DAYTIME RADIO STATIONS!

[Corky Marlowe]

Yes, the owners of WLIB, believing an upgraded facility in New York was worth much more than any facility in Ft Wayne purchased WOWO and castrated it.

With WOWO no longer requiring nighttime protection to the previous high degree, WILIB could file for a fairly reasonable night facility. Once that was done, the downgraded WOWO was sold to another company... in about the space of a year back in 1994.

The company Inner City sold WOWO to was Federated Media.

 

[davideduardo]

The company Inner City sold WOWO to was Federated Media.

Price Communications sold to Inner City in March of 1994, and then Inner City sold to Federated in November (filing dates, closing dates).

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Yes, the owners of WLIB, believing an upgraded facility in New York was worth much more than any facility in Ft Wayne purchased WOWO and castrated it.

With WOWO no longer requiring nighttime protection to the previous high degree, WILIB could file for a fairly reasonable night facility. Once that was done, the downgraded WOWO was sold to another company... in about the space of a year back in 1994.

We could start a whole new thread on this concept as a stand alone. In the early days of broadcasting we (as a nation, as a "public") had this lofty idea that frequencies were licensed and that broadcasters and the regulator (FCC) all stood around the campfire singing Kumbyah and doing what ever was good for the greater community.

Today the mood is: Broadcasting is a business, must be run strictly as a business, and the FCC just needs to "get the hell out of the way" and let it happen.

Should the people of Ft. Wayne and Northern Indiana have had a say in the practicality and feasibility of such a study?

How many viable little towns of 8,000 to 25,000 have watched as their legacy A.M. was shut down because the owner found that the F.M. was finally the primary channel, and then during and just before the big consolidation move, it became obvious that for the benefit of the OWNER, we should more the F.M. transmitter as close to the nearby big city as possible and pretend to be a big city station.

Oh, little hometown? I don't know you any more. Yeah, we had a good marriage for 27 years. But it's over. Me and this chick known as "the big metro area" have a new thing going. See ya".

I'm practical. When our nation is becoming urbanized and the old things sometimes get plowed under by new technology, some changes are going to happen. (I'm NOT driving a Ford Model "T" any more. I finally ended that marriage. Step out into the driveway and let me show you today's chick!)

Should the FCC give more room for Ft. Wayne, IN or Canton, GA or Paris, AR or Kirksville, MO to have some standing in shut-downs and down-grades? Should such applications require Public Notice that competing applications to protect the small town turf will be considered before granting this application. Or is it true, as some broadcasters tell us, that all licenses were converted to some kind of modern day commodity and it now belongs TOTALLY to the licensee. The allocation of that frequency now has about the same status as a beef carcass hanging in the refrigerator at the slaughterhouse. We're agnostic here at the slaughterhouse. We will sell it to Walmart, to Kroger or to McDonalds. It's just a piece of property WE own and what we do with it should be of no concern to you.

 

[amfmsw]

'signing off at 2 or 3pm'....

My first job in radio was Sundays, sign on to sign off. 1370 1kw ND. Today is daylight savings, and it reminded me of the time the owner stopped by, looked at the log, and asked when is sign-off.

Today? 7pm.

"Close shop after the last spot"

I played the National Anthem at 4:59pm, Legal ID at 5, cut carrier.

 

[jh]

Yes, the owners of WLIB, believing an upgraded facility in New York was worth much more than any facility in Ft Wayne purchased WOWO and castrated it.

With WOWO no longer requiring nighttime protection to the previous high degree, WILIB could file for a fairly reasonable night facility. Once that was done, the downgraded WOWO was sold to another company... in about the space of a year back in 1994.

We could start a whole new thread on this concept as a stand alone. In the early days of broadcasting we (as a nation, as a "public") had this lofty idea that frequencies were licensed and that broadcasters and the regulator (FCC) all stood around the campfire singing Kumbyah and doing what ever was good for the greater community.

Today the mood is: Broadcasting is a business, must be run strictly as a business, and the FCC just needs to "get the hell out of the way" and let it happen.

Should the people of Ft. Wayne and Northern Indiana have had a say in the practicality and feasibility of such a study?

This has been going on since the beginning of radio. I grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa... where in the 1930s, the only local station moved to Des Moines, to be replaced by WMT on 600, which moved from Waterloo, leaving that city without a local station until a station signed on there in the 1940s. The station that moved to Des Moines became sister station to another station in Des Moines owned by the same company (they allowed duopolies back then); the same company also owned both daily newspapers in Des Moines. There was a third radio station in Des Moines at the time, owned by someone else.

