-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Family Stations Will Sell 94.7FM WFME Newark
- Thread starter Giacomo Siffredi
- Start date
Barry said:
Whether it's ESPN, SNY, YES or MSG landing on 94.7 or perhaps 107.5 if WBLS is sold, CBS will have no choice put to put WFAN on 92.3 FM.
All NFL teams have either an FM flag or co-flag except for the Giants, Jets and Denver Broncos. Teams in other sports want their games on FM, because that is where the desired demo is.
Nick said:
Hey, Nick, you're "famous"! :
http://www.christianpost.com/news/h...io-stations-dropping-christian-content-66760/
Reading between the lines on this, I wonder, out loud, if there will be some type of LMA so as to keep the station, and its grandfathered "B" status, as an advantage to allow a move for a perspective renter of the frequency.
Keeping 94.7 in the hands of Family Radio, and leasing the frequency, will generate income they now don't have, and would help to pay off debt. It will effectively increase the value - and the eventual sale price - of the station, when an auction for the station eventually comes.
In the long run, they will acquire a lot more money for the station than an outright sale would produce if sold now.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
Keeping 94.7 in the hands of Family Radio, and leasing the frequency, will generate income they now don't have, and would help to pay off debt. It will effectively increase the value - and the eventual sale price - of the station, when an auction for the station eventually comes.
In the long run, they will acquire a lot more money for the station than an outright sale would produce if sold now.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
radioguy39nj said:Barry said:
Whether it's ESPN, SNY, YES or MSG landing on 94.7 or perhaps 107.5 if WBLS is sold, CBS will have no choice put to put WFAN on 92.3 FM.
All NFL teams have either an FM flag or co-flag except for the Giants, Jets and Denver Broncos. Teams in other sports want their games on FM, because that is where the desired demo is.
I've heard that the NFL itself pushes its teams to move to FM for exactly that reason. The leaugue wants to present a young-and-gullible demo to potential advertisers, and games on 55-plus-heavy AM don't cut it. I know NYC has a strong tradition of powerful FMs with big audiences, but moving sports to FM has been such a great ratings move in so many markets now that it's inconceivable that NYC listeners would reject the concept.
radioguy39nj said:The buyer of 94.7 will need to move the stick to the ESB. Because of WMAS in Springfield, MA (also on 94.7), it will have to be a directional. WMAS is owned by Cumulus. If Cumulus gets 94.7 in NY, they'll put nothing into it, probably a simulcast of WABC.
Of course, there's always ESPN. WEPN could swap 1050 for 94.7. If ESPN lands on 94.7, CBS may have to consider blowing up 92.3 to simulcast WFAN. CBS-FM and Fresh will probably stay intact. Though it's not a bottom feeder, 92.3 Now is the lowest rated of CBS' NY FMs.
Stay tuned!
It will not be necessary to directionalize 94.7 because WMAS is WAY below a full class B signal-they do run 50 kW ERP, but at only 170 feet above average terrain. Their AM/FM tower is right in downtown Springfield.
LA_Guy said:
As Freebird has noted, the obstacle that has to be overcome before you even get to the WMAS issue is WIGX out on Long Island. It's fully spaced to the current WFME site, so you don't get to invoke pre-1964 short-spacing, even though both WFME and WIGX are old enough. And it's too close to Empire for any kind of 73.215 short-spacing.
It's not easy to get around that: WIGX itself can't move because of other short-spacings (WYBC-FM in particular), and you can't even just buy it and shut it down, because the allocation still exists and can't really be usefully moved out of the way. But if you could get past the WIGX issue somehow, then you've got a new set of problems: you have to somehow show an overall reduction in interference between WFME and WMAS. Moving WFME to Empire (or 4TS, or Freedom) increases that interference. You can reduce it by directionalizing WFME - but then you have a huge logistical problem (no space on Empire for a DA) and you lose some of Westchester and Connecticut. Or you can directionalize WMAS...but (and this is a biggie) WMAS still has to cover its city of license with a predicted 70 dBu contour, and (as I forgot when I was exploring this for NERW this week), that city of license is no longer Springfield. It's Enfield, Connecticut, which is not only already on the fringe of the WMAS signal (they had to use Longley-Rice to show coverage) but is right in the line where the null to WFME would have to be.
