KFRC-AM 1550 KYCY 1550 K-YOU radio is dead!

[SFStatic]

Great. Another station in a box. Oldies with all the personality of...a box.

 

[djj]

Haha - All it has to get is a one share and it'll be doing almost as well as most of CBS's FMs in San Francisco.

LOL!!
And, as intimated earlier, with 1550's schitzo signal (10,000 watts day and night with two
distinctly seperate patterns that have little consistency, much like Pittsburg's 5-kw KATD 990),
I do not see how this will get more than a 1.0 share, either...

And I assume the Oakland A's will stay put on 1550 as a "stand-alone" affiliate, and not on an
adjoining FM?

BTW, the KOBY calls appear to be available, per FCC database searches...
;D
--jay

 

[BossRadioDJ]

And a heartfelt [EDIT] to podcasting.

...Like that had any chance to get through!

All I was saying was that if you see K-You, don't forget to say adios. :

 

[DanStrassberg]

LOL!!
And, as intimated earlier, with 1550's schitzo signal (10,000 watts day and night with two
distinctly seperate patterns that have little consistency,

That is total nonsense! The day and night patterns are nearly identical. The difference is some minor null-fill to the southeast of the transmitter site. Unfortunately, a lot of the population of the Bay area lives to the southeast of the site--San Jose and essentially all of Silicon Valley. However, the signal to the southeast during the day probably isn't strong enough to attact many listeners in those areas. The 1550 signal covers SF, Oakland, Marin, and other parts of the North Bay day and night. Unless you count the skywave, which is pretty good in Seattle and Portland on a lot of nights, that's all she wrote.

 

[djj]

That is total nonsense! The day and night patterns are nearly identical....
The 1550 signal covers SF, Oakland, Marin, and other parts of the North Bay day and night. Unless you count the skywave, which is pretty good in Seattle and Portland on a lot of nights, that's all she wrote.

I live in a North Bay city called Napa, and the 1550 nighttime signal is extremely weak here
unless, perhaps, you're listening in the car...same in Sonoma and Vallejo, two cities also
in the North Bay, the latter fairly populated. Apparently, the night signal is MUCH tighter...

Sidebar: my friend, John, in Pinole could not hear A's night games on 1550 at home, either...

Why can't 1550 lower power to 5-kw and open the signals more? They should still be able to
open-up the signals without interfering with KKAD Vancouver, WA and KXEX Fresno...

Oh, wait...that costs money to have researched...scratch that question...
--jay

 

[SFStatic]

About time for the A's to move on, anyway. They've never been happy anywhere, and won't be until they're on KNBR, which won't happen.

 

[LKellerIII]

That is total nonsense! The day and night patterns are nearly identical....
The 1550 signal covers SF, Oakland, Marin, and other parts of the North Bay day and night. Unless you count the skywave, which is pretty good in Seattle and Portland on a lot of nights, that's all she wrote.

I live in a North Bay city called Napa, and the 1550 nighttime signal is extremely weak here
unless, perhaps, you're listening in the car...same in Sonoma and Vallejo, two cities also
in the North Bay, the latter fairly populated. Apparently, the night signal is MUCH tighter...

Sidebar: my friend, John, in Pinole could not hear A's night games on 1550 at home, either...

Why can't 1550 lower power to 5-kw and open the signals more? They should still be able to
open-up the signals without interfering with KKAD Vancouver, WA and KXEX Fresno...

Oh, wait...that costs money to have researched...scratch that question...
--jay

For me, all this talk about the quality or the reach of the 1550 signal skirts the issue. The issue is - it's music on AM radio!. Very few people will listen. David Eduardo likes to point out that young listeners do not like AM. Well I'm an old listener... I grew up in the 1960s listening to Top 40 music on AM radio. But that was then, this is now. Music does not sound good on AM.

If you think about it, the last music around here on AM was Standards on KABL, which kept losing share until it was flipped to talk even though it played music from a bygone monaural era; and KOIT/1260 and KFRC/610 which were just repeaters. Neither KOIT-FM or KFRC-FM lost substantial ratings when the AM repeaters were gone.

Yes - KYA and the Big 610 were great in their day, but as Boss Radio DJ points out, it was because the content of the formats was so great. People my age listened to music on AM in those days because that was the only choice.

But I no more want to listen to Oldies on AM than I want to trade in my Mazda for my old 69 Plymouth Sport Fury...it had a 4 barrel carb 389 V-8, so it was fast, but it got 11 mpg on leaded premium,and handled like a two-and-a-half ton sled. Old technology for a bygone era.