In the 40s, CBS bought WBT in Charlotte NC, changed its night signal considerably so it had a null to Omaha, then sold it. This allowed KFAB in Omaha to move to WBT's 1110. KFAB had been in a share-time on 780 with WBBM in Chicago. With KFAB off 780, WBBM could go full time. I read a post a day or two ago on one of these forums of someone complaining about WBT's severe directional pattern preventing him from hearing the station at night.

 

[amfmsw]

The days of leaving a COL without primary service have long been over. You cannot move a signal out of a town without another having signal, leaving it without service. You can move it towards a more populated area, but your city grade signal MUST still include the original COL in the contour. The City doesn't have to be in the center of coverage but not in the fringe either.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The days of leaving a COL without primary service have long been over. You cannot move a signal out of a town without another having signal, leaving it without service. You can move it towards a more populated area, but your city grade signal MUST still include the original COL in the contour. The City doesn't have to be in the center of coverage but not in the fringe either.

In this conversation, the word "service" has two meanings in the common language and the conversation thus gets sticky.

So I move my little radio station as far from my little hometown as legally possible and I begin programming to the nearby larger city and focus my advertising sales in that city

My little town still has "service" in the language of the FCC... in that a transmitter signal of significant strength from a "local" transmitter is still there. But there is no local programming, no local news, no local advertising, no local weather, no local traffic reporting for the little town. So in the language of the common man on the street: "My little town no longer gets any service."

And since the transmitter can't get fully moved to the larger city, it gets limited service or no service (in the language of the common man) because the signal service (in the language of the FCC) is so wickedly weak.

 

[trusty]

So I move my little radio station as far from my little hometown as legally possible and I begin programming to the nearby larger city and focus my advertising sales in that city

My little town still has "service" in the language of the FCC... in that a transmitter signal of significant strength from a "local" transmitter is still there. But there is no local programming, no local news, no local advertising, no local weather, no local traffic reporting for the little town. So in the language of the common man on the street: "My little town no longer gets any service."

And since the transmitter can't get fully moved to the larger city, it gets limited service or no service (in the language of the common man) because the signal service (in the language of the FCC) is so wickedly weak.

In the first definition, service = coverage. In the second definition, service = content.

You have to have the coverage to deliver the content, so you have "service" by the first definition and the potential for service by the second definition. That's all the FCC cares about.

 

[firepoint525]

So I move my little radio station as far from my little hometown as legally possible and I begin programming to the nearby larger city and focus my advertising sales in that city
My little town still has "service" in the language of the FCC... in that a transmitter signal of significant strength from a "local" transmitter is still there. But there is no local programming, no local news, no local advertising, no local weather, no local traffic reporting for the little town. So in the language of the common man on the street: "My little town no longer gets any service."
And since the transmitter can't get fully moved to the larger city, it gets limited service or no service (in the language of the common man) because the signal service (in the language of the FCC) is so wickedly weak.

In the first definition, service = coverage. In the second definition, service = content.
You have to have the coverage to deliver the content, so you have "service" by the first definition and the potential for service by the second definition. That's all the FCC cares about.

What happens if you live in a town that is so small (or loses population) that it can no longer support a radio station? This would primarily be the case in rural areas where there is no big city to "move-in" to.

Fulton, KY, used to have WFUL-AM and FM. They sold the FM to WENK 30 years ago, who changed it to WWKF-FM (KF-99) and it is still on the air to this day, with a COL of Fulton. But the local programming remained with the AM station, which finally signed off for good sometime last year. (South Fulton, TN, got WCMT-FM about eight years or so, but WCMT-FM is primarily a Weakley County station.) But both WCMT-FM and KF-99 have regional programming (at least countywide), so nothing (at least not much) geared toward their specific COLs.

Meanwhile, Pegram, TN, where I live now, is the COL for WPRT-FM (the Game) which is a sports station serving the Nashville area. But I have no real interest in sports programming. Nearby Kingston Springs is the COL for one of the two FISH stations playing contemporary Christian music. But Pegram and Kingston Springs are much better served (at least here locally) by our local paper, which comes out once a week. And we don't even need a "swap-shop"-type program here because we have a Facebook page that takes care of that.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

What happens if you live in a town that is so small (or loses population) that it can no longer support a radio station? This would primarily be the case in rural areas where there is no big city to "move-in" to.

