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KAAY 1090 Little Rock Off The Air

I wasn't around or "in the sights" of the station in its heyday, but even with the deteriorated system, it put a little signal into the Mississippi Delta during the day and night, and was not a hard catch with a decent radio from places like Clarksdale and Greenwood.

After I moved to the Mobile area, I was happy to find KAAY still on 1090 one morning, wavering in and out. I can't imagine how much of a performer it was when it was in tip top shape.
 
Zach said:
I wasn't around or "in the sights" of the station in its heyday, but even with the deteriorated system, it put a little signal into the Mississippi Delta during the day and night, and was not a hard catch with a decent radio from places like Clarksdale and Greenwood.

After I moved to the Mobile area, I was happy to find KAAY still on 1090 one morning, wavering in and out. I can't imagine how much of a performer it was when it was in tip top shape.
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In the 60s on Sunday nights when most other music stations had public service programming, KAAY continued to play Rock & Roll.
The signal blasted into the midwest at night and on Sundays evenings was all I would listen to in the Chicago area.
 
When I lived in the Kansas City for a few years in the late 60's, I had the pleasure of being in the northern lobe of KAAY.

At night, 1090 was my frequency of choice for Top 40, and of course for "Underground" rock, KAAY's own Clyde Clifford hosting Beaker Street with its far out background music.

To be fair, KC had KUDL for Top 40 & KANU-FM from Lawrence KS for hippie music, but there is something about a distant AM signal that had great appeal to me.

Time passes. Things change. Stations die.
 
XEAU-NL and XEMCA-TAM have been heard by DXers all over the midwest the past few nights. Try for it while you can!

-crainbebo
 
Considering that they have played the sham of claiming to be a "Christian" station whose god was the almighty dollar for years, it's fitting that Bud S. at the KAAY blog said this:

"Too bad, that business ethics no longer apply, that the dollar is their god and jobs don't matter."

If they do nothing but go back to dollar a holler what's the point of trying to save it? It's too bad the same thing couldn't happen to WMQM in Memphis. ::)
 
What's sad to me....sentimental old goat that I've become....is that this is now happening to a "I-B" clear with such a great history. How many people in how many states had no other reliable access to top 40 radio. How many people were first introduced to the Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, etc. by this strong but distant signal on 1090?

Shows what happens when a mega-corporation milks and allows to degrade a once-fine facility seemingly without investing in or maintaining it. In the name of religion, no less!

My guess is that they'll fix it and get it back up and running. With that signal, it's got to be a cash cow with no shortage of preachers waiting with their wallets out to get on board.
 
I am sure I heard KAAY relatively recently, but not very well. They have not come in very well at my qth for a long time. I assumed it was due to IBOC interference from WTAM and KFAB.

You can't be too harsh on KAAY for their programming; they are just doing what a lot of other AM stations have resorted to: time-brokered programs. Our Chicago dial is full of this rubbish. It's the main reason I hardly listen to AM anymore except to DX.
 
No....I'm personally really not too down on KAAY's decision to go with paid religion per se. Although I do feel a little sad that they've been unable to transition their legacy into something with more broad appeal. I've been on the business side of media for over 30 years, so I understand the profit motive. And I'm never inclined to apologize for that.

Most of my "sad to see it" has to do with what appears to be a lack of upkeep on a formerly great facility. Sentimental feelings aside (although those certainly enter into it for me).

But my view is that if you're going to go with what's basically a brokered format, you owe it to your programming buyers and your audience to do proper upkeep. Who knows...maybe they have? But the evidence....and the blog comments....sure seem to suggest otherwise.
 
cyberdad said:
Shows what happens when a mega-corporation milks and allows to degrade a once-fine facility seemingly without investing in or maintaining it. In the name of religion, no less!
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Little Rock has long been a horrible AM market. The night AM signals, including KAAY, do not cover the eastern and western parts of the market, and for some time the total AM shares have been below the 5 level, and in the last couple of years they have been around a 1 share.

My guess is that they'll fix it and get it back up and running. With that signal, it's got to be a cash cow with no shortage of preachers waiting with their wallets out to get on board.
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The fact that they did not do significant maintenance on the transmitter site and building shows that they were not getting much out of the facility. Billing was apparently below $40 k a month, and the electric bill alone ate up something like $9,000 a month. It was likely only minimally profitable.

I'm wondering if they bring it back to add a Little Rock affiliate to the CBS Cumulus sports joint venture.

They ought to explore the possibility of reducing power to the 5 kw to 10 kw range at the same time.
 
Astonishing stuff, David. But I've got no reason to dispute it. I'd have thought, however, that it still might be easier to find takers for blocks of time on a blowtorch facility regardless of the local nighttime coverage issues. Maybe there were....but only at fire sale prices.

That said, my understanding....from someone who would have had firsthand knowledge....was that there was no shortage of "dollar-a-holler" business on the station even in its top 40 glory days. Also, they had nightly paid religion blocks even then.
 
I think a lot of these older 50 kW facilities that were originally built to serve wide areas could be downsized to 5 or 10 kW to serve their local markets. They would save a significant amount of money in power consumption. Another possibility would be to adopt the use of controlled carrier modulation. Hams did this on 2 and 6 meter AM decades ago and the broadcasters are only now discovering it (and they think they've invented it)! :)
 
In West TN I usually listened to WHBQ in Memphis in the daytime and WLS at night. I really didn't discover KAAY until probably the mid-80's at about the time they were changing to a "Christian" format. They played CCM in the evening for a short time, but I only listened when they had music. When they went full time dollar a holler I stopped listening. I've said before in other threads that secular owners can't be trusted to do a CCM format and stay with it and KAAY is definite proof.
 
Memories here are fourfold ....

1. Long Island : We'd get a faint KAAY, but only (of course) when WBAL was off. That was usually some Monday mornings.

2. I forget their own silent night. Monday morning, probably. They used to sign off with the song 'Take Five'.

3. Some time ago on this forum, someone from the Minnesota area remembered KAAY being right next to WDGY 1130 at quite listenable levels during the evenings.

4. I was dumping some stuff into a washer at an unmanned 24/7 laundromat in Clearwater, FL, 1969. I don't remember the hour. But the unmanned sound system was playing jazz, from KAAY.
Had to've been the other side of that directional nighttime signal
 
I remember driving down I-70 from Pittsburgh to Columbus you'd cross that magic lobe
dividing line from WBAL to KAAY. Thieves stole the copper from the grounding system, eh?
 
anotherguy said:
In West TN I usually listened to WHBQ in Memphis in the daytime and WLS at night. I really didn't discover KAAY until probably the mid-80's at about the time they were changing to a "Christian" format. They played CCM in the evening for a short time, but I only listened when they had music. When they went full time dollar a holler I stopped listening. I've said before in other threads that secular owners can't be trusted to do a CCM format and stay with it and KAAY is definite proof.
Click to expand...

Amazing how many of us non-Chicago types listened to WLS back in the day.
 
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