I've just moved, and am now about half the distance from local signals as I was before, which has got me thinking, does the average listener really need a huge signal? I've moved into the Portland market, Vancouver to be exact. This puts me in range of several translators, and I'm curious if the average listener would care if signals took a major downgrade? In Portland, I'd say maybe 300 watts from the KOIN tower which is 502 M would be adequate for a large chunk of the listening area. That would be higher power from the other sites, since they're lower haat, but still that contour should be adequate. In Seattle, since it's much more spread out, I'd say maybe 8 KW from the KRWM tower at 396 M. KLSW isn't much worse than that and had plenty of listeners when it was KMCQ. Any thoughts from the DX community on this?
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curious if anyone here thinks big signals are worth it?
- Thread starter bobdavcav
- Start date
In the Charleston area, it definitely matters. All of the top rated stations in the market have good FM signals of 50kw-100kw. The area is packed with translators at every second adjacent on the dial, but you need that power to cover the market. Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester Counties are a large area. About 800,000 people. Charleston County alone is 60 or 70 miles long. The listeners in rural towns 30 or 40 miles away from the city are still important for stations, especially the country stations.
When you add in Colleton County, Williamsburg, and some of the other areas the big signals (96.9, 95.1, 101.7, 89.3) serve, you’re probably talking about over 1 million potentially served by the stations.
Kingstree, a town 65 miles away from downtown Charleston, has a lot of listenership to our stations. When 96.9 was a country station, they had a decent listenership up there. They also used to have range into Myrtle Beach, before a translator went up there. That was 70+ miles from the transmitter.
When you add in Colleton County, Williamsburg, and some of the other areas the big signals (96.9, 95.1, 101.7, 89.3) serve, you’re probably talking about over 1 million potentially served by the stations.
Kingstree, a town 65 miles away from downtown Charleston, has a lot of listenership to our stations. When 96.9 was a country station, they had a decent listenership up there. They also used to have range into Myrtle Beach, before a translator went up there. That was 70+ miles from the transmitter.
For fixed location listening (home, work) 80% occurs inside the 70 dbu FM signal and 95% inside the 65 dbu signal. So if you want to figure what it takes to cover a market that includes all of 6 counties, even the current maximum power levels are barely adequate.
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Yes, absolutely. Audio quality is important, and very few are listening with a SuperRadio III with an external antenna.
I would say the usable service range for a current Class A FM is 6-8 miles, accounting for bad receivers.
I would say the usable service range for a current Class A FM is 6-8 miles, accounting for bad receivers.
I would say that a Class A gets out to the protected 60 dBu contour, 15 or 17.4 miles for 3 and 6 kW, if the terrain is relatively flat and there's no shadowed areas. Maximum Class C1s with a 45 mile protected 60 dBu, not so much. Cities tend to be at lower elevation compared to the surrounding area, and 45 miles is a lot of distance for hills and terrain shadows/valleys to degrade the signal. A lot of high power FMs have TLs far from their COL, because many try to cover other cities and markets. This results in the primary COL having a lot of terrain holes. Even WJFM/WBCT with 320000 watts has terrain holes in Grand Rapids. It's about 30 miles out. They once called it The Valley City.
That's not even what I have, the best radio I have is the G8, though I was tuning around on my clock radio this morning and got 102.9, which is pretty good since that radio isn't selective at all. At levels such as what I describe for KLSW, lots of home radios will still have quite a bit of hiss in the stereo, but unless you're truly on e fringe of the signal, that's still quite useable.
It's been my experience that FM is always dicey if there are hills around. At home, you generally have to move the radio or antenna a foot for a lot of stations. So you move it. In the car, you're going to hear flip-flip-flip-flip noises on some stations.
If the station is one you really want to hear, like the NPR station here, which has marginal coverage in some areas of King County, or the Funky Monkey 104.9 (an Pierce County station that switched to Active Rock around 2000), which also had dicey coverage north of Kent or Auburn, you do what you can to get a clear signal.
Maybe most listeners don't. I guess that's the shakes. There's a fringe Regional Mexican station on 99.3 that apparently does well enough in Seattle, although it's not a strong signal. The people apparently do what they can to pull it in; move the radio, antenna, or whatever.
If the station is one you really want to hear, like the NPR station here, which has marginal coverage in some areas of King County, or the Funky Monkey 104.9 (an Pierce County station that switched to Active Rock around 2000), which also had dicey coverage north of Kent or Auburn, you do what you can to get a clear signal.
Maybe most listeners don't. I guess that's the shakes. There's a fringe Regional Mexican station on 99.3 that apparently does well enough in Seattle, although it's not a strong signal. The people apparently do what they can to pull it in; move the radio, antenna, or whatever.
