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FCC Proposes Limiting Class A

The Cubans have already destroyed the USA clear channels from what I can tell. Case in point, WBAP (820) that we thought had a jammer on top of it has turned out to be a faulty Cuban transmitter.
 
kf4rca said:
The Cubans have already destroyed the USA clear channels from what I can tell. Case in point, WBAP (820) that we thought had a jammer on top of it has turned out to be a faulty Cuban transmitter.
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The Cubans have been transmitting over US blowtorches for decades.
 
The protection rules are a joke IMHO, and now we're pretty much proposing a bigger joke. But in 2018, I doubt that anyone cares very much.
 
Ditto on 'not-so-blowtorches', Gr8.

Several years ago one Florida night in my Folks' wonderful four-screen garage, I was trying to log and tape audio from every AM channel the GE Superadio 2 could yank in.
I somehow did exactly that. The ID's at that time had become few and far-between, naturally. There were lots of sports, what with Gainesville about 25 miles north, and with Tampa to the southwest, and with the Southeastern Conference all over the dial like stoplights on US 441. And there was only one loud local coming into the garage -- WVLG 640. I literally could walk to their studios, in the Villages' modern 'downtown', in ten minutes.
My Long Island buddy Big Ed Newlands did the overnights at WVLG then. The station is omni, maybe 1000 watts, with their stick somewhat west of the Villages. Yet I somehow managed to arrange a wicked-@$$ null of this loud community station to tape *other* audio, if any, off 640 -- just to see if it could be done.

When I told Big Ed about it, he feigned indignation. 'You nulled out MY SHOW, for (Pete's) sake, so you could hear CUBA? What the (heck) kind of Long Island radio friend are YOU?!?'

* * * * * * *

Is IBOC under any FCC scrutiny in all of these rule-change proposals to resuscitate the AM dial ?
 
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And then there are the flatscreens in my neighborhood tearing up the band. There are 3 other homes connected to my transformer. I even installed ferrite chokes on my powerline coming in. It helped a little but much of it is coming thru the air. Some homes have 2 or 3 flatscreens going. Fortunately around midnight, it quiets down.
WHEN is the FCC going to set standards for radiation from these devices?
 
It's hard to see the point of this. So many AMs are having trouble staying financially viable. The 50kw blowtorches are the ones best positioned to keep the band going. If they want to make a difference, open up more of the FM band to commercial content by moving stations receiving a public subsidy to AM.
 
umfan said:
If they want to make a difference, open up more of the FM band to commercial content by moving stations receiving a public subsidy to AM.
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Pretty funny...aimed at getting a response from me. Mission accomplished.

What would you suggest with non-coms that don't receive "public subsidy," such as the new EMF station in Detroit?

Truthfully, many large market CPB stations would forego any federal dollars in exchange for liberalizing fundraising rules. The NAB would object.
 
kf4rca said:
And then there are the flatscreens in my neighborhood tearing up the band. There are 3 other homes connected to my transformer. I even installed ferrite chokes on my powerline coming in. It helped a little but much of it is coming thru the air. Some homes have 2 or 3 flatscreens going. Fortunately around midnight, it quiets down.
WHEN is the FCC going to set standards for radiation from these devices?
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At least your area quiets down...my noise floor is currently S9+39dB.
I have about 2,000 big screens and a similar number of other (computer) monitors within 500 feet, along with high tension lines and a substation. Also, cable modems and converter boxes on every one.
I just hope I can retire and move away before the last station goes away.
 
TheBigA said:
Remember being to DX 50kw AM signals? The FCC is talking about cutting back on their protection:

https://radioinsight.com/headlines/...-am-interference-protection-changes-proposed/

The problem is owners have invested in the nighttime content at most 50KW AMs, while the local AMs mainly run syndication.
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What do you mean 'owners have invested in the nighttime content'? I thought AM's, as well as FM's, basically threw nighttime away as space-filler.

