PAMAL took over 107.1 in Briarcliff Manor.

I was wondering the same thing. Using K104's stick would get them high enough for a successful transmission link. Too bad they can't just broadcast WBPM from K104's stick.

 

[sharksfan]

The drop out issue is getting worse. I was listening for a short period around 11:15 am today and counted 7 drops during a span of 2 songs! This needs to be corrected ASAP or listeners will stop listening.

This random but persistant drop out reminds me of trying to listen to the radio with the 'FM Mute' feature activated on my old school receiver.

 

[disney fanatic]

The drop out issue is getting worse. I was listening for a short period around 11:15 am today and counted 7 drops during a span of 2 songs! This needs to be corrected ASAP or listeners will stop listening.

Yeah right! I hate audio drop outs. Will have to wait until the Winter ratings will come out, if not, wait for the Spring ratings.

 

[Roger]

They should just put WBPM on K104 stick and do a way with the WBPM stick.

 

[MHVRadiofan]

The drop out issue is getting worse. I was listening for a short period around 11:15 am today and counted 7 drops during a span of 2 songs! This needs to be corrected ASAP or listeners will stop listening.
This random but persistant drop out reminds me of trying to listen to the radio with the 'FM Mute' feature activated on my old school receiver.

It seems that Randy Turner and Jason Finkelberg were being umm ... less than forthright when they said we are working on a microwave STL as we speak .I think that IDSN was the system they intended to use permanently from the beginning, due to, as I said previously, the distance between the studio and transmitter, and the obstacles that presents. I also think they would need FCC approval for a frequency for the STL .I know listeners to 107.1 in Briarcliff Manor complained for months about audio problems when PAMAL took it over to simulcast WSPK. So unfortunately it seems it will be some time until this annoying problem is fixed, because Pamal was not as ready to take over WBPM as they thought .They don't even have a studio phone yet .And ,as great as it is for the listener there are very few of the necessary evil ,commercials . Speaking of which, sponsors will not be happy with drop outs happening during their spot.

Yeah right! I hate audio drop outs. Will have to wait until the Winter ratings will come out, if not, wait for the Spring ratings.

Disney, how about we appoint you to watch for the Poughkeepsie WINTER ratings book, and you make that your next post .Remember to wait for the Poughkeepsie winter book to come out. Sorry I couldn’t stop myself.

They should just put WBPM on K104 stick and do a way with the WBPM stick.

The FCC would never let them do that do to co and adjacent channel interference problems it would create .That’s probably why the original owner of 92.9 Robert Novak (?) located the station way up in Saugerties. It was easier to get an open frequency and the FCC would be quicker to approve a frequency to a city that had no “local service” of its own. They don’t care if local is no where near the city of license.