Radio Marti is block programmed, so it would have different types of programming throughout its broadcast schedule.
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Did Cuba Have 500,000 Watt AM Stations?
- Thread starter Gregg.
- Start date
But its format is basically a news summary each hour and “talk show” analysis for test of the hour. It is basically a “news talk” format without ads. Definitely not as diverse as NPR affiliates have been in the domestic market.
I always thought of it as a non-com version of WAQI.
I’ve only occasionally tuned across Radio Marti since it’s near-death experience in 2025, but they did have some music segments in the past. It appears they are all news/talk now.
Radio Martí
Radio Martí, emisora administrada por la Oficina de Transmisiones a Cuba, ofrece reportajes y programas variados para proporcionar al pueblo cubano noticias e información sin censura. Sigue el acontecer noticioso de Cuba y el mundo a través de noticieros, boletines informativos y programas de...
www.martinoticias.com
They added some music in a number of hours as budget cuts hit them in the past.I’ve only occasionally tuned across Radio Marti since it’s near-death experience in 2025, but they did have some music segments in the past. It appears they are all news/talk now.
Radio Martí
Radio Martí, emisora administrada por la Oficina de Transmisiones a Cuba, ofrece reportajes y programas variados para proporcionar al pueblo cubano noticias e información sin censura. Sigue el acontecer noticioso de Cuba y el mundo a través de noticieros, boletines informativos y programas de...
Tell that to WFFG
I’ve only occasionally tuned across Radio Marti since it’s near-death experience in 2025, but they did have some music segments in the past. It appears they are all news/talk now.
Radio Martí
Radio Martí, emisora administrada por la Oficina de Transmisiones a Cuba, ofrece reportajes y programas variados para proporcionar al pueblo cubano noticias e información sin censura. Sigue el acontecer noticioso de Cuba y el mundo a través de noticieros, boletines informativos y programas de...
their processing for music on SW was BALLS TO THE WALL....very compressed and punchy
Radio Marti has always had music programming at various times throughout the day plus baseball play-by-play, prize fights, performances by artists like Willy Chirino and Celia Cruz even soap operas in addition to the news/talk. If you are hearing Ft Myers it might have been WINK FM. They are on 96.9 mHz as is an FM in Key Largo. Because of the geography and the climate, there is considerable tropical ducting that causes very weird reception on FM and TV. I have heard FMs out of Texas and Louisiana occasionally.
Radio Marti transmits from Sisters Creek Island while WFFG is on Boot Key. Both of which are located on the ocean side of Marathon and on the south side of the key. Marti is pretty darn directional toward Cuba while the WFFG pattern is sort of north/south. WFFG is currently operating on an STA at reduced power.
Radio Marti transmits from Sisters Creek Island while WFFG is on Boot Key. Both of which are located on the ocean side of Marathon and on the south side of the key. Marti is pretty darn directional toward Cuba while the WFFG pattern is sort of north/south. WFFG is currently operating on an STA at reduced power.
I've done the annual revue of Martí as mandated by Congress a number of times over the years (they use a selection of independent "outsiders" to go over the programming and purpose of the station once a year). While they may have had such show in some periods, they were never part of the format when I did reviews.
Part of my reviews involved listening to an entire day of broadcasts, previously recorded and sent to me. So I got a full dose of the station each time.
Worked there for 20 years from when they were in DC through the move to Miami. Believe me, these non-news/talk programs were regularly scheduled part of the mix. Music shows did sound, shall we say, less than great because of the overly aggressive processing.
@ bigdonho
Gotta concur with your Cuban station interference in Florida. Wrecked one of my favorite stations from back in the teen years.
It was several years later. No longer a teen, I drove from Sarasota's tutorial citadel REI to Miami to take the tests for my chocolate know-nothing FCC 1st phone license. The only convenient way to drive across that part of the state to Miami in a car was Alligator Alley -- Highway 41. I could not wait to hear Top 40 WFUN. Back home up in Queens I had only heard them once; that was overnight. Once. (WQAN came right up the coast, of course. But I preferred WFUN).
