My coversation with Whit Adamson & AM Stations in General

[bub]

With a small town AM like WMRO and WHIN, if your not running a football game, it's really a waste of time to be on due to the general public is home watching TV, on the computer, and doing other family things. Nobody is listen to either WMRO or WHIN,.... UNLESS it is an emergency like the 2 tornados that have hit this town, then a that point, we should run daytime power to get important information out to the community.

Scott:
In that case, instead of 250 watts night power across the board, wouldn't it make more sense for some of these stations to go back to daytimer status and essentially rollback the fulltime status first put into place by the Reagan Administration during the first wave of Deregulation? Unless there is an aforementioned emergency?

Oh Doug, by the way, you are probably are right about Bill Barry wishing he had not built 1490 in Lebanon. The IBOC has really wipes him out until you get to HY 109 towards Lebanon, then the signal is strong enough to override WLAC's IBOC hash.

But isn't 1490 nothing more than an AM simulcast of 98.9 WANT-FM?

 

[scottwmro]

With a small town AM like WMRO and WHIN, if your not running a football game, it's really a waste of time to be on due to the general public is home watching TV, on the computer, and doing other family things. Nobody is listen to either WMRO or WHIN,.... UNLESS it is an emergency like the 2 tornados that have hit this town, then a that point, we should run daytime power to get important information out to the community.

Scott:
In that case, instead of 250 watts night power across the board, wouldn't it make more sense for some of these stations to go back to daytimer status and essentially rollback the fulltime status first put into place by the Reagan Administration during the first wave of Deregulation? Unless there is an aforementioned emergency?

Oh Doug, by the way, you are probably are right about Bill Barry wishing he had not built 1490 in Lebanon. The IBOC has really wipes him out until you get to HY 109 towards Lebanon, then the signal is strong enough to override WLAC's IBOC hash.

But isn't 1490 nothing more than an AM simulcast of 98.9 WANT-FM?

From an economic standpoint, I would say yes. Small community AM stations (especially in bedroom towns of a metro area) don't make much money anymore. In fact, I had made a statement on this board that AM WAS JUST ABOUT DEAD OR IS DEAD, and one of the members on this board called the owner of of the other station here in town, telling him what I said. The owner of the other station left me a nasty voicemail message, which was highly stupid of him. I choose not to respond to that voicemail for reasons I won't go into.

We can't ignor the fact that in the past 10-15 years, other forms of media are taking the reins and making more money in one month than a small town AM station can make in one year. I can agree with you to a certain point that lots of Class "D" AM stations should go back to being "daytime only".

BUT, on the flip side of the coin, The other station here in town I've been refering to makes thier money doing local sports (football, basketball, little league baseball, etc), with most of these games played at night. On my station, during high school football season, I have a gentleman and his partner that do the friday night high school football games on my station, but they buy the time from me to do them. In reality, it's stupid for me to broadcast the same football game the other station here in town is doing, but I not stupid, when someone flashes cash in my face, I'll take the cash and let them do the games, otherwise, I'd just would just turn off the transmitter at night.

The other station in town plays back the football games on Saturday Mornings, like the daytimers always did before. I made a decision not to replay friday night high school football games on saturday mornings because I made $0 on it and too, it's old news by the time saturday morning arrives in my opinion. If it makes them money, then more power to them, but I have other programming on at the time they are playing back the ballgame from the night before.

It's good that stations have just enough power to cover a city to do ballgames because there is an audience for them and local advertisers do spend money to have those games on the radio. In Gallatin's situation, there are only two local stations with low nighttime power. If the night power (what little both stations have) was taken away, then I believe this town would protest to the FCC.

This is the only programming left for AM to make any real good money on, otherwise, it's dead. For local news, people watch TV, read the newspaper on the internet like I do. Heck, I can't recall the last time I bought a newspaper. Local news is good to have on an AM station, the other station here in town does a good job at it, so I don't bother doing it. I have people come to me asking me..."How come you don't do what the other station here in town does"? My reply, they have been doing it for many years longer than my station, they do a great job on it, so I'd rather find something else to program than to copy them. What I'm getting at is that I tried it, it made me $0 (NO MONEY) so I dropped it, and I won't copy what someone else is doing.

 

[w9wi]

What's the solution to the problem? Everyone is unhappy with the AM Band, it sounds like crap, thanks to Clear Channel's idea of trimming the high end down to almost land line telephone audio. Oh yes, IBOC....creating a mess!

