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Does the Score finally hit fm

KeithE4 said:
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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I live in an area where there are a half-dozen one square mile developments, all with single family homes, each valued at well over $1 million and some even over $5 million (a new neighbor of mine as of last week is Tim Cook). Those homeowners are not at all happy to see cell towers obstructing their mountain views, and they have the money to form groups and committees to oppose every manner of cellular towers.

The result is that I seldom have even two bars of signal on my iPhone and have to depend on my Netgear Orbi units to cover the house and yard area. This also means that using the phone to stream anything is less than ideal.

In the last 6 months, all three providers were able to work with a fire station in the middle of these developments and they have built three "telephone trees" (Arecaceae Belliphonus) in the form of palms. They are indeed ugly, but they don't block the view of any of the homes with litigious owners.
 
I give Audacy credit for keeping their call letters up to date.

I question how long WSCR keeps their AM frequency. I don't know the exact numbers, but I would assume 90% of listenership moves to the FM dial after the simulcast goes live. Why bother (and pay) to relocate the AM signal to a new location and keep it going?

Same for WBBM-AM. Why keep that going? Maybe there is some emergency broadcast requirement that I am unaware of, but still.
 
KeithE4 said:
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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Oh boy... don't even get us started on the "cell phone towers cause cancer, COVID-19, conspiracy theory," etc...!
 
pattywells said:
Why bother (and pay) to relocate the AM signal to a new location and keep it going?
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Because it gives them a place to put some play-by-play when there are conflicts or overlap. For example, WFAN moves the Yankees broadcasts to AM only for day games. That way their profitable talk shows aren't pre-empted. They also put some Rutgers sports on AM only for the same reason.

pattywells said:
Same for WBBM-AM. Why keep that going? Maybe there is some emergency broadcast requirement that I am unaware of, but still.
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Correct. WBBM is a primary EAS signal for Chicago.

Also the move and the operations are a fraction of what they got from selling the tower land.
 
pattywells said:
I question how long WSCR keeps their AM frequency. I don't know the exact numbers, but I would assume 90% of listenership moves to the FM dial after the simulcast goes live. Why bother (and pay) to relocate the AM signal to a new location and keep it going?
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With the greatly reduced coverage area of a Class B FM compared to a high power AM at the bottom of the dial with decades and decades of habit and inertia... the split will not be 90-10 for at least 10 years if ever. They can probably get to 60% in a couple of years though not counting streaming.
 
Ryan Williams said:
With the greatly reduced coverage area of a Class B FM compared to a high power AM at the bottom of the dial with decades and decades of habit and inertia... the split will not be 90-10 for at least 10 years if ever. They can probably get to 60% in a couple of years though not counting streaming.
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Based on similar cases elsewhere, I do not doubt that 70% to 80% of the existing cume will migrate in a very short period of time. And the station will gain new cume, so thinking that about 80% to 90% of all listening will be to the FM within the first year... if not the first 6 months.

Remember, any listening outside the Metro Survey Area does not "count" for this evaluation, as that listening has essentially no value to the station for sales.
 
pattywells said:
Same for WBBM-AM. Why keep that going? Maybe there is some emergency broadcast requirement that I am unaware of, but still.
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A different station can be assigned if warranted. Being a primary emergency notification station is not a condition of the station license nor is there a requirement to continue broadcasting just to provide that service.

And emergency primary stations do not have to be high power AMs. In Tallahassee when I supervised WTNT (FM) we were the primary station and even had underground studios and big government maintained generators.
 
davideduardo said:
Based on similar cases elsewhere, I do not doubt that 70% to 80% of the existing cume will migrate in a very short period of time. And the station will gain new cume, so thinking that about 80% to 90% of all listening will be to the FM within the first year... if not the first 6 months.

Remember, any listening outside the Metro Survey Area does not "count" for this evaluation, as that listening has essentially no value to the station for sales.
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I hate to disagree with the legend... but I think the numbers are going to be lower in Chicago. The Class Bs on Hancock and Sears are underpowered relative to the size of Chicagoland if you compare them to the Class Cs on Cedar Hill in DFW or the super Bs on Mt. Wilson in LA.

There are a lot of people in those outer belt counties who are in the Chicago MSA and will not have a 65 or even 60 dBu signals, which I suspect will lead to a higher mix of AM listeners. I'm talking about McHenry, Kane, Wills, etc. Even some issues in parts of Lake. I would spitball that there are approximately more than 2,000,000 listeners in these areas.

I still think it is a good move overall. New cume, potentially younger cume, and availability on non-AM radios. It's interesting that they seem to be going all in on the 104.3 branding and the new logo doesn't even mention 670, unlike WBBM which still lists 780 first.

