CLEAR CHANNEL WNUA

[BOBBY.B]

IF CLEAR CHANNEL WAS SMART! WHICH THEY ARE NOT' BECAUSE THEY DROPED SMOOTH JAZZ AFTER 21 YEAR'S. WHEN MEGA 95 BOMBS OUT AND WHICH IT WILL. THEY WOULD BE SMART TO BRING REAL OLDIES BACK 95.5 THEY STILL OWN IT BUT HAVE IT ONLY ON THE INTERNET.REAL OLDIES 1690 AND THE AIR STAFF THEY HAD WHEN THEY FIRST WHERE ON THE AIR. I BELIEVE IT WOULD GIVE WLSFM A GOOD RUN??? HAVE A GREAT DAY! ! : ???

 

[stormy01]

Crap Channel should sell 95.5 to a company that wants to bring Smooth Jazz back - the people have spoken. We have enough stations playing music like 95.5 on the dial in the Chicago area already. That segment of the population, proportionally speaking is well represented in the Chicago market. It's the corporate shirts that are jerks telling us what to listen to - and we don't like your crap, Crap Channel, and we are not listening.... hope you go bankrupt!!!

 

[radioman148]

IF CLEAR CHANNEL WAS SMART! WHICH THEY ARE NOT' BECAUSE THEY DROPED SMOOTH JAZZ AFTER 21 YEAR'S. WHEN MEGA 95 BOMBS OUT AND WHICH IT WILL. THEY WOULD BE SMART TO BRING REAL OLDIES BACK 95.5 THEY STILL OWN IT BUT HAVE IT ONLY ON THE INTERNET.REAL OLDIES 1690 AND THE AIR STAFF THEY HAD WHEN THEY FIRST WHERE ON THE AIR. I BELIEVE IT WOULD GIVE WLSFM A GOOD RUN??? HAVE A GREAT DAY! ! : ???

I also liked Realoldies, but they will never bring it back. The demos were too old and they don't bring in enough advertising dollars to please the corporate suits.

 

[avtosalon]

The smooth jazz format still airs on WNUA-HD2, and it's without any commercials.

Traditional jazz was killed-off on WNUA-HD2 when Mega started on WNUA and WNUA-HD1, and smooth jazz was bumped to WNUA-HD2.

I think Real Oldies WRLL was simulcast on WNUA-HD2 a few years ago when HD radio first started. At the time, HD Radios costs several hundred dollars.

Real Oldies failed because the 1690 signal was atrocious. The signal went about 1 block at night. Larry Lujack and Tommy Edwards used to "bash" the station's signal during their show. Many older people were still using old radios without the expanded band (that stopped at 1600 KHz). Clear Channel was very stupid for moving the station from Johnston City, Illinois to Berwyn.

 

[davideduardo]

Crap Channel should sell 95.5 to a company that wants to bring Smooth Jazz back - the people have spoken.

Clear Channel is likely the biggest supporter of smooth jazz by virtue of owning Broadcast Architecture, the syndicator and consulting firm that created the format and has worked to keep it alive.

The issue with WNUA was the age of the listener base, and the fact that the revenues were declining because of that factor.

We have enough stations playing music like 95.5 on the dial in the Chicago area already.

The market itself tends to week out the weak performers and they find something else to try.

It's the corporate shirts that are jerks telling us what to listen to - and we don't like your crap, Crap Channel, and we are not listening.... hope you go bankrupt!!!

In fact, it is the advertising community that either supports a format or does not, based on whether it can deliver listeners in the age groups they want to reach.

 

[radioman148]

The smooth jazz format still airs on WNUA-HD2, and it's without any commercials.

Traditional jazz was killed-off on WNUA-HD2 when Mega started on WNUA and WNUA-HD1, and smooth jazz was bumped to WNUA-HD2.

I think Real Oldies WRLL was simulcast on WNUA-HD2 a few years ago when HD radio first started. At the time, HD Radios costs several hundred dollars.

Real Oldies failed because the 1690 signal was atrocious. The signal went about 1 block at night. Larry Lujack and Tommy Edwards used to "bash" the station's signal during their show. Many older people were still using old radios without the expanded band (that stopped at 1600 KHz). Clear Channel was very stupid for moving the station from Johnston City, Illinois to Berwyn.

You're right. RealOldies 1690 never had a chance with that terrible signal.

