At 1am it is Red Eye radio. The calls still say KGO and KSFO.
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New Call Letters for AM 560 Are KZAC. A Question:
- Thread starter Daryl Lynn L.A.
- Start date
Still the same at 2am.
At one time, radio was a big enough commodity that a company might unveil a new format at midnight on Dec. 25 or Jan. 1. No more. Everything is automated and nobody is in the building.
I have to chuckle to myself how only a couple of years ago, there was big fanfare for the launch of KGO's Sports Gambling format. There was a continuous loop of songs about gambling, "Take The Money and Run", "The Gambler," etc. There were repeated hinted messages about the new format. Looking back, it resulted in a station with a .1 rating.
If nobody has leaked what KZAC will be, I have the feeling 560 will continue simulcasting the 810 KSFO format for a while longer.
I have to chuckle to myself how only a couple of years ago, there was big fanfare for the launch of KGO's Sports Gambling format. There was a continuous loop of songs about gambling, "Take The Money and Run", "The Gambler," etc. There were repeated hinted messages about the new format. Looking back, it resulted in a station with a .1 rating.
If nobody has leaked what KZAC will be, I have the feeling 560 will continue simulcasting the 810 KSFO format for a while longer.
Regarding the question of what Cumulus should do with 560 & 1050 going forward:
Does either station's TX facilities sit on valuable real estate? If so, is Cumulus owner of that real estate?
If the answer to either question is "yes," the real estate should be placed on the market for sale.
Does either station's TX facilities sit on valuable real estate? If so, is Cumulus owner of that real estate?
If the answer to either question is "yes," the real estate should be placed on the market for sale.
I was wondering the same thing. Both transmitters are located adjacent to the San Francisco bay, so I don't think they'd be able to build anything new there due to all the restrictions when building anything next to "wetlands" in California. So no value in the real estate.
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I think the answer to both is "no".
The 560 sticks sit near the end of Islais Creek, which is now a shipping channel just north of Hunter's Point:
There are two towers---you can see the shadow of one of them falling over Amador Street as it curves left. Next parcel to the right are protected wetlands.
The land is leased from the State Harbor Commission---in a deal dating back to 1938, when CBS owned KSFO. Here's a good backgrounder, with historical photos and an aerial from more recent times:
1050 has five towers sitting on a big parcel in Hayward (the one with the red marker):
All this land appears to be part of the Hayward Regional Shoreline. It's probably another long-term lease. At the very least, it's unlikely to be a candidate for development, given that it's surrounded by the Regional Shoreline.
Cumulus does not own the towers themselves---they sold all of those a little over four years ago, so they wouldn't even get the scrap value for the metal if the towers were to be dismantled:
Vertical Bridge Acquires 250 Towers from Cumulus Media for $213m
Cumulus Media announced that it had agreed to sell all of the company's 250 broadcast communications tower sites to Vertical Bridge for $213m.
dgtlinfra.com
Cumulus Media Completes Initial Closing of Tower Portfolio Monetization Transaction for $208 Million › Cumulus Media
ATLANTA, Oct. 01, 2020 -- Cumulus Media Inc. (NASDAQ: CMLS) (the “Company,” “Cumulus Media,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) today announced that the Company completed the initial closing of its tower portfolio monetization transaction for $208 million in gross proceeds on September 30, 2020. Mary G...
www.cumulusmedia.com
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7:00 a.m. top of the hour ID is the old one, mentioning both KSFO and KGO. 560 and 810 still in simulcast (I went out to the car and listened live on 560).
It's important to note that a call letter change authorization for a date does not necessarily mean 12:01 a.m. Some stations change formats (and the call letters that go with them) at noon, or 3:00 p.m.
It being a holiday, and both Cumulus and FCC standards being what they are, it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't happen today.
It's important to note that a call letter change authorization for a date does not necessarily mean 12:01 a.m. Some stations change formats (and the call letters that go with them) at noon, or 3:00 p.m.
It being a holiday, and both Cumulus and FCC standards being what they are, it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't happen today.
A PS: After zooming in, it appears the main 560 tower is actually built atop the transmitter building.
The tower casting the shadow in the aerial I posted is the second tower, added when KSFO went directional.
The tower casting the shadow in the aerial I posted is the second tower, added when KSFO went directional.
Eureka! (Arcata!) I think we've found an actual use case for mandating AM radio receivers in vehicles.