 

[Domino Rippy]

1550 AM has an awesome signal, it MIGHT make it to Oakland, at least I think so. If this re-launch of KFRC does not work, I have an old Radio Shack CB radio that I could sell to CBS Radio SF, that might work to bring back KFRC. And with this recent management I could talk them into it.

 

[djj]

That's true, LKeller...the talk of the KYCY/KFRC 1550 signal is moot, since music radio
on ANY kilocycler (AM station) in "The City" is, for all intents and purposes, history...
Yet:

1550 AM has an awesome signal, it MIGHT make it to Oakland, at least I think so. If this re-launch of KFRC does not work, I have an old Radio Shack CB radio that I could sell to CBS Radio SF, that might work to bring back KFRC. And with this recent management I could talk them into it.

LOL!!!
And one last addendum regards the signal:

The 1550 signal covers SF, Oakland, Marin, and other parts of the North Bay day and night. Unless you count the skywave, which is pretty good in Seattle and Portland on a lot of nights, that's all she wrote.

Egad, I hope the skywave ISN'T good in Portland for the sake of KKAD 1550 (licensed to
Vancouver, WA), which calls itself a Portland station!:
< http://www.1550kkad.com/contact.shtml >

Moving right along...
;D
--jay

 

[DanStrassberg]

Egad, I hope the skywave ISN'T good in Portland for the sake of KKAD 1550 (licensed to
Vancouver, WA), which calls itself a Portland station!:
< http://www.1550kkad.com/contact.shtml >

Sorry; my bad. I should have checked before I shot off my mouth. It was many, many years ago that I heard the then KKHI in the Pacific Northwest (mid '60s or maybe early 70s is my guess). I assume that the 1550 station in Vancouver WA had not yet been built. Not only must it now obliterate the KYCY skywave in Portland, its own skywave must do a number on the KYCY skywave in Seattle. KYCY's skywave is probably still audible at night in southern OR and far northern CA.

 

[Madmansam]

I agree with everyone about the feasability of Music on the AM Dial. It is just funny that in STOCKTON, We have THREE AM STATIONS that play Music on the AM Dial. There is KWSX-1280 and KCVR-1570, both which merely simulcast their FM Stations (The Former ACTIVE ROCK KMRQ-96.7 and the latter SPANISH ADULT HITS KCVR-FM 98.9), but the one which stumps me to this day is KSTN-1420 which is CLASSIC HITS and is programmed strictly for the AM Station. No Simulcasting at all. KSTN is one of the Last Old Dinosaurs Around in Broadcasting!

 

[semoochie]

What is now KKAD(then KGAR)was allowed to extend to nighttime hours in 1977 with the understanding that they would accept existing interference from KKHI San Francisco, which used to come in almost as well as KGO(used to). KGAR used to be obliterated anywhere on the east side of Portland. Since then, they have switched from 2 to 4 towers, for better coverage and you can now hear the station but not well enough to attract an audience in most of the metro area at night. There's another 1550 station with a similar situation in Bellingham WA. That probably doesn't help matters any. There was a long standing application for the SF 1550 to raise power but was held up. That would have solved some of the problems in Portland.

 

[DaveBayArea]

If you think about it, the last music around here on AM was Standards on KABL, which kept losing share until it was flipped to talk even though it played music from a bygone monaural era; and KOIT/1260 and KFRC/610 which were just repeaters. Neither KOIT-FM or KFRC-FM lost substantial ratings when the AM repeaters were gone.

Don't forget KPIG. It's essentially a repeater, but with totally different coverage than the FM. They don't even encode PPM data last I heard, so who knows what the ratings are. But they seem to sell ads. For portable radios at job sites and table radios in the garage, it really doesn't make that much difference. But as you say - music on AM is pretty much an oxymoron to most adults. KPIG has been on the air for - what - 2 years now? Just yesterday I tuned them in at a Christmas party and it became the station of choice until sunset when we lost the signal. Yet nobody had heard of them before. 1550 will surely undergo the same fate.

One other thing I always wondered about music on AM: If it's so taboo among the youngsters, how come every grade-school child seems to know that Radio Disney is 1310 AM?

Dave B.

 

[LKellerIII]

If you think about it, the last music around here on AM was Standards on KABL, which kept losing share until it was flipped to talk even though it played music from a bygone monaural era; and KOIT/1260 and KFRC/610 which were just repeaters. Neither KOIT-FM or KFRC-FM lost substantial ratings when the AM repeaters were gone.