 

[Nock]

Clear Channel is likely the biggest supporter of smooth jazz by virtue of owning Broadcast Architecture, the syndicator and consulting firm that created the format and has worked to keep it alive.

BA is the reason the format has gone away. They single handedly destroyed what was once a great format. It took them a few years, look at their track record. How many stations have defected in the last 2 years? WNUA sounded horrible in it's last days compared to where they were. You can THANK the briliant minds at BA for all of it.

Nock

 

[audioguy]

Regardless of what the purple people meters say, I dispute the idea that only old folks like to listen to jazz. That's simply untrue. Jazz is a timeless format. It doesn't happen to be my favorite type of music, but I appreciate it.

HOWEVER, it is a wonderful thing that many of these specialty formats continue to be available on the Internet. That is the future!

I predict that within a few years OTA broadcasting will largely be obsolete, and we'll all be wondering why we made such a big fuss about "wireless". Radio as it exists today will be relegated to the history books like Morse code on spark gap transmitters.

 

[Prais]

WRLL FAILED because some clear channel suit decided to put a 50kw morning show on a pea-shooter station and expect it to pay for itself.

Whan an idiotic idea.

 

[audioguy]

WRLL FAILED because some clear channel suit decided to put a 50kw morning show on a pea-shooter station and expect it to pay for itself.

Whan an idiotic idea.

Agreed, in large measure, but to be fair... there were a lot of overly optimistic predictions for the spandex band, don't you think? I am sure I remember reading articles in Radio World predicting daytime coverage of 80-90 miles and nighttime coverage of half the country. At least the latter part of that was true in the beginning before the channels were duplicated, but the daytime coverage never lived up to the hype.

Just like HD radio...

OTOH, I could get WRLL at night here in the northern burbs on a Superadio; it faded like a skywave station, but it was listenable... in the beginning before all of the skip interference from stations hundreds and thousands of miles away.

 

[radioman148]

WRLL FAILED because some clear channel suit decided to put a 50kw morning show on a pea-shooter station and expect it to pay for itself.

Whan an idiotic idea.

Agreed, in large measure, but to be fair... there were a lot of overly optimistic predictions for the spandex band, don't you think? I am sure I remember reading articles in Radio World predicting daytime coverage of 80-90 miles and nighttime coverage of half the country. At least the latter part of that was true in the beginning before the channels were duplicated, but the daytime coverage never lived up to the hype.

Just like HD radio...

OTOH, I could get WRLL at night here in the northern burbs on a Superadio; it faded like a skywave station, but it was listenable... in the beginning before all of the skip interference from stations hundreds and thousands of miles away.

I always had trouble getting WRLL in the northern suburbs when they were on low power during the dark hours. When I drove into the city on fall or winter mornings in the darkness I couldn't hear them well until I got south of Evanston. What a terrible place to put top morning talent.

 

[davideduardo]

BA is the reason the format has gone away. They single handedly destroyed what was once a great format. It took them a few years, look at their track record. How many stations have defected in the last 2 years? WNUA sounded horrible in it's last days compared to where they were. You can THANK the briliant minds at BA for all of it.

Again, BA created the format for KTWV in LA, and they coined the term Smooth Jazz for WNUA in Chicago.

That was 22 years ago.

Stations have not "defected." They have changed format because the demos of the format got so old despite the efforts to keep it younger. The era of the instrumental is pretty much over, and you even have many instrumental soloists recording with "guest" vocalists.

Were ad agencies and major advertisers to want to reach people over 55, Smooth Jazz would have continued in many more places.

 

[davideduardo]

Regardless of what the purple people meters say, I dispute the idea that only old folks like to listen to jazz. That's simply untrue. Jazz is a timeless format. It doesn't happen to be my favorite type of music, but I appreciate it.

Diary surveys, PPMs, station perceptual research, format searches and everything else you can do shows that Jazz and Smooth Jazz have little young adult listening.

Smooth Jazz has about as little to do with Jazz as County has to do with Salsa.

 

[mimo]

I found x band signals in the daytime to be quite go0d...except for in the Chicago area. I could never figure that out. Lo0k at the coverage of the Iowa x banders in the daytime, KCJJ, KCNZ and KBGG. I could hear KCJJ on my car radio about 10 minutes west of Aurora to well west of Des Moines. KCJJ was receivable to about 150 miles with a listenable signal, 170 with a very weak one. KCNZ tripped the seek feature on my car radio 100 miles away daytime easily. Madison's 1670 was receivable in Iowa City. Kansas City's 1660 covered southern Iowa as well. I could never understand why Milwaukee's 1640 just couldn't make it to chicago, or Madison's 1670 faded in the northwest suburbs. I guess 1690 probably sounded better outside the city than it did inside.