OK, now I'll be serious. The mistake I made here was assuming that, OK, it's midnight on January 1, the most convenient time for making programming contracts effective, making it easy for some finance analyst at Cumulus to keep track of them. Nice, predictable, and neat. What I should have remembered is that this is the same company that crashed out of the KGO talk format one day at 10:16 in the morning, taking the on-air host by total surprise and forced to make an awkward exit.
That said, I was crazy enough to run a recording of KSFO off an SDR, centered on 12 midnight Pacific time. Listening to the recording, I could tell there was something wrong: a weird Max Headroom kind of audio effect where about a second or two of audio would repeat a few times before jumping to the next second or two of audio. This affected the program on the air, plus Fox news on the hour, and it sounded like there was first an attempt at airing ABC news, at a low audio level, before going to Fox. So there may be technical problems that are holding up a change. As you say, it's a holiday and another day of simulcasting isn't going to hurt anything. At 9 am Pacific time, the chattering Max Headroom effect was gone and Fox news came up normally; I was listening on the same SDR that I was using at midnight Pacific time.
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Listening to the SDR, I hear 560 running Dan Bongino and 810 is running a football bowl Cal basketball game. 11:55 am Pacific time. So there may be a method to the madness.
Edited to correct what 810 is running. 810's 12 noon top of hour ID included KSFO, KSAN-HD2, and KGO. 560 ID'ed as KSFO but I was too quick on the trigger and didn't get the rest of it.
Edited to correct what 810 is running. 810's 12 noon top of hour ID included KSFO, KSAN-HD2, and KGO. 560 ID'ed as KSFO but I was too quick on the trigger and didn't get the rest of it.
Okay. We have the answer, and I can't believe it took my reading a comment from someone on Facebook to realize it:
(emphasis mine)
That's not the same as the FCC approving the change. The request went in the day after Christmas.
The FCC hasn't even gotten to it yet.
Expect stuff to remain status quo until the federal folk come back to work on Monday, the 6th...and we don't know what the current backlog is, so it could be a while after that.
(emphasis mine)
That's not the same as the FCC approving the change. The request went in the day after Christmas.
The FCC hasn't even gotten to it yet.
Expect stuff to remain status quo until the federal folk come back to work on Monday, the 6th...and we don't know what the current backlog is, so it could be a while after that.
Except we do... The FCC "call sign desk" is basically one person who approves all call applications as they come in on the days they're in the office. The application will be rubber stamped tomorrow morning.
99% of the time the applications are granted with no issues. The date in the application is always 7 days from the request filing unless a later date is requested or a sale has not closed. The more likely reason nothing has changed is because Cumulus hasn't produced a new dual ID since new programming will launch imminently.
Remember not everyone working in radio pays attention to things that while are technically "illegal", in the real world nobody cares like we do.
Good to know, but given what I know about government agencies and departments---especially one man bands---I'm thinking nobody's in tomorrow or Friday and this happens Monday at the earliest.
If Cumulus wanted to go ahead with whatever it is that's been planned for 560, I don't think they would let a bunch of call letters stop them. As far as I know, there's nothing that would stop them from saying "810 KSFO" and then burying the KGO calls at the top of the hour while, on 560, using whatever slogan they want to use and then just say "KSFO San Francisco" once an hour. As it is, the KGO calls only appear once an hour in the simulcast. That was true during the Cal basketball game earlier today.
Cumulus may not be ready to roll out its plans for 560, or may have wanted a little extra play-by-play money today from Cal sports on 810, or may even wait until January 6 since, at least today and often for the rest of the week, many of the syndicated talk shows are running "best of" programs, with new programming returning next week. Of course, the assumption implicit in that statement was that 560 would be doing syndicated talk, which may not necessarily be the case.
I don't think you can generalize. I listened to the switchover of 98.7 in NYC from sports to hot AC and it happened at midnight. This is a case of a low audience AM station that is basically reconfiguring formats within a cluster. A tree falling in an empty forest. Nobody cares because nobody listens to these AM stations anymore. Which is why any change won't involve an exciting new format or new staffing. When Alpha flipped its AC station to country a few years ago, it was very different.
BTW Lance is watching the format flips taking place over the holiday.
2024 Post Christmas Format Change Rundown
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. A time to blow up your station’s previous branding and start fresh
radioinsight.com
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The lights are off, nobody's home.
How come the hourlies state KNBR as 1050, when it's really KTCT?
Street Novelist
Banned
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The call changes on 560 and 810 were granted by the FCC this morning.
As of the 8 AM hour they were still simulcasting. I'll check at the TOH to see if they've begun to run a new legal ID, or even new imaging. (Though I doubt it.)
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