Kevin Fitzgerald said:
Can you actually pick up WARM in the Mall at Steamtown now?
No. I tried it when I set up that studio for Citadel a few years ago. The RF noise there is horrendous on the AM band. It even rendered WEJL unlistenable, even though the transmitter is only a block away from the mall. A shielded loop antenna, like those used with the Belar AM modulation monitors, might work.
WARM rarely did remotes from anywhere during the nearly eight years that I worked for Citadel. I did have alternative methods of getting WARM program audio to a remote venue during those times when WARM did such broadcasts:
1. SCA. I used a 67 kHz SCA subcarrier on WSJR for WARM programming. An SCA receiver would provide AM-quality audio for the PA system at the venue.
2. Backhaul feeds on the Comrex and ISDN systems. These sounded much better than the SCA and the ISDN feed was in stereo.
The only full-show remote that we ever did while I worked there was with Sam Liguori broadcasting his "Polka Weekend" show from the Plymouth Kielbasa Festival. I played the music and commercials from the studio, while Sam was under a tent on Main St. in Plymouth. We used a Marti link to the studio and the SCA for feeding the PA system and Sam's headphones. AM reception in the part of Plymouth where we were set up was extremely noisy.
Since WARM used (and still uses) a satellite-fed format for the oldies programming, we had a different system for remotes. The automation system was programmed to automatically record a 60-second remote "drop" and insert it into a stopset. I did that from several venues.
WARM never did any remotes from the Mall at Steamtown during my tenure. Magic 93, 97BHT, and 97.9X did just about all of the remotes from there in the Citadel days.