Don't forget KPIG. It's essentially a repeater, but with totally different coverage than the FM. They don't even encode PPM data last I heard, so who knows what the ratings are. But they seem to sell ads. For portable radios at job sites and table radios in the garage, it really doesn't make that much difference. But as you say - music on AM is pretty much an oxymoron to most adults. KPIG has been on the air for - what - 2 years now? Just yesterday I tuned them in at a Christmas party and it became the station of choice until sunset when we lost the signal. Yet nobody had heard of them before. 1550 will surely undergo the same fate.

One other thing I always wondered about music on AM: If it's so taboo among the youngsters, how come every grade-school child seems to know that Radio Disney is 1310 AM?

Dave B.

I love KPIG. But I have the same problem with the music on AM so I don't listen. I do listen to KPIG online sometimes...and I think the station would get some noticeable PPM ratings in the Bay Area if they had an FM repeater (I know, not likely to happen).

Young children listen to Radio Disney on AM because they like the format, and it's on the AM dial - plain and simple. I can tell you that my daughter outgrew 1310 AM about age 10, and moved on to Wild 94.9, KMEL to a much lesser extent, and her i-pod. It is NOT fashionable among kids in her cohort (Middle School) to listen to Radio Disney, I can assure you. And it's not that they are rejecting Disney's content because they all love Hannah Montana and all the other "tween" shows on the Disney Channel

 

[skippertthomas]

It seems the only nulls they don't cover: Night does not put a signal over San Jose/Santa Cruz... The daytime does not cover Santa Cruz....

 

[BossRadioDJ]

It seems the only nulls they don't cover: Night does not put a signal over San Jose/Santa Cruz... The daytime does not cover Santa Cruz....

Michael Zwerling just told me that KOMY/1340 is going to be looking for a new programming source soon. The new transmitter should be in place shortly, so, if he goes with True Oldies, there's the solution to that perplexing problem. ;D

 

[djj]

Michael Zwerling just told me that KOMY/1340 is going to be looking for a new programming source soon. The new transmitter should be in place shortly, so, if he goes with True Oldies, there's the solution to that perplexing problem. ;D

So does this mean KOMY 1340 will actually have normal coverage for a typical 1-kw 1340,
or is Zwerling just getting a new xmtr while continuing with skywave-only (not ground-wave) xmission
that covers much less territory?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as a follow-up for DanStrassberg, 1550's night signal eeks fair into
Southern Oregon, but as you get north of Grants Pass (or as I like to say, Grass Pants) on I-5 and
north of Brookings on U.S. 101, KKAD's presence starts showing - although I did get lucky in June
2007 and heard portions of an A's game (barely) on KYCY while on U.S. 20 for about 15 miles
east of Newport, OR...

Still, it's a signal for real die-hard DX-listening types only...
--jay

 

[BossJock1947]

The scary thing is that CBS might be using this as a trial to automate all their classic hit stations, some of which are still good.

Bingo!

 

[Bongwater]

That's true, LKeller...the talk of the KYCY/KFRC 1550 signal is moot, since music radio
on ANY kilocycler (AM station) in "The City" is, for all intents and purposes, history...
Yet:

1550 AM has an awesome signal, it MIGHT make it to Oakland, at least I think so. If this re-launch of KFRC does not work, I have an old Radio Shack CB radio that I could sell to CBS Radio SF, that might work to bring back KFRC. And with this recent management I could talk them into it.

LOL!!!
And one last addendum regards the signal:

The 1550 signal covers SF, Oakland, Marin, and other parts of the North Bay day and night. Unless you count the skywave, which is pretty good in Seattle and Portland on a lot of nights, that's all she wrote.

Egad, I hope the skywave ISN'T good in Portland for the sake of KKAD 1550 (licensed to
Vancouver, WA), which calls itself a Portland station!:
< http://www.1550kkad.com/contact.shtml >

Moving right along...
;D
--jay

I remember 1550 as classical KKHI booming into Seattle nightly, but 1550 in Vancouver also upgraded since then. I now get KKAD better than KYCY.

There's also a 1550 in Ferndale, WA (KRPI) with a 24/7 Punjabi format. Signal aimed into Vancouver BC.....

 

[BossRadioDJ]

There's also a 1550 in Ferndale, WA (KRPI) with a 24/7 Punjabi format. Signal aimed into Vancouver BC.....

Hold it. Is Stan Bull their morning anchor ... or am I getting this thread and the "Classic Hits Are Returning To SF On Jan. 5" thread confused?