Even the big 50KW AM stations run syndicated programming at night, be it Coast to Coast, Red Eye Radio, or a sports network. Not too many big AM's have their own programs (KFI in Los Angeles comes to mind).
 
boombox4 said:
What do you mean 'owners have invested in the nighttime content'? I thought AM's, as well as FM's, basically threw nighttime away as space-filler.
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It depends. When you look at the former CBS 50kw AMs, including WCBS in NY, they do live and local anchored news right up to at least midnight. WLW is live and local all night. WSM in Nashville does live & local music programming at night, including live broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry. Those are specifically the ones I was thinking about, but there are others. My view is that stations like these should retain any and all protection as long as they continue this kind of content. That would, it seems to me, keep with the concept of AM revitalization. However, the FCC tends to not consider programming in technical decisions. So I'm not expecting them to make such exceptions.

Still, as I asked in my earlier post, if their is no protection for these stations, especially at night, what motivation do they have to continue this kind of programming? Further what motivation do they have to continue to own such expensive operations?
 
TheBigA said:
It depends. When you look at the former CBS 50kw AMs, including WCBS in NY, they do live and local anchored news right up to at least midnight. WLW is live and local all night. WSM in Nashville does live & local music programming at night, including live broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry. Those are specifically the ones I was thinking about, but there are others. My view is that stations like these should retain any and all protection as long as they continue this kind of content. That would, it seems to me, keep with the concept of AM revitalization. However, the FCC tends to not consider programming in technical decisions. So I'm not expecting them to make such exceptions.

Still, as I asked in my earlier post, if their is no protection for these stations, especially at night, what motivation do they have to continue this kind of programming? Further what motivation do they have to continue to own such expensive operations?
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Good point. It would obviously reduce their potential audience. I wasn't aware so many of the larger 50KW AMs had their own programming that late, aside from KFI, which I think runs it's own programming up until around 10 p.m. when Coast To Coast comes on. I think KSL in Salt Lake has its own programming on all night. But most of the other large blowtorches in the west seem to run syndicated shows at night, so I was under the impression most of the country was that way. I can't pick up any of the bigger eastern stations here so I wasn't aware of the extent of their independent shows.
 
fybush said:
I have half an hour of thoughts about this (maybe even coherent ones!) on my "Top of the Tower" podcast this week... www.fybush.com/podcast-026/
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And there is a definite sidebar to all of this as witnessed by the storm events in Panama City and farther inland. When there is a catastrophe of that proportion, local media may be completely down or unable to operate out of damaged studios or hampered by destroyed infrastructure. Only stations from outside the immediate are can provide service at that point.

I'm reminded of how the government (military and propaganda branches) used to have full radio stations in cargo containers which could be shipped to an "area of interest" and installed internationally in a matter of a day. It would seem logical to have FEMA develop a system like that for domestic emergencies so that disaster information could flow, perhaps using a pool of local media personnel.

Further breaking down the clears restricts the ability of those stations to serve in emergencies. Economics probably makes it hard for those stations to maintain the level of needed service for once in a lifetime events; this is perhaps one case where more government is good.
 
KFI is running Coast to Coast after 10pm, perhaps something is local prior to that, but at 10PM it's syndicated programming. Which is why we don't have Monday morning sign-off periods anymore! To think I never grew up in that period of frequency checks, Hawaii all alone on 650 khz and 3AM PT sign-ons from 'W'-stations on 1450...
 
crainbebo said:
KFI is running Coast to Coast after 10pm, perhaps something is local prior to that,
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Yes it's local until 10PM. The local show is Tim Conway Jr., the son of the legendary comedian.

crainbebo said:
Which is why we don't have Monday morning sign-off periods anymore!
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The concept of syndicated overnights goes back at least 40 years. Many news talk stations ran Larry King in the 80s and 90s. Larry's best of show ran Sunday night/Monday morning.
 
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crainbebo said:
KFI is running Coast to Coast after 10pm, perhaps something is local prior to that, but at 10PM it's syndicated programming. Which is why we don't have Monday morning sign-off periods anymore! To think I never grew up in that period of frequency checks, Hawaii all alone on 650 khz and 3AM PT sign-ons from 'W'-stations on 1450...
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I believe that the reason they don't have Monday morning sign-offs anymore is because modern transmitters became more reliable than their predecessors. I remember when I first started in radio at KUPL, we were supposed to change the EBS monitor from KEX to KYXI because KEX was off the air on Sunday mornings for maintenance. The problem was that so was KYXI but no one knew it.
 
Remember having to change power MANUALLY at sunrise/sunset. I was late about half the time.
 
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