Columbus gets a fish - 95.9 The Fish launches.

[xmusicmatt]

Today salem launched 95.9 that they purchased earlier this year with a CCM format labeled as "The Fish"

Salem already has conserve talk covered with 98.9 The Answer, Preaching and teaching AM 880 WRFD covers their other niche (WRFD will have a translator at 104.5 soon) and now they have CCM covered with 95.9 The Fish.

They are airing their syndicated “Today’s Christian Music” format as the playlist is an exact match so at this point this is pretty much the satellite feed from Nashville with local liners/inserts.

Given how close we are to the holiday season I am surprised Salem did not launch with a Christmas format (TCM goes all Christmas every year anyways so we’re just a few weeks away from Christmas music).

Note: this is not Salem’s first attempt at CCM in Columbus many years ago they owned 103.1 briefly and programmed it with mostly satellite fed TCM as “103.1 Joy FM”

It will be interesting how this all plays out – WCVO “104.9 The River” does have a stronger signal plus the ‘local’ aspect.

 

[Ryan Williams]

I'm not in Columbus, but this launch is very interesting to me. On paper, 95.9 appears to be nearly as good as 104.9 signal wise. In fact, the signal estimates for Central Columbus actually show 95.9 being stronger. However, in real life, 250 watts, even at great height, can only do so much in terms of getting inside buildings and houses, compared to 6 kW.

How do the two signals compare on the ground across the metro? Are the processing and levels comparable?

 

[schmave]

Sounded pretty good when I was driving from Reynoldsburg to Hilliard a little while ago.
For what it's worth, once I got west of about 70 and Broad Street, while 95.9's signal was still quite solid, it did not affect my reception of WHIO on 95.7 at all ... same as always, which is decent enough to put the "WHIO-FM" on my display even this far east. I was pretty concerned about that once I saw we were getting a 95.9 here locally.

 

[xmusicmatt]

How do the two signals compare on the ground across the metro? Are the processing and levels comparable?

WCVO 104.9 does better in the burbs than near downtown but 95.9 has the edge of being a centrally located signal - 95.9 does not do as well in the northern burbs due to WYNT north of town. (It fades in and out in the Lewis Center area fighting with WYNT).

Processing wise I am not sure what Salem is using but it's got a great sound for a rebroadcast of an HD channel that's rebroadcasting a satellite feed from Nashville. - The sound has improved from when Percy owned it and ran it as " 95.9The Drum" so it appears Salem did make some changes after taking over the license.

WCVO has a great sound I think and they run a top notch plant engineering wise from the studio to processing to the choice in transmitter.

I do wish Salem would be more mindful of the on air sound though - I know this likely does not bug anyone that isn't or wasn't a part of the "industry" but coming in and out of local breaks is sloppy on The Fish most of the time (catch the last 2 seconds of the network break when they rejoin out of a local spot).