Back on Long Island I had a car button for WTAR 790 Norfolk, which soared across the water and was almost as loud as WABC 770. So, out of Naples, the Gulf, broad daylight, I punched up the 790 button.
Solid Cuban. For miles. I didn't see any alligators for fifty straight miles. In fact, there was no scenery. Barren, like maybe New Mexico. Certainly didn't look like any cypress lagoon where you'd expect to see Tony Joe White or Jerry Reed hanging out. And where was my WFUN??
It wasn't until maybe three miles before the literal Miami *city-limit sign* when I heard, well under the Cuban, the piano riff from 'Day After Day' by Badfinger that there was any sign of WFUN.
Gotta concur with your Cuban station interference in Florida. Wrecked one of my favorite stations from back in the teen years.
It was several years later. No longer a teen, I drove from Sarasota's tutorial citadel REI to Miami to take the tests for my chocolate know-nothing FCC 1st phone license. The only convenient way to drive across that part of the state to Miami in a car was Alligator Alley -- Highway 41. I could not wait to hear Top 40 WFUN. Back home up in Queens I had only heard them once; that was overnight. Once. (WQAN came right up the coast, of course. But I preferred WFUN).
Back on Long Island I had a car button for WTAR 790 Norfolk, which soared across the water and was almost as loud as WABC 770. So, out of Naples, the Gulf, broad daylight, I punched up the 790 button.
Solid Cuban. For miles. I didn't see any alligators for fifty straight miles. In fact, there was no scenery. Barren, like maybe New Mexico. Certainly didn't look like any cypress lagoon where you'd expect to see Tony Joe White or Jerry Reed hanging out. And where was my WFUN??
It wasn't until maybe three miles before the literal Miami *city-limit sign* when I heard, well under the Cuban, the piano riff from 'Day After Day' by Badfinger that there was any sign of WFUN.
Quite a few years back Radio Marti was heavily music during the overnight hours. The poster who mentioned the interference says they worked the overnight shift.
You should have heard Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the 1980s. I visualized their modulation meters in my head; instead of bouncing up and down they probably just quivered around the modulation peak.
I don’t think anyone has ever mistaken Alligator Alley for New Mexico.🤪🤣
(I’ve always enjoyed driving around NM and taking in its scenery, but living in Houston I appreciate traveling to any landscape that is not flat.🤣)
Fellow REI grad here (1980) and I remember that route. Cuba was all over that dial.
In the 80's Cuba would run "high power" on many frequencies for special events like Castro's birthday.
Don't have my written logs anymore to give you specific dates.
The WCCO engineer told me about when he was driving home, about 100 miles north of MSP and Cuba was wrecking WCCO. To make it worse WCCO was running C-QUAM so 'CCO & Cuba were "slamming from side to side on my car radio".
Have recording (somewhere) of Cube obliterating 1160 KSL here in Boise Idaho.
Another occasion all the big Cuban signals had their carriers frequencies shift suddenly + or- 5 KHz every couple seconds, then swing back on frequency. On purpose or a technical issue? Heard it on 670 (under KBOI) 830, 1160 among others here in Boise.
Don't have my written logs anymore to give you specific dates.
The WCCO engineer told me about when he was driving home, about 100 miles north of MSP and Cuba was wrecking WCCO. To make it worse WCCO was running C-QUAM so 'CCO & Cuba were "slamming from side to side on my car radio".
Have recording (somewhere) of Cube obliterating 1160 KSL here in Boise Idaho.
Another occasion all the big Cuban signals had their carriers frequencies shift suddenly + or- 5 KHz every couple seconds, then swing back on frequency. On purpose or a technical issue? Heard it on 670 (under KBOI) 830, 1160 among others here in Boise.
Seems they would do that if the Castro government was especially POed at the US about something.
Do we know that Radio Martí is still running despite Linda MacMahon's goal to disband Voice of America and other broadcast services to foreign countries from the United States government? I believe a court has blocked her firing much of the Voice of America staff, although since they already left, I'm not sure what the VOA is putting out. Some folks have pointed out that the U.S. should have the VOA broadcasting to Iran in Farsi and other local languages. We know much was cut by Elon Musk and DOGE. But did DOGE leave Radio Martí alone, considering how important the Cuban-American vote is in Florida?