All of this makes sense, especially in the case of rimshot signals. When my aunt lived closer to Stevenson, I could get a listenable signal on most Portland stations, including KFIS and if I remember correctly, even KRYP. Part of the thing that prompted the question though was getting the 104.5 translator Portland had at the time. This was only 99 watts at 452 meters, but had a solid signal on a car radio all over Portland and Vancouver. I'm assuming since a technically identical 102.9 is licensed to Gresham that it does well there too. That's a pretty good chunk of the market's population.
As with so many of these general questions, the answer is a hearty "it depends."
I am the chief engineer of a short-spaced, 3 kW-equivalent class A station that, once derated for height, puts out just 800 watts ERP - and we're routinely in the top 3 stations in our market.
It works for us because we're perfectly centrally located, atop the tallest building downtown (our top antenna bay is the highest point above sea level in the entire county), and because with a hip-hop/R&B format, our core audience is mostly close to the center of the market. But we're also a geographically compact market in general, with probably 70-75% of the pop count inside our 70 dBu contour.
Most formats in most markets wouldn't do as well as we do with our signal. We even have some areas where we'd like to be heard better - there's a tower farm a few miles outside downtown that has three Bs, a B1 and two As that create an intermod/overload mess that wipes everything else, including us, for a mile or two, and it would be nice to have more power to overcome that noise.
I am the chief engineer of a short-spaced, 3 kW-equivalent class A station that, once derated for height, puts out just 800 watts ERP - and we're routinely in the top 3 stations in our market.
It works for us because we're perfectly centrally located, atop the tallest building downtown (our top antenna bay is the highest point above sea level in the entire county), and because with a hip-hop/R&B format, our core audience is mostly close to the center of the market. But we're also a geographically compact market in general, with probably 70-75% of the pop count inside our 70 dBu contour.
Most formats in most markets wouldn't do as well as we do with our signal. We even have some areas where we'd like to be heard better - there's a tower farm a few miles outside downtown that has three Bs, a B1 and two As that create an intermod/overload mess that wipes everything else, including us, for a mile or two, and it would be nice to have more power to overcome that noise.
I had an experience in Puerto Rico with a full Puerto Rico B that was 50 kw but only at 300 feet above average terrain. Many other FMs were up on a mountain ridge south of the metro... in fact, the transmitters were not even in the San Juan market!
We burnt a hole in the dial in Metro San Juan. But when the ratings moved to being Island-wide, that station was destroyed by its lack of coverage. It covered the metro well, but nothing else.
But by that time, I had moved to a different FM, which was up with the major TV stations and had a simulcast repeater in western PR. It became #1 for the next 26 years.
What you say about the size of the market is critical. There are single country markets, or ones with a couple of small counties that can be served with limited power/height. And there are metros where the outlying areas are very sparsely populated. In those cases, even a limited class A can do well... in fact, even a translator can show significant impact.
Austin and ABQ are examples of where either A's or translators can succeed since much of the population is very concentrated.
I hope I'm not too off-topic here, but I have a question of you, David.
I live in Schuylkill County PA, one of those 'tan' counties with the Monopoly Board colors you see on the Nielson/Arbitron U.S. map.
We here have five 'books' completely surrounding our tan-hued county. Three of them are green-colored, so they reside in the collection of markets #50 to 100.
The other two markets are in blue, which means they get measured just in the Fall and Spring.
And I'm presuming that those five markets all use the diary methodology.
Now I had heard that the tan counties such as Schuylkill have * some * actual diaries issued in the county, but not FOR Schuylkill, or for the Pottsville PA or Pottsville-Shenandoah market, because there isn't such a market. Those scarce diaries get tabulated and sent to those compiling the numbers in the five surrounding markets, to be counted strictly in those surveys.
So, guessing that my speculation is generally correct, it becomes a two-fold question:
1. How many diaries (if any) get issued to Schuylkill County, and
2. Might the amount of recall pamphlets be somewhat the same throughout all those 'tan' U.S. counties?
I live in Schuylkill County PA, one of those 'tan' counties with the Monopoly Board colors you see on the Nielson/Arbitron U.S. map.
We here have five 'books' completely surrounding our tan-hued county. Three of them are green-colored, so they reside in the collection of markets #50 to 100.
The other two markets are in blue, which means they get measured just in the Fall and Spring.
And I'm presuming that those five markets all use the diary methodology.
Now I had heard that the tan counties such as Schuylkill have * some * actual diaries issued in the county, but not FOR Schuylkill, or for the Pottsville PA or Pottsville-Shenandoah market, because there isn't such a market. Those scarce diaries get tabulated and sent to those compiling the numbers in the five surrounding markets, to be counted strictly in those surveys.
So, guessing that my speculation is generally correct, it becomes a two-fold question:
1. How many diaries (if any) get issued to Schuylkill County, and
2. Might the amount of recall pamphlets be somewhat the same throughout all those 'tan' U.S. counties?
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If a county is not in the Metro Survey Area, in most cases any diaries are for the one-time-a-year national county survey data.