// ***** //

But I have no real interest in sports programming. Nearby Kingston Springs is the COL for one of the two FISH stations playing contemporary Christian music. But Pegram and Kingston Springs are much better served (at least here locally) by our local paper, which comes out once a week. And we don't even need a "swap-shop"-type program here because we have a Facebook page that takes care of that.

You have outline the kind of circumstances that just ties people's tails in knots. There was a great "growth spurt" of radio broadcasting following WWII. Every little county seat town seemed to be growing there for a while and looked like a viable place for a radio station. Part of small town growth was farmers moving into town in some place. Farm women looked at the husband and said: I'm going to town 4 and 5 times day taking kids to school, to band practice, to church circle meeting. Why don't we move to town, and you can drive out to the farm ONCE per day, DURING FARMING season. Sop even little towns that really had no future appeared to be growing.

But the majority of people now live in cities. Thus, FCC law and regulations have to deal with the circumstances of metropolitan markets.

I have followed all this for years. My dream was to have a station in a small town market, but one at least strong enough to be viable as a radio market. I can show you towns of 20,000 that can't keep a station healthy, and then there are towns of 3,000 that do well by their station. And that is hard to comprehend from a distance. And that is impossible to translate into federal law and regulations that will see to it that stations are only licensed in towns that can financiall support one. And it isn't always the town, the market. Sometimes the wrong person gets possession of the station and there is no way to write federal law and regulations that can "grade" people and say: We will license you because we can see that you are a radio-winner, and we are not going to give you a license anywhere because YOU are a radio-loser.

So, we muddle along and limp along with the markets, the station operators and the regulations we have. But there is some real stupidity at work in our existing system. We can probably do better.

And to your final point: when the existing crop of stations was licensed, and when most of the current owners built or bought, and the current laws and regs were written, we did not have Facebook and Blogs and Podcasts and XM/Sirius and e-mail on a smart-phone did not exist. We have had to adjust our lives and our economy to accommodate more technology change in 15 years than my Father had to adjust for in his entire 89 years!

 

[FreddyE1977]

Fenton, Michigan is home to an anomaly - a station that is licensed for 24-hour operations but still signs off at night anyway. That station is WCXI 1160 Fenton.

When did they start running daytime only? I lived in the area when that
station signed on and they were 24 hours the whole time I lived there.

 

[blackgold]

I remember when WCAS in Cambridge would sign-off with all kinds of comic mash-ups. And WWEL in Medford would end their broadcast day by inviting their listeners to tune in to 107.9 FM. And it would end with "Pour me a drink, honey."

 

[Bongwater]

I remember when WCAS in Cambridge would sign-off with all kinds of comic mash-ups. And WWEL in Medford would end their broadcast day by inviting their listeners to tune in to 107.9 FM. And it would end with "Pour me a drink, honey."

What WWEL did was CLASSY.

 

[firepoint525]

You have outline the kind of circumstances that just ties people's tails in knots. There was a great "growth spurt" of radio broadcasting following WWII. Every little county seat town seemed to be growing there for a while and looked like a viable place for a radio station. Part of small town growth was farmers moving into town in some place. Farm women looked at the husband and said: I'm going to town 4 and 5 times day taking kids to school, to band practice, to church circle meeting. Why don't we move to town, and you can drive out to the farm ONCE per day, DURING FARMING season. Sop even little towns that really had no future appeared to be growing.
And to your final point: when the existing crop of stations was licensed, and when most of the current owners built or bought, and the current laws and regs were written, we did not have Facebook and Blogs and Podcasts and XM/Sirius and e-mail on a smart-phone did not exist. We have had to adjust our lives and our economy to accommodate more technology change in 15 years than my Father had to adjust for in his entire 89 years!

They used to (at least back when I worked there) have a program called "Livewire" in which they actually called all the town halls and fire halls in Fulton and Hickman Counties, and just basically asked for any news updates, whatever was going on in those communities. Not real exciting for me, but I suppose that it made for great small-town radio. I should point out that Fulton is probably the largest town in either Fulton or Hickman Counties, and is not a county-seat, but probably the only town in either county that could have supported a radio station, however small. Fulton and Hickman Counties are both very small, both in population and in geographical size, and both should probably be merged into one county, the combined population of which would probably be about 15,000.

 

[frnkp2000]

I remember when WCAS in Cambridge would sign-off with all kinds of comic mash-ups. And WWEL in Medford would end their broadcast day by inviting their listeners to tune in to 107.9 FM. And it would end with "Pour me a drink, honey."

What WWEL did was CLASSY.

I remember that!!!! Good memories!