That 106.1 translator is now in Haverhill, and they also put one on 92.1 in Topsfield.
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How Boston AM's will either go silent, or already are?
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The synchronous boosters were "experimental" and the last of them, a group owned by WAPA's Blanco Pi, was cancelled by the FCC.
The KOB case goes back more than half a century, and is not relevant today
I thought they swapped them. The 92.1 is now in Haverhill and 106.1 is now in Topsfield now...or did I hear incorrectly?
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Thanks for taking the time and effort to put this whole translator thing in perspective, Eli.
Seems to me, though, the end result is to just get on FM, no matter where the signal is directed.
You bring up an interesting point, Aerie; to wit, why, if a station's advertisers don't give a hoot about "out-of-market" coverage, would WABC, NY sue KOB, Albuquerque, for being on the same frequency with 50 KW, non-dir? Was part of WABC's "primary service area" (however THAT entity is defined) adversely affected by KOB's signal? Or did it affect the ability for out-of-state listeners between NY and NM to pick up WABC?
Radio is a funny business. The WABC/KOB thing demonstrates this. I was working at KYND when KOKC called about a listener reporting they heard KYND near Dallas. It was likely a skip. KOKC could care less about Dallas but they were willing to fight for a Dallas listener that meant nothing to them or us in Houston. The mentality is if you take one on my listeners anywhere, it's full on war. I've seen that in many owners and GMs and never figured out that mentality.
As for those translators, the FCC has certain restrictions on how far from the original station the translator can be located. A certain strength AM signal must be present to justify the translator location. In reality, the AM i ran in Houston would have likely had more listeners serving 1/8th of Houston than all of Houston on the AM dial. At least serving 1/8, you can super-serve the smaller area and spend less money building awareness. Virtually every ad dollar would be direct but the AM never got any agency dollars anyway.
As for those translators, the FCC has certain restrictions on how far from the original station the translator can be located. A certain strength AM signal must be present to justify the translator location. In reality, the AM i ran in Houston would have likely had more listeners serving 1/8th of Houston than all of Houston on the AM dial. At least serving 1/8, you can super-serve the smaller area and spend less money building awareness. Virtually every ad dollar would be direct but the AM never got any agency dollars anyway.
The KOB and WABC dispute happened back in the "Golden Age" when WABC was the home station to the ABC network and radio was mostly listened to at night. So WABC protected every square mile of its night coverage.
Go back to the trade magazines from the 30's and 40's where the big stations showed mail from all 48 states! That was very important back when there were far fewer stations, particularly in less populated areas.
I used to pick up quite a few stations from Chicago back in the day, WLS included.
I wonder if they were able to move over to Haverhill due to Binnie's WFNQ on first adjacent 106.3 moving from Hudson NH to Merrimack NH?
From Hampton NH in the 60's, we could hear WMAQ 670, WGN 720, WBBM 780, WLS 890, and WCFL 1000. We could also hear WJJD 1160 just after sunset in NH and before sunset in IL (they were a daytimer in that era). Things have changed. With leaky broadband and fluorescent and LED lighting, I am lucky to get anything beyond WRKO and WBZ these days. I used to love DX-ing but now it's mostly impossible where I live.
I have received most of those Chicago 50,000 Watt blowtorches at night as well! I have also picked up WJR, Detroit, and WOWO in Fort Wayne also.
I think we should have a 1-for-1 AM-FM simulcast, however in the 1960's, we thought we could save AM by not having an FM simulcast (good in theory, but looked how it actually turned out for AM). Translators can be fine and peachy, except in heavily populated areas (people have complained about K300CP's lack of signal in Denver, and then just look at this Boston thread!), so it might be time for a change. FCC has dropped some of the FM simulcast rules, allowing stations like KSL to go with full-power simulcast, and stations like WHO and WBZ to simulcast on an HD subchannel, but then AM revitalization happened, and everybody forgot about the old way. Now, I feel we are kind of stuck with this set-up for a while, and although it works in some instances (my local KFBC and K248CZ makes a good pair), it leaves areas like Boston a complete mess..