Do you think all Class D stations should have thier license revolked? That would kill off alot of stations, & make the DX'ers happy, then open that will open the Class B regionals that have 10 KW or more to increase power, like WPAD.

Really the Class B stations are the major problem, especially the ones on what used to be "clear" channels. Night power on Class D's doesn't help but the crowding of the B's has really limited coverage.

Now, I don't see anything that can be done within the AM band to save Class D's. Those which can take advantage of FM translators (assuming it happens) can get some relief that way; the rest are either going to have to find a way to make it with their existing facilities, or are going to revoke their own licenses by going dark.

The best we can do is to speed the clearing of the band by:
- Revoking licenses of stations that don't operate at least the minimum required schedule for at least 26 weeks out of the preceding 52.
- Downgrading stations that don't operate at their licensed power for at least 26 weeks out of the preceding 52.
- Holding X-band station operators to their promise to return either their X-band frequency or their regular-band channel.

That's not nearly enough to make most AMs a roaring success. I don't think anything is going to make the AM band a license to print money anymore.

 

[Don78]

anything[/u] is going to make the AM band a license to print money anymore.

I got it. I don't know why it took so long for me to think of this. AM owners should be bailed out by the government just like AIG, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac.
And like the CEO's of GM, Ford and Chrysler, Scott and other AM owners should fly in their private jets to D.C. to lobby for bail out money. Scott, how many billion would you need?

 

[scottwmro]

What's the solution to the problem? Everyone is unhappy with the AM Band, it sounds like crap, thanks to Clear Channel's idea of trimming the high end down to almost land line telephone audio. Oh yes, IBOC....creating a mess!

Do you think all Class D stations should have thier license revolked? That would kill off alot of stations, & make the DX'ers happy, then open that will open the Class B regionals that have 10 KW or more to increase power, like WPAD.

Really the Class B stations are the major problem, especially the ones on what used to be "clear" channels. Night power on Class D's doesn't help but the crowding of the B's has really limited coverage.

Now, I don't see anything that can be done within the AM band to save Class D's. Those which can take advantage of FM translators (assuming it happens) can get some relief that way; the rest are either going to have to find a way to make it with their existing facilities, or are going to revoke their own licenses by going dark.

The best we can do is to speed the clearing of the band by:
- Revoking licenses of stations that don't operate at least the minimum required schedule for at least 26 weeks out of the preceding 52.
- Downgrading stations that don't operate at their licensed power for at least 26 weeks out of the preceding 52.
- Holding X-band station operators to their promise to return either their X-band frequency or their regular-band channel.

That's not nearly enough to make most AMs a roaring success. I don't think anything is going to make the AM band a license to print money anymore.

Gee, I didn't think about the Class B's that have taken up a lot of space on the one time clears, and I didn't realize there were station operating on some many weeks out of the year, rather than the 52 week that we are required to.

Doug, I don't know if I told you this, and you may saw it, but last fall I filed an application to reduce daytime power from 1 KW to 250 watts. Now for some who don't understand what "field strength" is, 250 watts is 1/2 of 1 KW, field strength wise, with the antenna in a perfect condition, 90 degress, 120 buried copper radials, etc. I pulled back the application because some one on this board called me an idiot. How can that be? One of the most important thing was it would reduce interference on 1560. If the FCC had not granted some of these power increases, the noise floor on AM wouldn't be so bad.

Besides, I would see a drop in my electric bill!

From the ecomnomic standpoint, with most AM small town stations, and AM stations in a bedroom community (how Gallatin is to Nashville), an AM station like mine does not make no money outside the 5 mv/m contour. After a good study was done, heck 250 watts covered the whole community with no problem, and I don't really sell advertising in towns like Portland (that has a radio station), Hendersonville, Westmoreland, White House etc. All these communities are in Sumner County.

Doug, wouldn't it make sense to just run 250 watts, instead of 1 KW? I have copies of the contour maps and it showed to be just a two mile difference between 1 KW and 250 watts for WMRO. Now what makes sense? Doug.....Comments?

 

[radioguybroadcasting]

What's the solution to the problem? Everyone is unhappy with the AM Band, it sounds like crap, thanks to Clear Channel's idea of trimming the high end down to almost land line telephone audio. Oh yes, IBOC....creating a mess!

Do you think all Class D stations should have thier license revolked? That would kill off alot of stations, & make the DX'ers happy, then open that will open the Class B regionals that have 10 KW or more to increase power, like WPAD.

