More Questions about 50,000 Watt AM Stations

[Gregg]

In a thread below, the question of Clear Channel AM assignments was addressed. I have some more questions about how cities got 50,000 watt AM radio stations...

1) How did a 50,000 watt day and night signal get assigned? If you already had a lower-power station, could you just petition the FCC for the maximum power and if you didn't interfere with anyone else, and your proposed station was on a clear channel or regional frequency, you got it?

2) How did the FCC decide on what cities would get clear channel stations? The FCC had a hard time predicting the growth of cities in the West and South. While NYC and Chicago got the most 50,000 watt stations, LA only got two, 640 KFI and 1070 KNX. I suppose no one figured LA would become our #2 city. And San Francisco, the biggest city in the West at the time, got four 50,000 watt stations at 680, 740, 810 and 1100... but none clear channel. Only 740 & 810 really cover a lot of territory, 740 shared with Toronto/Houston and 810 shared with Schenectady NY.

3) Look at how many large Western and Southern cities got NO 50,000 watt day and night stations: Phoenix, Tucson, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Norfolk, Memphis, San Jose, San Diego (although adjacent Tijuana has 2).

4) Look at how many large Western and Southern cities got only one 50,000 watt station: Portland, Vegas, Denver, SLC, KC, St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston.

5) How did these small cities get 50,000 watt stations? Wheeling WV, Waterloo IA, Ft Wayne IN, Lincoln NE, Eugene OR, Spokane WA, Shreveport LA.

6) How did upstate NY get four 50,000 watt stations? (Buffalo 1520, Rochester 1160, Schenectady 810, Albany 1540--although Albany's 1540 is so directional, having to protect clear channel ZNS, Nassau, Bahamas and KXEL Waterloo IA, maybe I shouldn't count it?).



Gregg
[email protected]

 

[gr8oldies]

Short answer is somebody applied for them and they were granted. Unlike FM, there was no table of allocations for AM that assignned certain frequencies to certain cities. If you could squeeze it in, it could be granted. Obviously, the current 50,000 watters were way early in the game.

 

[FRR]

You may enjoy reading the new biography of Lewis and Powell Crosley from Cincinnati. There is much discussion about how they were able to get the FCC to grant them 500,000 watts and then had it taken away. Interesting perspective on early radio in the US

 

[redneckriviera]

Check the population of the 100 largest U.S. cities in 1930 and it gives some clues. Most of the nation's population at that time, both urban & rural, was still concentrated in the northeast. Miami, Tampa & Jax were all small cities of just over 100,000 at the time. LA? It was #4 with 1.2 million!!!

But, yeah, it was an application/acceptance game then, and the aggressive, visionary broadcasters jumped in and grabbed the Big Uns.

The WLW story is a great one, and really does help illuminate the very different issues facing radio 70 years ago.

 

[smedge2006]

) How did these small cities get 50,000 watt stations? Wheeling WV, Waterloo IA, Ft Wayne IN, Lincoln NE, Eugene OR, Spokane WA, Shreveport LA.

There's an unspoken point to this thread -- AM allocations have not kept up with population distribution. Only in rare cases (like WOWO) has anyone been able to bend them to reflect modern population realities. What is needed is a massive redistribution of the Class A's.

It's self-evident that markets with Class A AM stations have a much healthier economic environment (for all AM stations in a market) than those without. Florida AM's have a quadruple whammy -- No Class A's, interference from powerful thunderstorms, interference from Cuba and other nearby countries, and a Class C FM state with flat terrain. If stations like WQAM and WGBS had been Class A's (or 1-A's then), they might have held on a few years longer against FM Top 40 -- and would be stronger in their current formats. Perhaps WGBS wouldn't have had to go Spanish.

Get 810 out of Schenectady, 1180 out of Rochester, and darn sure get 1130 out of Shreveport. Those class A's should be reassigned to Top 50 markets currently lacking Class A stations -- treaties be damned. (A country that throws IBOC skywave over foreign territory can hardly be said to be obeying them anyway.)

(I think Eugene OR was a Class II (B) secondary allocation, not a Class A. Ditto 1540 Albany.

 

[KeithE4]

There's an unspoken point to this thread -- AM allocations have not kept up with population distribution. Only in rare cases (like WOWO) has anyone been able to bend them to reflect modern population realities. What is needed is a massive redistribution of the Class A's.

It's self-evident that markets with Class A AM stations have a much healthier economic environment (for all AM stations in a market) than those without. Florida AM's have a quadruple whammy -- No Class A's, interference from powerful thunderstorms, interference from Cuba and other nearby countries, and a Class C FM state with flat terrain. If stations like WQAM and WGBS had been Class A's (or 1-A's then), they might have held on a few years longer against FM Top 40 -- and would be stronger in their current formats. Perhaps WGBS wouldn't have had to go Spanish.

Get 810 out of Schenectady, 1180 out of Rochester, and darn sure get 1130 out of Shreveport. Those class A's should be reassigned to Top 50 markets currently lacking Class A stations -- treaties be damned. (A country that throws IBOC skywave over foreign territory can hardly be said to be obeying them anyway.)

(I think Eugene OR was a Class II (B) secondary allocation, not a Class A. Ditto 1540 Albany.

In reality, with only the largest markets like NYC, LA, and Chicago being exceptions, does any AM station with a non-directional antenna require 50,000 watts to fully cover its market area? And couldn't most of the stations running 50 kW into a directional antenna drop to 10 kW non-directional?

I can't think of more than maybe 30 or 40 stations that absolutely need to run 50,000 watts anymore.

 

[smedge2006]

In reality, with only the largest markets like NYC, LA, and Chicago being exceptions, does any AM station with a non-directional antenna require 50,000 watts to fully cover its market area? And couldn't most of the stations running 50 kW into a directional antenna drop to 10 kW non-directional?

I can't think of more than maybe 30 or 40 stations that absolutely need to run 50,000 watts anymore.

In reality, there are many Arbitron-defined markets in which NO AM covers the entire market area at night.

 

[davideduardo]

In reality, with only the largest markets like NYC, LA, and Chicago being exceptions, does any AM station with a non-directional antenna require 50,000 watts to fully cover its market area? And couldn't most of the stations running 50 kW into a directional antenna drop to 10 kW non-directional?

I can't think of more than maybe 30 or 40 stations that absolutely need to run 50,000 watts anymore.

I can think of several hundred stations that ought to have 50 kw to cover their market. The power needs are determined by the size of the metro, the local ground conductivity (Example; WSB barely covers the Atlanta metro with 50 kw) the frequency (5 kw on 550 is better than 50 kw on 1600), and the noise levels in the market.

In most larger metros (by population, not land mass) the noise levels are so bad that it takes about 15 mv/m to be really listenable... which means 50 kw on a lower half of the band channel.

Many markets have no station on AM providing a listenable signal over all the market.... in fact, in the top 100 markets and industry sources says there are only about 250 viable AMs in total... the rest do not have the power or the pattern to be competitive.

 

[davideduardo]

Perhaps WGBS wouldn't have had to go Spanish.

WGBS went Spanish-language because the market is over half Hispanic, and there was a need for a news / talk station that could compete with WQBA and which had better Broward coverage. As WGBS, it was near death. Now, it is consistently in the top 5 stations in the market. WGBS went Spanish language because there was a market.... there was none for what they were doing in English.

By the way, Rochester, if you remove the embedded markets, is a top 50 market... and Albany is very close to being one. Removing the only full coverage AM from the Albany / Schenectedy / Troy markets would be a major disservice... and Rochester has only one station that fully covers its metro, >day and night, and that is WHAM.