June 2024 Bay Area Radio PPM Ratings

[Radiopaw]

Is FM reception in the Bay Area is much of an issue as it has been in the past? I read that KFRC hung around a little longer because of that.

Definitely, though I believe proper signal and transmitter care and using more modern antenna technologies can help, since some weaker signals like 92.7 (KEXC) and 92.3 (KSJO) do better then expected around the bay. KSJO shouldn’t be clearer then KBAY in all of Pacifica (CA) but it very easily is.

 

[Signal Geek]

Is FM reception in the Bay Area is much of an issue as it has been in the past?

Not as much IMHO, thanks to HD.

Case in point: FM in Marin was usually wracked with multipath (unless you were listening to the Mt. Beacon signals). But when I drove through recently, the HD signals in specific places with terrible reception were now crystal-clear.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Is FM reception in the Bay Area is much of an issue as it has been in the past? I read that KFRC hung around a little longer because of that.

Not as much IMHO, thanks to HD.

Case in point: FM in Marin was usually wracked with multipath (unless you were listening to the Mt. Beacon signals). But when I drove through recently, the HD signals in specific places with terrible reception were now crystal-clear.

It depends on where you are and what you're being shadowed from. Oakland was generally pretty good, HD or otherwise, but driving on the Warren Freeway (Highway 13), I would encounter HD dropouts, particularly north of Moraga Avenue, even on KOIT.

HD wasn't around yet when I lived in San Francisco, where I could look out my living room window and see Sutro Tower loom over the neighborhood; when I worked in downtown San Francisco, HD made all the difference in making signals listenable. However, my last downtown office, though on the 26th floor, was in a building that was built like a concrete bunker. (It was also ugly.) So there often wasn't enough signal strength to get HD to lock on.

 

[michael hagerty]

Is FM reception in the Bay Area is much of an issue as it has been in the past? I read that KFRC hung around a little longer because of that.

That was overstated even then.

Here's a response I wrote in a different thread showing how AM was losing shares and FM penetration was gaining in the span between 1978 and 1985:

https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/a-change-coming-to-kgo.755008/post-6538204

 

[DaveBayArea]

Is FM reception in the Bay Area is much of an issue as it has been in the past? I read that KFRC hung around a little longer because of that.

Most of the San Francisco class-B's have boosters in the East Bay now, so it's less of an issue in Concord/Walnut Creek/Dublin/Pleasanton. Plus radios - especially car radios - are way better than they used to be. Quite honestly, I haven't checked AM much lately. But FM isn't that bad from my perspective.

Dave B.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Most of the San Francisco class-B's have boosters in the East Bay now, so it's less of an issue in Concord/Walnut Creek/Dublin/Pleasanton. Plus radios - especially car radios - are way better than they used to be. Quite honestly, I haven't checked AM much lately. But FM isn't that bad from my perspective.

I've been told, though, that some of those boosters are poorly maintained, particularly the ones on Mt. Diablo. Whenever I was out that way, I noticed quite a bit of multipath on some stations that shouldn't have been there.

I haven't been to Walnut Creek this year; when I was in a hotel there last year a couple of times after my move to Colorado, I found that FM reception of most San Francisco stations was fairly lousy. But it could have been the hotel, which was next to the Pleasant Hill BART station.

 

[cc333]

I haven't been to Walnut Creek this year

I have (I live nearby in the Lamorinda area).

I don't listen to FM too often, since there's not much of interest to me (being the outlier that I am, literally nothing on SF's radio dial interests me at all, save for KCBS, which even after being cheapened over the past few years as result of Audacy's various cost cutting measures, is among the best news stations around), but when I do listen, reception is generally okay, though I've noticed that the upper half of the band is iffy (the HD on 103.7 is unreliable and drops out often, and 106.9 is hit or miss).

c

 

[davideduardo]

Most of the San Francisco class-B's have boosters in the East Bay now, so it's less of an issue in Concord/Walnut Creek/Dublin/Pleasanton. Plus radios - especially car radios - are way better than they used to be. Quite honestly, I haven't checked AM much lately. But FM isn't that bad from my perspective.

Remember, the market extends from Gilroy to Santa Rosa.

 

[cc333]

Remember, the market extends from Gilroy to Santa Rosa.

It also informally extends as far east as Stockton nowadays (Stockton and most of its surroundings have become, for all intents and purposes, a giant suburb of Silicon Valley, since it has been known for quite some time now as one of the few places with housing that is even vaguely affordable).

c

 

[davideduardo]

It also informally extends as far east as Stockton nowadays (Stockton and most of its surroundings have become, for all intents and purposes, a giant suburb of Silicon Valley, since it has been known for quite some time now as one of the few places with housing that is even vaguely affordable).

I am talking about the Nielsen defined Metro Survey Area.



The area is defined (or was last defined) by the listening patterns of residents of each county. Stockton County is a separate radio market.