Really the Class B stations are the major problem, especially the ones on what used to be "clear" channels. Night power on Class D's doesn't help but the crowding of the B's has really limited coverage.

Now, I don't see anything that can be done within the AM band to save Class D's. Those which can take advantage of FM translators (assuming it happens) can get some relief that way; the rest are either going to have to find a way to make it with their existing facilities, or are going to revoke their own licenses by going dark.

The best we can do is to speed the clearing of the band by:
- Revoking licenses of stations that don't operate at least the minimum required schedule for at least 26 weeks out of the preceding 52.
- Downgrading stations that don't operate at their licensed power for at least 26 weeks out of the preceding 52.
- Holding X-band station operators to their promise to return either their X-band frequency or their regular-band channel.

That's not nearly enough to make most AMs a roaring success. I don't think anything is going to make the AM band a license to print money anymore.

Gee, I didn't think about the Class B's that have taken up a lot of space on the one time clears, and I didn't realize there were station operating on some many weeks out of the year, rather than the 52 week that we are required to.

Doug, I don't know if I told you this, and you may saw it, but last fall I filed an application to reduce daytime power from 1 KW to 250 watts. Now for some who don't understand what "field strength" is, 250 watts is 1/2 of 1 KW, field strength wise, with the antenna in a perfect condition, 90 degress, 120 buried copper radials, etc. I pulled back the application because some one on this board called me an idiot. How can that be? One of the most important thing was it would reduce interference on 1560. If the FCC had not granted some of these power increases, the noise floor on AM wouldn't be so bad.

Besides, I would see a drop in my electric bill!

From the ecomnomic standpoint, with most AM small town stations, and AM stations in a bedroom community (how Gallatin is to Nashville), an AM station like mine does not make no money outside the 5 mv/m contour. After a good study was done, heck 250 watts covered the whole community with no problem, and I don't really sell advertising in towns like Portland (that has a radio station), Hendersonville, Westmoreland, White House etc. All these communities are in Sumner County.

Doug, wouldn't it make sense to just run 250 watts, instead of 1 KW? I have copies of the contour maps and it showed to be just a two mile difference between 1 KW and 250 watts for WMRO. Now what makes sense? Doug.....Comments?

Your signal may only get smaller by 2 miles if you went down to 250W, but your building penetration would be ALOT worse.. you would find people complaining they can't hear you at home or at work as well.

Your range wouldn't decrease that much, but you're building penetration would.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Doug, I don't know if I told you this, and you may saw it, but last fall I filed an application to reduce daytime power from 1 KW to 250 watts. Now for some who don't understand what "field strength" is, 250 watts is 1/2 of 1 KW, field strength wise, with the antenna in a perfect condition, 90 degress, 120 buried copper radials, etc. I pulled back the application because some one on this board called me an idiot. How can that be? One of the most important thing was it would reduce interference on 1560. If the FCC had not granted some of these power increases, the noise floor on AM wouldn't be so bad.

Besides, I would see a drop in my electric bill!

From the ecomnomic standpoint, with most AM small town stations, and AM stations in a bedroom community (how Gallatin is to Nashville), an AM station like mine does not make no money outside the 5 mv/m contour. After a good study was done, heck 250 watts covered the whole community with no problem, and I don't really sell advertising in towns like Portland (that has a radio station), Hendersonville, Westmoreland, White House etc. All these communities are in Sumner County.

Doug, wouldn't it make sense to just run 250 watts, instead of 1 KW? I have copies of the contour maps and it showed to be just a two mile difference between 1 KW and 250 watts for WMRO. Now what makes sense? Doug.....Comments?

Scott: There are some charts, circles and graphs created by engineers that are very finite, very tangible. When you take pilot training, they give you these charts that show that an airplane with a certain amount of weight on board (people, baggage, fuel) will quit flying at a certain speed. And part of your training is to flay the airplane slower and slower and slower until you reach that speed that is in the manual, and sure enough, that sleek vehicle in which you are riding changes from being a graceful bird into something like a rock. You are free-falling and the training is how to regain control and how to get it back to flying like a bird.

Guys that build houses know that if you span x number feet across a foundation, your beams will break and fall into the basement if you over load them. We know at what temperature water will become ice and at what temperature it will become steam.