WFME, in short, is squished into a crowded allocations situation in a way that earlier move-ins like WVNJ/WHTZ were not, and the rules are not as cooperative as they were back in the days when WVNJ moved. Back then, WFME - if it had been purchased by Citadel - could have accepted mutual interference with WMAS. Now it can't.
I'm all for highly creative solutions to allocations issues (and sometimes work on them for a living, if anyone's looking for help) - but this one's a sticky pickle indeed. If WFME were my client, I don't think I'd be recommending an attempt at a move, at least not to any of the major Manhattan sites. It's not that broken to begin with, and by the time you start spending cubic dollars to move WIGX and WMAS and put a DA on Empire...why not just wait for WBLS to hit the market and get a real, fully-protected Empire B?
WFME gets out pretty well from its current site. Maybe an option for a new owner would be to build a taller tower and drop the ERP to get over some of the obstacles such as buildings and hills.
37kW does pretty well at 800' AMSL from South Mountain. You lose a bit on Long Island, but also gain a lot on the NJ side of things. From my perch in western NJ, it comes in better than any of the NYC FM's.
37kW does pretty well at 800' AMSL from South Mountain. You lose a bit on Long Island, but also gain a lot on the NJ side of things. From my perch in western NJ, it comes in better than any of the NYC FM's.
Back to the "who's gonna get it" question, just briefly:
Has anyone even considered those broadcasters with deeper pockets than any and all of the ones mentioned:
CRI and VOR are both leasing time on noncompetitive domestic AM's in DC and NYC and Al Jazeera could use more than one hour per day on WBAI.
None can own a domestic facility outright, but could one of them pay for several years of air time up front, either on 94.7 or 1050?
Has anyone even considered those broadcasters with deeper pockets than any and all of the ones mentioned:
CRI and VOR are both leasing time on noncompetitive domestic AM's in DC and NYC and Al Jazeera could use more than one hour per day on WBAI.
None can own a domestic facility outright, but could one of them pay for several years of air time up front, either on 94.7 or 1050?
The 94.7 signal is not good in Manhattan. This is because of intermodulation with 96.3 and 95.5. When those two signals mix in the front end of a radio they produce sum and difference frequencies. 96.3 minus 95.5 is .8. That .8 mixes with 95.5. 95.5 minus .8 is 94.7. That is the same reason you couldn't hear 103.5 well in midtown. 102.7 and 101.9 had a third order harmonic combination that blocked them.
You don't know how many times I've thought that...WNTIRadio said:
When Z-100 moved to Empire, I was living in Jackson. The signal strength went from a 4 (on a Sansui TU-9900) to a 2.5.
As the move was better for them, Scott Shannon was promoting the move from the "baby pea shooter transmitter" to the "Flamethrower". It was the origination of the "Flamethrower" slogan during Scott's tenure at Z-100. And "From the top of the Empire State Building" slogan
My signal strength was considerably less.
For the first 2 or 3 days they were on, the antenna was still in West Orange it hadn't yet moved.
Unless there was some overnight testing, WVNJ never saw its signal from Empire.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
Then, there is multipath. We are in southern Miami Beach, northeast of downtown Miami.WNTIRadio said:
Four FM's southwest of the skyline all have decent signals here but are constantly in and out until we go far enough north to change the trajectory. Check 88.9, 89.7, 90.5, and 98.3 in Miami.
On another post in another section, that interference was explained as the "daisy" type of a pattern developed by Alford around the windows at 102. When they moved off Alford with a different design, that was considerably reduced at street level.spm1036 said:
The difference was real. I wondered about it until I read the post. It is a great explanation.
I would imagine the problem would be evident at "Top of the Rock", but nobody listens up there, anyway.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
- Status