And some diary markets still have a Total Survey Areas which is the metro and the surrounding counties that are not part of another metro.
PPM markets have not TSA. Not all diary ones do, either. The TSA seems to have originated back in the day when Arbitron did TV as well, and the TSA is a bit like the TV markets, but based only on signal, not cable coverage
A 2000 ft mountain helps, but so does a Class C! To get to all of the metro counties in my market, including the mountainous areas, it takes that. Having said that, a translator on that mountain will get you city-wide coverage and a couple of counties over. I wouldn't be in favor of anyone cutting power----especially the big stations that help provide service to surrounding areas.
Having a lot of power really helps to reduce dead spots caused by hills, obstructions, and makes it easier to receive the station indoors on radios with poor sensitivity.
I'm 48 miles from the New Orleans FM master antenna where 8 stations are combined into one antenna 1004 ft HAAT/above ground. WWNO at 35kw is just as strong if not stronger than the 100kw stations on the tower, according to my radio's signal strength indicator. All of the stations always can be received in HD indoors with headphone wire antenna unless tropo interference occurs. The 250w KGLA translator can almost always be heard with a bit of noise.
KVDU is even further away at 75 miles and is usually completely clear and in HD, this is because it is 100kw/1946 ft HAAT/above ground, nearly the maximum height allowed for FM at 100kw. While this is expensive to build/maintain, this allows the station to reach several markets, 2 of them in the 65 dbu. It's nice having a good variety of stations so far out of the city. I almost never listen to the local stations that have a 65-70 dbu signal to my location, so most of my listening would be to rimshot stations.
While stations could put a good signal into most of the dense part of a market with just 250w/class A power, this isn't good for building penetration such as in basements/ground floor. Also, many people drive long distances in and out of the city and would like to keep a strong signal along their entire journey. The transmitter electricity consumption is usually a small fraction of the total expenses of a station, especially on FM where antennas can produce lots of gain. 100 kw stations generally use around 20-25 kw of transmitter power, depending on how many bays are used. So it wouldn't save stations that much money to reduce their coverage areas.
I'm 48 miles from the New Orleans FM master antenna where 8 stations are combined into one antenna 1004 ft HAAT/above ground. WWNO at 35kw is just as strong if not stronger than the 100kw stations on the tower, according to my radio's signal strength indicator. All of the stations always can be received in HD indoors with headphone wire antenna unless tropo interference occurs. The 250w KGLA translator can almost always be heard with a bit of noise.
KVDU is even further away at 75 miles and is usually completely clear and in HD, this is because it is 100kw/1946 ft HAAT/above ground, nearly the maximum height allowed for FM at 100kw. While this is expensive to build/maintain, this allows the station to reach several markets, 2 of them in the 65 dbu. It's nice having a good variety of stations so far out of the city. I almost never listen to the local stations that have a 65-70 dbu signal to my location, so most of my listening would be to rimshot stations.
While stations could put a good signal into most of the dense part of a market with just 250w/class A power, this isn't good for building penetration such as in basements/ground floor. Also, many people drive long distances in and out of the city and would like to keep a strong signal along their entire journey. The transmitter electricity consumption is usually a small fraction of the total expenses of a station, especially on FM where antennas can produce lots of gain. 100 kw stations generally use around 20-25 kw of transmitter power, depending on how many bays are used. So it wouldn't save stations that much money to reduce their coverage areas.
I can certainly see how the more spread out the population is, the bigger signal you need, hence why in the original post I suggested two quite different power levels for two different markets. A translator from Cougar Mountain doesn't hit Edmonds with any more than a DX signal, but in Portland the population is a bit more evenly distributed which would make a smaller signal just as workable. ABQ also has a huge haat advantage, as putting a maxed out translator on Sandia Crest would really get out. There are certainly signals I would advise against downgrading. One such signal is KPQ-FM, licensed to Wenatchee WA. That's the only class C in the market, and with its transmitter at the height it is, it covers pretty much all of Eastern Washington.
Charleston’s big FM signals, as I said before (96.9, 95.1, 89.3, 101.7) are audible clearly 60+ miles from the transmitter. Holly Hill, St. George, Santee, even over Lake Marion, that is what the people listen to.
Columbia only has a couple of signals which compare to Charleston’s big FMs. The only big class C signal in the market is the Big DM (101.3, an urban AC). They have been dominant in the market for decades because of that huge signal. They got ratings in Charlotte and Augusta for years because of that format. And not small ones either. 1s or higher.
Columbia only has a couple of signals which compare to Charleston’s big FMs. The only big class C signal in the market is the Big DM (101.3, an urban AC). They have been dominant in the market for decades because of that huge signal. They got ratings in Charlotte and Augusta for years because of that format. And not small ones either. 1s or higher.
I wonder if the low country and flat terrain has a lot to do with that. The few times I've been there, I remember things being pretty flat.
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