Last time I looked, all that remains at the WLZR transmitter site is the STL tower. Looked like the site hadn't been mowed in a couple years. As an owner of several towers myself, I don't know why Vertical Bridge would want that...but the derilect looks of the site matches many others VB owns.
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Cumulus shutdown tracker
- Thread starter Mediafrog+
- Start date
From what I understand, Vertical Bridge had to buy some towers it probably otherwise wouldn't have wanted if it wanted the Cumulus FM tower portfolio.
Most of those tower companies don't want AM towers at all as you can't do much more with most of them than just broadcast on AM.
Based on Google Street View, the setup looks like a simple wire antenna fed to the STL mast. If you go back in time to 2019 there was a standard AM tower in the back.
EDIT: the tower was damaged by Hurricane Irene, and was likely dismantled because of that. The STAs for lower power start at that time.
BTW - I was told that the tower leases in the market I was quoting were actually $4,000/month for the cluster, not per station as I had originally thought. That was before the AM got a translator, which added about $1,000/month to the total.
I've also been told that Cumulus is working with a broker to sell most of the stations it took dark.
I've also been told that Cumulus is working with a broker to sell most of the stations it took dark.
Good luck there.
I suspect Cumulus will find a buyer for most, if not all the FM's, but most of the AM's are gone forever, especially those without translators.
As I mentioned before, someone who has been buying small market stations over the last year or so has told me he’s interested in some of them, but he's definitely not interested in any standalone AM's unless he can line up a translator for them. I don’t know what the actual prospects for that would be, but I'm guessing they’re not good.
Cumulus Shutting Down Des Moines, Flint & Fort Walton Beach AMs
Cumulus Media has concluded its current batch of station shut-downs with four more stations ceasing operations this weekend. In Des
radioinsight.com
Here is more on the current status of Cumulus shutting down stations this time the stations affected are in Des Moines, Flint and Fort Walton Beach stations.
Can they sell any of the translators?
Depends on how Cumulus got them. If any of the translators were moved in one of the move-in windows, the mandatory four year simulcast period is up, and they can be sold or can otherwise re-broadcast another Cumulus property. Those that were acquired in the final AM revitalization window are permanently tied to their AM signals and are lost if the AM license is surrendered.
I believe Cumulus got most, if not all, of the translators for the AM's it signed off in that final window, though I can't say for certain that all of them were acquired that way.
WRIE's translator now fully relays WXTA (I heard it on my car radio last weekend while travelling to Toronto) so that one was capable of being decoupled from the AM. If the other translators were able to be reassigned to another station, Cumulus would have done so already IMO.
The acquaintance of mine interested in some of those Cumulus properties thinks at least a couple of them are unlikely to actually be for sale and will, if nothing else, come back as simulcasts of Cumulus AM's (Lexington and Bloomington, in particular). Both of us found odd that Cumulus took WJBC-FM dark while WJEZ 98.9, which has a poorer signal and would seem to be a worse fit with the Cumulus cluster in Bloomington/Normal, would seem to continue going strong. Cumulus shows WJEZ being operated out of Bloomington now. In the Citadel days, both it and 93.7 were still run out of Pontiac.
Looking at the calendar, March is going to be a busy month for Cumulus. With no announcements of pending sales, I think we are going to see a mass license cancellation of AM's occur The first on the horizon being KZAC San Francisco on March 4. Here's a reminder of some of the affected stations. Not the complete list, but close.
radioinsight.com
radioinsight.com
Twenty Cumulus & Townsquare Media Stations Cease Operations With More To Come
Cumulus and Townsquare Media both continue to shut down under-performing stations across the country. Following its shutdown of “ESPN Quad
radioinsight.com
Cumulus Shutting Down Des Moines, Flint & Fort Walton Beach AMs
Cumulus Media has concluded its current batch of station shut-downs with four more stations ceasing operations this weekend. In Des
radioinsight.com
I don't believe the 99 FM signal really covers most of the market, especially North of downtown and Oak Ridge.
With 5G taking off, the cellular companies are going to have to make smaller cells or buy more spectrum. Also supposedly 5G doesn't go as far. They will be most likely will be "filling" holes in the coverage with more sites. Like any real estate it's location location location. The new cell sites in the suburbs and small cities will not be much higher than 100 feet. Rather than deal with NIMBYs they prefer go with existing structures if possible. A high band AM tower that's not lit could be converted to shunt feed allowing easy cell antenna installation. There is an operator (name with held to protect the guilty) that "repaired" the bottom 80 foot of his tower with a larger gauge sections. Didn't get a building permit because is was to "replace rusty sections". Tower crew did it in 3 days. No change in height, no public hearings, no FAA or FCC paper work. Nobody noticed. High dollar subdivision less than a mile away and no complaints because the top of the tower still looks the same.
I not advising any one to do the same without good legal help. If your are a "tower space landlord", get the best lawyer you can afford.
Cumulus Faces Months Without Nielsen Ratings As Legal Fight Drags On.
This year is shaping up to be one in which many Cumulus Media salespeople will be hitting the streets without any ratings data in hand. In court filings last week,
Depends on the frequencies being used. 5G has added so-called "millimeter wave" bands which are above 10 GHz and have very limited range...but the advantage is they can carry much more data. On much lower frequencies the 5G range is the same as what was achieved using 4G and 3G on those same bands, but data rates are slower.
IIRC T-MOBILE is using 900 mhz for their 5G which is slower but goes farther and costs a lot less and is faster to deploy. Lower antenna height makes smaller cells which will allow more users on the same frequencies. If you drive around Atlanta, Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities I drive around very few NEW cell antennas are above 100 feet.* Of course the rural "interstate highway" towers are still tall.
* There was one in Cherokee County two years ago that is in a hilly area that is a little taller but they got it in somehow. It would not surprise me if in 20 years billboards and fast food signs in densely populated areas will have cell antennas "hidden" out of sight to the average person. Same idea as the "plastic fiberglass steeples" some Churches got last century.