New station, 98.7

[w9wi]

WZLU-LP at David Lipscomb University filed for a license-to-cover earlier this week, Wednesday IIRC. I presume they were the station with uninterrupted hot adcon music around 7:30 tonight. Seemed too strong to be Hopkinsville.

Seemed to be off the air by 10:30 as I was hearing WCRT-FM-1 (the FM relay of AM 1160) fighting it out with another station that probably *was* WHOP.

This on a car radio near Nashville Tech on White Bridge.

 

[romer979fm]

I'm surprised the 98.7 relay of 1160 is allowed to stay: it was
granted because of "Cuban interference" of 1160 decades ago.
For more fun...try listening to 98.9 around Bellevue...as the Pasquo LP
battles with WANT.

 

[w9wi]

I'm surprised the 98.7 relay of 1160 is allowed to stay: it was
granted because of "Cuban interference" of 1160 decades ago.

Inertia, I guess... There still is Cuban interference on a number of AM frequencies, but 1160 hasn't been one of them for something like 20 years...

I suspect WCRT-FM-1 runs "under the radar" a bit - the Commission will forget they're there unless WZLU complains. Really I'm not at all sure there's any prohibited overlap between the two anyway.

For more fun...try listening to 98.9 around Bellevue...as the Pasquo LP
battles with WANT.

Yeah, I have to assume the LPFM folks REALLY didn't want 98.9 but because of the ill-advised 3rd-adjacent restrictions they got stuck with it. Maybe one of these days, now that the Congressionally-mandated study has confirmed what the FCC's engineers said in the first place, these restrictions will be lifted & WRFN can move to 103.9 where someone can actually hear them<grin>...

 

[jetfli]

Yeah, I have to assume the LPFM folks REALLY didn't want 98.9 but because of the ill-advised 3rd-adjacent restrictions they got stuck with it. Maybe one of these days, now that the Congressionally-mandated study has confirmed what the FCC's engineers said in the first place, these restrictions will be lifted & WRFN can move to 103.9 where someone can actually hear them<grin>...

I seriously think it'll be more likely that Nashville Sports finally gets its Drakesboro station assigned a new COL to occupy 103.9 with a city-grade signal pushing into Nashville. Or maybe they're all waiting until HD takes completely over and allows more stations in our current "gaps."

 

[w9wi]

I seriously think it'll be more likely that Nashville Sports finally gets its Drakesboro station assigned a new COL to occupy 103.9 with a city-grade signal pushing into Nashville. Or maybe they're all waiting until HD takes completely over and allows more stations in our current "gaps."

I don't think WNSR can do that.

There is no proposal out there to relax 3rd-adjacent contours for full-license stations, only for LPFMs. Any moved WNTC-103.9 facility would have to be at least 75km from WGFX and WKDF. But the city-grade contour of a Class A station only extends 17km. It'll still fall nearly 40 miles short of putting a city-grade into Nashville. The necessary 115km (71mi.) spacing from McMinnville won't help. (unless their application to move to 103.7 gets approved)

Also, WNTC is the only station licensed to Drakesboro - it can't move without getting another station licensed there. I'm just about certain WQXQ (101.9 Central City KY) would put a city-grade across Drakesboro, and there's another station (WNES AM) in Central City so the move wouldn't cost Central City its only station. WKTG (93.9 Madisonville KY) would probably also put across a city-grade, and there are two other FMs and two AMs there. But none of these stations are co-owned with WNTC - I'm not sure what Nashville Sports would have to pay to talk one of them into changing their COL. It's a doable thing but wouldn't be cheap or easy. (and again, a moot point because of WKDF & WGFX)

(finally, if the FCC gets wind of WNTC having been off the air for over a year, the WNTC license is going to go away... It *has* been off that long, hasn't it? I sure haven't heard it in a LONG time, tonight on the car radio I was getting Okolona, Mississippi instead!)

HD isn't going to make the interstation gaps any more usable. Really, it makes them *less* usable; certainly HD was one of the reasons given by the NAB for opposing 3rd-adjacent LPFMs. HD may make more programs possible through multicasting but it isn't going to make them possible through creating any new signals.

 

[jetfli]

I don't think WNSR can do that.

I haven't thought they can do it either. I was really trying to make the point that as much of a long shot as it was for Nashville Sports to resurrect that pipe dream, it was even more of a long shot that WRFN would land there. Not that WRFN couldn't, but that they won't. Sorry my sarcasm didn't come across. (Although, your explanation of how Drakesboro could get a city-grade reception from Central City or Madisonville does make it sound more possible than I thought it would be.)

On the HD thing, I read early on in a couple of white papers that as HD receivers develop, the increased receiver sensitivity is going to allow us to better hear more stations. By that they mean more exisiting stations, as they are expecting far less bleed in reception, so that range of reception would seemingly improve somewhat. Those ideas may have changed, as reality often does as new technologies develop, you would know better than me. I didn't intend to imply that it would allow more new stations in the gaps, but reading back over what I wrote, I see I wasn't clear.

 

[RMarino]

3rd adjacents

If 3rd adjacents are such a problem, how does this area get away with 100kw signals at 102.5, 102.9, and 103.3? I know their transmitters are scattered around different parts of the metro, but they still seem awful close.

 

[w9wi]

Re: 3rd adjacents

If 3rd adjacents are such a problem, how does this area get away with 100kw signals at 102.5, 102.9, and 103.3? I know their transmitters are scattered around different parts of the metro, but they still seem awful close.

102.5 and 102.9 are 82km apart.

I'm not sure how they got away with 102.9 and 103.3, which are only 33km apart. My guess is that they were already short-spaced when the current spacing rules were adopted in 1964. (the Broadcasting Yearbook says both stations went on the air in 1962, and the separation between WKDF's current transmitter site and that of WBIA-88.3, the only FM currently licensed to Shelbyville, is 71km. I don't know where either station's transmitter was in 1964.) The rule on this is kinda difficult to read but from what Scott Fybush has told me there is essentially no limit to how close pre-1964 grandfathered short-spaced 2nd or 3rd adjacents can move. Of course, WNTC doesn't qualify for a pre-1964 short-spacing.

Jetfli: sorry, sometimes my sarcasm filter doesn't work very well<grin>! I rarely go anywhere where one can hear WRFN so I don't really have much of a handle on their attitude towards things...

...as HD receivers develop, the increased receiver sensitivity is going to allow us to better hear more stations. By that they mean more exisiting stations, as they are expecting far less bleed in reception, so that range of reception would seemingly improve somewhat.

Ah. I'd imagine the selectivity of less-expensive HD receivers will indeed be a considerable improvement on bottom-end existing receivers like clock radios, boom boxes, and "walkmen". I've got a cheap auto-scanning "earphone radio" that only gets WPLN, WSM-FM, and WKDF; if an HD version worked at all I'm sure it'd get all the Nashville-transmitter 100kw stations.

(most)Car radios and home stereos are already pretty good. The other side of this coin is that interference from the HD sidebands (which spill into adjacent channels) will cause an *increase* in bleed on better receivers. At my location in Pleasant View, I expect full deployment of HD on all Middle Tennessee stations would wipe Fisk's WFSK 88.1 off the dial and leave Austin Peay's WAPX, 92Q, Lightning 100, and Hopkinsville's 100.3 all fairly noisy. This on the car radio and other good quality sets.

On AM, it's acknowledged (by the industry and FCC) that nighttime HD requires eliminating interference protection for skywave signals - thus, nighttime reception of existing stations like WBBM, WHAS, and WWL would potentially go away.