The circles on coverage maps ARE NOT FINITE OR TANGIBLE. Years and years ago when radios were built to meet the needs or rural families living where signals were weak, and when the air was not polluted with all manner of electronic sewage we call "noise".... these circles were developed. As sales people we could go to your customers and say: "Everybody living in this circle can receive my station well."

Today's receivers are a bunch of second rate crap, and the airwaves are polluted with sewage from e-ray machines, computers, improved automobile ignitions, electric welders, traffic signal detectors, neon lights and who knows what else.

If you are looking at your coverage map and then penciling in a circle two miles smaller and saying: "That tiny slice of geography is not important to me" you are overlooking the possibility that your actual listening area may already be FIVE MILES smaller than the circle you are looking at, and you are willing to give up another mile or two?

When you took on a license for a radio station you not only took on the stewardship of providing some suitable audio signal to the input terminals of your transmitter.... I would propose to you that you also took on the stewardship of seeing to it that as the world changed, you have the duty to try to keep the coverage circle from being gobbled up by technological change.

 

[scottwmro]

Cowboy & Radio Guy,

You are both correct on your opinions. Years ago when engineers didn't have computers to predict contours, it was all math. Nobody knew what the AM facility would do until it was built.
I read a story where many years ago, I think this went back to the late 30's or 40's, there was an engineer trying to prove to the FCC a certain allocation would work in a town that he thought needed service. He took a 1 KW transmitter, copper wire, with balloons tied to the copper wire. As the balloons reach the 90 degree point of the proposed tower, he turned on the transmitter and took field measurements. He proved to the FCC the allocation would work and after filing an application, he was issued a license, based upon his field strength measurements.
Times have changed since we now have all this computer technology to calcluate contours. I do agree with the point of building penetration. Go into a Wal-mart store with an AM Radio. Not even two miles from Wal-Mart in Gallatin is WHIN, WMRO & WYXE. Neither three stations can get a signal into the Wal-Mart building. There is so much steal in a Wal-Mart Store that the transmitter site would have to be sitting on top of Wal-Mart to penetrate the building with any kind of AM Signal.
Man made devices, even computer and cell phones disrupt AM signals. In the older building, say like on Gallatin's Public Square, that's not a problem, due to they are wooden and brick structures. It just depends on the structure of the building.
One other thing to keep in mind, your transmitter may show your putting out a 1,000 watt signal to the tower, and your ATU is tuned correctly, but when you get out the field strength meter, you may be only putting out only a 151 mv/m at 1 km, which is right around 250 watts on a field strength meter on most AM channels. This has happen to WMRO before!
Remember, the ground system, connections on a folded monopole or series fed tower must be tight. We have terrible ground conductivity in this area. The FCC rates it about a 4 on the scale, but really I think it's about a .01! Out in Texas, there are spots where the ground conductivity is up near a 35 or 38, giving a 250 watt AM station almost 100 miles of coverage! My point here being it's not about output power from the transmitter, it's how good your antenna is working in the conditions your in.

 

[scottwmro]

On Sunday nights at midnight, WCCO would go off the air until 6:00 Monday morning. WNYC could have legally returned to the air, but they didn't feel there was much point to signing on at 1:00 in the morning! So for a few hours, the only station operating in the U.S. on 830 was in Honolulu.

KIKI was widely reported heard throughout all of North America, including the East Coast.

Their power: 250 watts.

My point being, a 250-watt station 5,000 miles away can generate enough signal to be heard. You'd better believe one 800 miles away is capable of causing interference.


[/quote]


Doug,

One way of supressing the skywave of a "Class D' station is to use a sectionalized tower. Yes they are very tall, expensive, and some have pointed out to me they are so tall that they are not useful to get a local signal out compaired to a the typical 90 degree, 1/4 towers most AM stations use, which is more economical for the broadcasters.

As you know, there is a "tuning box" at the middle of the sectionalized tower, to keep the skywave to more to the ground and producing more of a local, ground, signal. I don't see a day coming when we will be using such of an antenna in this area for AM. In some cases, sectionalization is used on towers that are too tall to be an efficient radiator at the AM frequency.

Dale Howard has done some experiments on folded unipoles and he has found to tune a 90 degree radiator at 70 degrees instead of 50 degrees. Dale says this helps "somewhat" in keeping the signal more towards the ground and less going up causing skywave.


Doug, my point being if we can come up with a solution to keep the power down more to the ground and less going up to the sky, local AM stations can run more power at night and cover thier local service area.

Scott