I remember some jocks on WLS saying the same thing, that WLS sounded better outside the city than inside. Must be all that concrete.

 

[stormy01]

I found x band signals in the daytime to be quite go0d...except for in the Chicago area. I could never figure that out. Lo0k at the coverage of the Iowa x banders in the daytime, KCJJ, KCNZ and KBGG. I could hear KCJJ on my car radio about 10 minutes west of Aurora to well west of Des Moines. KCJJ was receivable to about 150 miles with a listenable signal, 170 with a very weak one. KCNZ tripped the seek feature on my car radio 100 miles away daytime easily. Madison's 1670 was receivable in Iowa City. Kansas City's 1660 covered southern Iowa as well. I could never understand why Milwaukee's 1640 just couldn't make it to chicago, or Madison's 1670 faded in the northwest suburbs. I guess 1690 probably sounded better outside the city than it did inside.

I remember some jocks on WLS saying the same thing, that WLS sounded better outside the city than inside. Must be all that concrete.

It has to be ground conductivity. In the case of WVON and KCJJ, assuming both stations have a properly functioning ground plane, WVON has a 122 degree tower height diplexing with WGRB...KCJJ has a 83 degree tower height, so not quite a quarter wave, yet KCJJ has a consistently [much] better signal than WVON. WTDY at 123 degrees tower height to me puts out a better signal for the distance than WKSH at 84 degrees tower height, even though WKSH is the [slightly] closer of the two. WTDY must be diplexed with another station, I thought the standard for the X-band stations was a quarter wave tower (90 degrees)

Of course AM radio might sound better in the "burbs" - the man-made noise level that interferes with AM stations is definitely higher in the urbanized areas, that's why several broadcasters are upgrading their power to whatever they can fit in, even on what used to be the "regional" 5kW channels.

 

[radioman148]

It's got to be city noise because in the northern Chicago suburbs I can hear an Xbander on every frequency during the day.

 

[audioguy]

It's got to be city noise because in the northern Chicago suburbs I can hear an Xbander on every frequency during the day.

It's a number of things. First of all, no AM (even WSCR) is going to penetrate steel buildings downtown. But the spandex band is like a cross between medium wave and short wave. You get significant NVIS fading during the daytime at relatively close distances to the transmitter (e.g. 30-40 miles). Of course ground conductivity is also a factor. Iowa has much better conductivity than the areas along the IL and WI lakeshore (sand does not make a good ground, unless it's surrounded by salt water)... and probably Madison has pretty good conductivity also. You want to see a station with terrible coverage? Go check out the maps for South Bend's 1620. A Class D on 1240 could beat that. But the fact is that the high end of the dial is way worse than the low end, and the higher you go, the worse it gets. A 50 kW signal on 1600 is MAYBE the equivalent of a 5 kW signal on 600.

Unfortunately the fact that you can "hear something" on every spandex channel in the daytime in the burbs doesn't mean that it's a usable signal that the average listener is going to bother with.

It is shocking how weak WKSH is... they really don't have anything coming into Illinois except during critical hours.

 

[stormy01]

It's got to be city noise because in the northern Chicago suburbs I can hear an Xbander on every frequency during the day.

This is all I get with a long wire on a communications receiver:

1610 Nothing except TIS IDOT (Multiple transmitters)
1620 South Bend weak mixed with Lake County DOT (Lake Zurich) Strong and Bensenville TIS Weak.
1630 Iowa City nonexistent except critical hours Very Weak Metrarail TIS Deerfield
1640 Sussex (Milwaukee) Moderate.
1650 Nothing except TIS (Naperville)
1660 Kalamazoo Fair mixed with Palatine TIS Weak
1670 Madison Moderate.
1680 Ada (Grand Rapids) Very Weak.
1690 Berwyn (Chicago) Strong.
1700 Des Moines nonexistent except critical hours. Racine TIS very weak.

So I can't get a broadcast station on every X-band frequency - but I can get something on every X-band frequency if I count TIS stations.