I'm a little late getting back here to reply (it's a busy time with consulting clients), but here's the basic answer to this question: it depends!
More specifically: it all depends on which license category a translator falls into. You have some translators that were never locked to an AM station - when the FCC first began allowing AM stations to be rebroadcast on FM translators, station owners were free to go out and buy existing translators (or repurpose translators they already owned) and use them to relay their AMs. Those translators were free to be sold or repurposed at any time, whether to rebroadcast a different AM or an FM or an HD sub.
Next, you had translators that were granted in the two "250-mile" windows, under which existing translators could be purchased and moved up to 250 miles to be used to rebroadcast AM stations. Translators that were moved in those windows ended up with temporary license conditions binding them to be used only to rebroadcast the specific AM for which they were moved, for a period of four years of actual operation from the time they were licensed at their new locations. (The one I can speak to very specifically here is the one I moved, Bob Bittner's 101.3 for WJIB, which we moved south from its former location in Maine. Up there, it had been an "unlocked" translator - he bought it and paired it with WJTO, but could have sold or moved it at any time. Once it moved to Boston, it was locked to WJIB for four years, not that it's going to be sold off separately now.)
Many of those translators that were granted in the 250-mile windows are now at or approaching that four-year limit and thus could be resold now.
The final category (for now) are the new translator CPs that were granted in the final set of windows in 2018. Those were permanently locked to their parent AMs and cannot be moved to a different primary station or sold separately from their AM parent.
If you know the dates of each window, you can look through the original CP applications for a translator and figure out which category it's in - or you can look at the actual license authorization and see whether either the four-year or permanent lock to the AM parent is listed as a condition of the license.
And with my broker hat on - yes, there's a definite difference in the market value of each category of translator. All other factors being equal (signal, tower lease issues, the general push-pull of supply and demand), an "unlocked" translator that has more flexibility to be fed from an FM HD or to be moved to a different AM parent is always going to have more value to a buyer than a translator that's permanently locked to an AM, with all the baggage that an AM station brings to the table in 2021 and beyond.
The late 60's FCC ruling prevented owners of most FM stations from simulcasting all of the time. There were exceptions, such as AM daytimers, but the purpose was to provide the public with new services and not just a repeat of the AM stations that were sustaining the mostly money-losing FM stations.
Over the years, the better coverage of most FMs and the vastly improved audio quality allowed music formatted FMs to dominate. In 1967, in many markets there was not a single FM getting ratings. Bu 1977, in most markets FM had taken half of the AM audience away.
Scott can give the date, but FM/AM total simulcasts have again been allowed again for quite a few years, and now even an AM can simulcast another AM even if they overlap. And there are many multi-FM simulcasts in the same market by lower powered Class A's or rimshots from different sides of the market.
Scott, can you explain what is going on with WMVX? 1110AM/98.9FM They are no longer simulcasting each other. The music format on 98.9 doesn't seem to be on any AM facility?
The programming on 98.9 appears to be coming from the HD2 of 102.9, the translator for WNNW 800. The legality of that as a program feed is unclear. The 98.9 translator was a "250-mile" window move from 100.9 in West Lebanon NH. It was supposed to have been locked to 1490 in Haverhill for four years from March 2017.
You ask much to my wife's angst. 😆
It's the station that plays at her work, and I've been telling her that we might see it go away because it isn't in known compliance.
I don't think it ever simulcast 1490AM. It have been simulcasting 1110AM....which was/is a daytimer. I thought that is why they got the 98.9 signal.
It’s 103.7 that’s tied to 1490.
Right you are. I had to go back and look at the 2016 application, which specified FID #13998 as the parent station for 98.9. That's the 1110, which was WCCM then, but became WMVX in 2017.
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