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Fresno / Central Valley KMJ
- Thread starter radio208
- Start date
Fresno has a bunch of Spanish language FMs, so using a big AM signal is useless. Remember, in Mexico the government declared AM unviable and tried to move as many AM stations as possible to FM.
KMJ will not ditch the AM signal. Ag-related coverage is a big part of their advertising and programming; the AM signal reaches far better into the fringe areas of Kings, Tulare and even Kern counties (e.g. Delano). Heck, KMJ 580 reaches into the East Bay.
KMJ runs a highly-rated in-house-produced ag block 5-6 am weekdays and has a dedicated ag reporter as well. Remember, the area's Tulare World Ag Expo is the largest in the world of this type of event.
What the "for now" quote refers to is that KMJ's airstaff has been actively commenting on the many "Save AM radio" efforts in Congress.
I hope my comments end the rumors.
KMJ runs a highly-rated in-house-produced ag block 5-6 am weekdays and has a dedicated ag reporter as well. Remember, the area's Tulare World Ag Expo is the largest in the world of this type of event.
What the "for now" quote refers to is that KMJ's airstaff has been actively commenting on the many "Save AM radio" efforts in Congress.
I hope my comments end the rumors.
"Highly rated"? They don't even subscribe to ratings anymore!
Yes they do subscribe to Neilson Ratings and are in the top 10. One Putt Stations KFRR, KJWL, KJFX, KYNO and KWDO do not subscribe to Neilson's.
KMJ, like KFI/KNX and KNBR/KGO/KCBS etc., are primarily valuable as "emergency stations" (provided folks have radios that receive AM and actually know what it is!
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
The real problem is that we do not know how many people there are who qualify on both counts. Or who think their smartphones will give them more information than just a "take cover" alert. Or who think FM/TV stations are invincible (Oh yeah? Let's see them stay on the air after an earthquake takes a tower or two down!) and will be there no matter what.
Over in the thread about Japan shutting down AM, a recent post described a methodology which would essentially be a recreation of CONELRAD. Only problem is that it would require a huge amount of government support and educational outreach to work.
Ah yes, old CONELRAD: "tune to 640 or 1240 kcs on your radio dial" for the latest info...When I was a little kid growing up in SoCal I figured KFI would do 640, but I always wondered who or what would handle the 1240 operation. Maybe micro (100 W) KPPC in Pasadena had a secret 50 kW rig in their basement ! Ha-Ha!!
No single station "did" either frequency as the system involved multiple transmitters from different locations switching on and off to avoid missiles targeting to any one of them. As I understood it, each transmitter might be on for just a few minutes before another switched on.
I never saw it work as I was too young at the time, but thinking about running hollow-state transmitters into a mismatched antenna is kind of frightening. Even at very low power, some tube gear would just not do a "plates on" if there was a big impedance mismatch.
Sounds like this system was or would be incredibly expensive as well...
I never saw it in action...too young...but the backup transmitter at the radio station where I had my first full-time job could broadcast both on the station's assigned frequency, 1400 in this case, and on 1240. That transmitter was bought in 1961. There was a switch on the front of the RCA transmitter for that purpose. No one ever explained how that would work with a fully-licensed station just 35 miles away on 1240.
The station sold that transmitter to a broadcaster in Haiti, who retuned it to 1370. It took eight station employees (including me) to get that thing on the truck that carried it off.
When I worked at WWNH 1340 Dover, NH there was an old transmitter no longer used that had Conelrad markings on it and had level/switch for 1240
All stations in an area alternated on and off on 640 or 1240, depending on which they were assigned to. They would only be on for a brief period before another station would activate and take over.
During the on-air tests I heard in the early 60's, you could detect the change in signal strength and audio quality as they switched. I taped one test on reel-to-reel back then to listen to later, as during the tests I was looking for new Canadian stations to log since they were not involved. Best was a Manitoba station heard at my Cleveland, Ohio location.
Interesting. It's almost as if they invented time-division multiplexing, or maybe re-invented it, without realizing it!
I can only imagine the coordination required to make this work, in an era when such coordination would have been entirely manual.
I just thought of this: was there a maximum power for a station when it was on its Conelrad frequency, or could it broadcast at its assigned power? For example, let's say Des Moines' Conelrad frequency was 1240. Would WHO broadcast at its full 50 kw power when operating on the Conelrad frequency, or would it broadcast at a lower power? (KRNT and KSO had 5 kw; nearby WOI also had 5 kw daytime; KWKY and KCBC had 1 kw.)
At least as interesting is how all this on/off switching would coordinate (manually at each station verses coordinated at one central key station?), and how (and from where) the information part of the Conelrad broadcast would originate. Seems like there would have been three options for the latter: a live feed from Washington DC, a feed from a key station in each market that would be like the current day EAS primary station, or with each and every station following a script when it's their turn to be the hot xmtr on the Conelrad broadcast. Needless to say, there would have been significant problems to overcome in each approach, especially since Conelrad would have needed to operate with the technology of the late 1950s or early 1960s, in an era with rudimentary telco-only networking and no commercial satellite communications yet.
When I was at KCBS in the late 1980s I found a 640 crystal for our 10 Kw aux transmitter as part of the Bay Area EBS roundtable. Out of curiosity I briefly tried it one night while we were off the air for maintenance. It worked, but only did about 1.5 Kw with the 740 DA sending it in some unknown direction.