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Does the Score finally hit fm

104.3 comes in fine in New Buffalo. The Stevensville exit off I-94 is roughly the spot where many Chicago FMs incur severe picket fencing, but 104.3 tends to survive an extra 5 to 10 miles.

Chicago FMs under normal atmospheric conditions are unreceivable farther up the shoreline in places such as Holland and Grand Haven. WIIL from Kenosha used to be heard around the clock with varying signal strength, but that's become trickier thanks to a translator at 94.9 in Grand Haven and an LPFM at 95.1 in Holland.

WSCR from its current site is prone to fading at night in places such as Grand Rapids. I know because I heard it with my own ears. I am unsure if that issue occurs along the shoreline.

I suspect signal fading at night on 670 might become a major nuisance in some outlying Chicago suburbs as well as places such as Kankakee, DeKalb, Rockford, Kenosha and portions of NW Indiana once the TX site move occurs.
 
Note that the WAIT 820 tower(s) in Elmhurst were 153.6 degrees, and the WMBI 1110 (now WXES) tower is 200 degrees in Addison. That is so much higher than the towers on Ballard Rd. Higher towers have higher inverse fields AND less fading. WAIT came in well enough that older people around 1980 had a preset button for it in their cars, for Beautiful Music, in Grand Haven and MUSKEGON!
 
Staff cuts at WBMX due to format change starting Feb2:

ramp247.com

Chicago Pros On The Loose

• Yesterday we reported that, because of Audacy's impending Feb. 2 flip of Throwback WBMX (104.3 JAMS)/Chicago to a simulcast of Sports-Talk WSCR-AM (670 The Score)/Chicago, the human cost of this move was the departure of 104.3 JAMS morning personality Jennifer "Jen BT" Farina and Commercial...
ramp247.com
 
Dj mr fresh said:
Sonic didn’t get cut he still there looks like bmx 4 is still there to
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That's a good indicator that they will be added to the B96 staff ... which then means we will be hearing who is being let go from there to make room.

In the end, the equivalent of one station's air staff will be eliminated.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Note that the WAIT 820 tower(s) in Elmhurst were 153.6 degrees, and the WMBI 1110 (now WXES) tower is 200 degrees in Addison. That is so much higher than the towers on Ballard Rd. Higher towers have higher inverse fields AND less fading. WAIT came in well enough that older people around 1980 had a preset button for it in their cars, for Beautiful Music, in Grand Haven and MUSKEGON!
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I believe it.

I could hear 820 The Score faintly but audibly in GR in the early 90s when nulling out 810 WMJH. 820's field strength along the immediate lakefront in western Michigan was probably pretty darn good.
 
K.M. Richards said:
That's a good indicator that they will be added to the B96 staff ... which then means we will be hearing who is being let go from there to make room.

In the end, the equivalent of one station's air staff will be eliminated.
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Julia is no longer with Audacy. I assume her former B96 shift will go to Sonic.
 
MarkW said:
I believe it.

I could hear 820 The Score faintly but audibly in GR in the early 90s when nulling out 810 WMJH. 820's field strength along the immediate lakefront in western Michigan was probably pretty darn good.
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On a good Sony or Panasonic portable radio in Genesee County, MI, you could get WAIT 820 and WOSU on 820 by just turning the radio, until CHAM 820 signed on. In fact, on the radio I have with a signal strength meter on it, you could get WAIT from Elmhurst STRONGER than WMAQ 670 when WMAQ was on Auxiliary. I called the engineer and he swore up and down that the AUX was 10000 watts from Bloomingdale, with the shorter AUX antenna. The only record I can find on fccdata.org is for an AUX with 5000 watts, from 1961. That's further away, but further down the dial. I'll have to look at the History Card, though 100 year old stations like WMAQ/WSCR tend to have long and complicated Histories.
 
BLA said:
That call sign on 102.7- again? Last done in 1960's
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That was part of a three-way deal which actually required a waiver at the time.

94.7 was KRHM. 102.7 was KLAC-FM. In 1965, the owners of 94.7 sold the station license and facilities to the owners of 102.7 and retired; 102.7's license and facilities were simultanously sold to a third party, along with the KRHM calls.

And then, after another ownership change at 102.7, the call letters changed to KKDJ in 1971.

But that's just us discussing history. iHeart is not going to blow up KIIS-FM to go Sports, despite what @Loverofradio suggests, tongue in cheek.
 
A_b_m_90 said:
B96 should go Old School, 90s, 2000s (and today of course) throwbacks. And Throwback 100.3 should go back to AC.
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Please explain your reasoning so I can decide whether or not you know more than Audacy about how to program their stations.

What seems to be the most reasonable endgame for them is to incorporate some of the former WBMX's features and air talent into the existing B96 format, and from every public statement made thus far by them. that appears to be what Audacy is doing.

I seriously doubt they will do anything more than that initially; after a year or so, once they see how those moves worked, they can tweak further. But I do not expect anything major beyond the 670 simulcast on 104.3 which is triggering these relatively minor changes at 96.3 ... too much simultaneous change introduces the possibility of "unintended consequences".
 
Been hearing the promos for this on the Score (670) and couldn't be happier.

1) I am still bitter about them replacing K-Hits with this garbage format they put on to replace it. I am quite surprised it lasted this long and check in frequently to see if they were changing it to something else.

2) I hope that they make a play to get the Bears back. WMVP is an absolute garbage signal out here in the western and NW suburbs and it is a pain in the... to listen to. The Score was nice and clear 100% of the time and now being on FM... Even better to listen to Jeff and Tom. With that said, I do listen to both. I flip-flop during dayparts between the two. So I listen to enough of both.
 
WCFL/WMVP was the only station to put a 25 mV/m predicted signal over all of the city of Chicago, with the three tower array in Downers Grove, the newer and the old one. The new facilities' signal from Lockport/Joliet is just a fraction of what it used to be in the Northern parts of Chicago and the North and Northwest suburbs. No one should buy a radio station with the land and towers owned by someone else that they can sell. WMAQ/WSCR and WBBM are also soon going to find out that the towers at 2355 Ballad Rd. in Des Plaines are too short to provide a decent signal over the whole area, and they will get fading complaints. You cannot change the Laws of Physics.

The late Glen Clark, WLS-FM CE and WLS 890 Station Engineer, found in the early 1970s that WCFL's signal in the Chicago Central Business District was more than three times what WLS's was in the early 1970s. They did extensive testing for a new site, and applied to move the WLS TL to Addison. But it was never built. Years later, as a leading Consulting Engineer, he designed a new DA for WMVP with new towers at the same site in Downers Grove, to fill one of the Night nulls. Still put 25 mV/m over all of Chicago.


They sold it without the land, and had to do it somewhere else. The new Engineering Consultant, again one of the best in the business, did the best with the WCPT 820 Night towers she had to work with, because no wants new towers in their back yard. Now they have much shorter towers, more fading, and a deep null to the SE at Night. But why can cell companies put up more and more towers, and nobody can stop them?
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
But why can cell companies put up more and more towers, and nobody can stop them?
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Believe me, they try. At least here in the Phoenix area, where NIMBY-ism runs rampant and HOAs make matters worse, cell towers are no more than about 30 feet high (20 feet in my area, due to FAA flight path restrictions near airports which affects all services). Many are "hidden" behind fake, plastic palm trees, which are laughably obvious. People want good cell service, but not the towers that are required to make it happen.
 


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