I would love to know what Audacy expects the split to be since they already went through a similar move in Chicago with WBBM/WCFS.
 
Ryan Williams said:
I would love to know what Audacy expects the split to be since they already went through a similar move in Chicago with WBBM/WCFS.
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My guess is that this move was calculated with that experience in mind. What they are thinking is, as always, everyone's guess; remember, this is the company that changed its name from Entercom without realizing that radio audiences would interpret the new name as "Odyssey" ...
 
Ryan Williams said:
I still think it is a good move overall. New cume, potentially younger cume, and availability on non-AM radios. It's interesting that they seem to be going all in on the 104.3 branding and the new logo doesn't even mention 670, unlike WBBM which still lists 780 first.

I would love to know what Audacy expects the split to be since they already went through a similar move in Chicago with WBBM/WCFS.
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I doubt many listeners even know about WBBM’s logo. On air, WBBM only ever mentions 105.9, besides the top of the hour ID.
 
"There are a lot of people in those outer belt counties who are in the Chicago MSA and will not have a 65 or even 60 dBu signals, which I suspect will lead to a higher mix of AM listeners. I'm talking about McHenry, Kane, Wills, etc. Even some issues in parts of Lake. I would spitball that there are approximately more than 2,000,000 listeners in these areas."
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You can add Kenosha County WI (also in the Chicago MSA) to that list. Chicago full-market FMs get pretty spotty coverage up here, although 104.3 is one of the best. 670 is strong enough to blast through most all interference. Lots of Chicago sports fans up here, too.
 
KenoGuy said:
You can add Kenosha County WI (also in the Chicago MSA) to that list. Chicago full-market FMs get pretty spotty coverage up here, although 104.3 is one of the best. 670 is strong enough to blast through most all interference. Lots of Chicago sports fans up here, too.
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Some In Laws of mine live between Union Grove and Sturtevant, within view in various places on the lot, of the tower lights of WTMJ and WISN. WBBM pinned the signal strength meter on their home Stereo. But before IBOC, it was weak enough to get WSGW with WBBM nulled out. WISN barely comes in at Night after pattern change, and of course FCC Sunset is 4:15 PM in December.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
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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Good Karma was not the victim here. Disney who payed to rebuild the Downers Grove Site back in 2006 also payed the engineering, equipment and moving expenses to relocate to the WCPT night site in 2024. Good Karma's skin in the game was paying for license and the leasing fee for the WCPT night site. Good Karma's belief is streaming is their future and not building out a new site with 490 Ft towers vs. the shorter 298 FT towers they're living with now courtesy of Disney the former owner.
 
K.M. Richards said:
My guess is that this move was calculated with that experience in mind. What they are thinking is, as always, everyone's guess; remember, this is the company that changed its name from Entercom without realizing that radio audiences would interpret the new name as "Odyssey" ...
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The crazy part of the "Odyssey" deal was they had radio.com at that time.

IMHO: it would have been a lot easier to transition OTA folks to a "real" word*. I doubt the average Gen Z would find it harder to find "radio" than iHeart, Spotify, or whatever.

BTW: The first time I tried to log in my phone tried to "autocorrect" Audacy to odyssey
 
I get Audacy as having been coined to mean an "audio odyssey." But that meaning only works in print, if it works at all. "Audyssey" would have made the meaning obvious in print, but would run into the same problem with listeners. Throw in the fact that the "o" in "odyssey" and the "au" in "audio" are pronounced differently in many parts of the country and you have a total branding botch.
 
True story:

When Entercom changed names, they started promoting "Audacy.com" on the air as they prepared to shut down Radio.com ... but not long afterwards a friend, not in the radio business herself but knowing that I was, asked me why KTWV ("The Wave") promoted a website for a travel agency.

You already know the punch line. She had typed "odyssey.com" into her browser and got the site for a company in Florida that booked vacation cruise packages.

At that point, I started loudly asking to everyone I knew in the business whether or not David Field was an idiot. To his later credit once he realized his mistake, he acquired the domain name, put a redirect on it to the travel agency's new address for a while, and now has it disconnected from any servers (you will get a "cannot locate" error if you type it into the address bar of your browser now). Waste of a good domain name, though.
 
CTListener said:
I get Audacy as having been coined to mean an "audio odyssey." But that meaning only works in print, if it works at all. "Audyssey" would have made the meaning obvious in print, but would run into the same problem with listeners. Throw in the fact that the "o" in "odyssey" and the "au" in "audio" are pronounced differently in many parts of the country and you have a total branding botch.
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Audyssey is also already taken. :)

Marantz / Denon have used that brand name for their room calibration software for their AV receivers for many years.
 


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