As David has told us, Radio Martí at 1180 kHz really can't be heard in Havana or much of the island of Cuba. There are stations on every AM frequency across the island, be it 1180 or others, that you'd have to be near the northern shore of Cuba using a sensitive radio to hear anything from the U.S. I'm sure the staff at Radio and Television Martí are trying to help the Cuban population to know the U.S. point of view. But few Cubans are able to hear or see it. And that's been true since Radio Martí signed on.
As David has told us, Radio Martí at 1180 kHz really can't be heard in Havana or much of the island of Cuba. There are stations on every AM frequency across the island, be it 1180 or others, that you'd have to be near the northern shore of Cuba using a sensitive radio to hear anything from the U.S. I'm sure the staff at Radio and Television Martí are trying to help the Cuban population to know the U.S. point of view. But few Cubans are able to hear or see it. And that's been true since Radio Martí signed on.
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Turning on even a basic shortwave radio anywhere in the US would answer that question.
Marti is on 6030, 3 or 4 7 mhz channels and one 9mhz channel, all from Greenville
Radio Farda is currently broadcasting to Iran 24/7 from transmitters in Kuwait and The Philippines.
The Radio Marti shortwave broadcasts were suspended for several months as a result of all the USAGM cuts a year ago, but were gradually brought back. I suspect there was blowback from the Cuban diaspora in Florida.
Frequencies vary by time of day, but there are three or four shortwave transmitters broadcasting RM at any given time.
Middays in North America RM has been on 11930, 13570, 13820 and 15380, confirmed by my own listening.
Ignore the RM on-air SW frequency announcements as they are out of date.
oh uyeah, 11860 and11930 too
i have heard some sign offs when VOA was running that were clearly originating from the transmitter site because it was only one or two sites i wud hear sign offs or sign ons from.. and they would say "write to the US information agency in your country for a shortwave schedule"
That makes sense. One of the comments I made in an earlier evaluation was to not broadcast from Midnight to 6 AM as anyone with the radio on in those hours in non-industrial Cuba would be subject to investigation.
There was the thought that shortwave or distant medium wave listening might have high background noise levels, so high modulation would mask that...
Interestingly, in a number of Ecuadorian tropical band stations that I visited.., and at one I bought... they used theater AGC devices rather than professional broadcast gear "because it sounded louder". Basically, they were getting a lot of peak clipping and square waves... the way stadium audio used to sound.
That was because they were blocking Radio Swan / Radio Americas on 1160 from Swan Island. Swan Island was a joint Honduras / U.S.A. protected deserted island. It was just Southwest of Cuba, and 50 kw with a very directional antenna shot right at Cuba.
The "warbling" stations actually moved only around 100 to 300 cps, not kHz. The idea was to make listening unpleasant with a constantly changing low frequency heterodyne.
Back in the 60's and 70's, Cuba tried mostly to block U.S. stations in Spanish. That meant 710, 990, 1140 and 1550 from Miami, 1180 WHAM that ran paid Spanish programming after midnight, 1160 that had Radio Swan / Radio Americas from Swan Island and a couple of 1-A clears that sold overnight blocks to the folks in Langley... IIRC it was 840, 1180 and a couple of others.
I had the opportunity to visit Swan Island in 1962. I was in Miami to visit "sister station" WFAB, owned by the same tyrant that had WCUY and WJMO in Cleveland where I worked part-time. I went to the AIR, "Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusión", offices in Miami to try to get lists of Latin American radio stations, since I was a DXer then. Sharing the office of AIR was the Gibraltar Steamship Company, an obvious cover whereby the guys from Langley took a dead company and used it to run the anti-Castro station on Swan Island south-southwest of Cuba.
By coincidence, the "steamship" folks were planning their rotating shift change and supply run to Swan and they invited me to fly with them. Swan was basically deserted except for a few transient fishermen from Honduras and the radio station. There was a two-tower directional system, some housing and a studio. Some programming was live, some on tape.
Aimed at Cuba, Radio America's 50 kw in a roughly 45° wide single lobe was the equivalent of about 500 kw non-directional.