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Non-comm. changes

Tim said:
90.3 going classical will leave some NPR holes to the east, for sure.

89.1 WKSV Thompson, Ohio simulcasts 89.7...that will continue. WKSV is 50,000 watts and covers Lake & a good part of Geauga counties.
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I plugged in the info for all the WKSU repeaters + 104.9 Lorain into RabbitEars.com and the results are pretty interesting.

I’d have no idea if an in-channel frequency booster or series of boosters is/are possible for the 89.7 signal to fill in gaps in downtown Cleveland and points east. But adding 104.9 as a repeater will be quite beneficial for the immediate west side; even with the Lorain COL, the tower is less than a mile from the Avon-Westlake border.
 
Ideastream has released their new lineups for WKSU and WCLV, effective March 28. View them here.

Among the moves:
  • WCLV inherits all of WCPN’s jazz programming, including Dan Polletta, John Simna and WFMT’s Jazz Network in overnights.
  • The City Club of Cleveland’s Friday Forum moves to a noon start on WKSU.
  • WKSU will air the audio of PBS NewsHour during the 7pm hour.
  • Both Folk Alley and WCPN’s Hungarian and Polish programs have been moved to WKSU-HD4, which (for now) largely duplicates WKSU’s analog signal but with significant deviations in midday and evenings.
  • WKSU-HD2 remains as the Folk Alley channel.
  • WKSU-HD3 becomes a pure WCLV simulcast.
  • All local hosts for WCPN and WKSU have been retained and shuffled around. More here.
1647523657232.png1647523735211.png1647524929349.png
 
And I assume 90.3 HD2 will be a simulcast of 89.7.

Only 2 hours for Mark Satola. Hmmm. Well, he has been there for a long time. Maybe he is getting ready to retire.

I used to enjoy listening to Wayne Mack's noon program on WCLV years ago. He played lighter, popular selections. I wish they could do something similar again.

I hope Dr. Wendel's German program will continue on another station, perhaps on one of the college stations which air ethnic programs.
 
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skiwest said:
And I assume 90.3 HD2 will be a simulcast of 89.7.

Only 2 hours for Mark Satola. Hmmm. Well, he has been there for a long time. Maybe he is getting ready to retire.

I used to enjoy listening to Wayne Mack's noon program on WCLV years ago. He played lighter, popular selections. I wish they could do something similar again.

I hope Dr. Wendel's German program will continue on another station, perhaps on one of the college stations which air ethnic programs.
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Correct, 90.3-2 will switch to a WKSU relay.

It looks like the addition of jazz abbreviated everyone’s airshift sans Jacqueline Gerber. Rob Grier moves from evenings to early afternoon while John Mills moves from overnights to evenings.

I stand corrected re: WKSU-HD3; it’s not a 100% simulcast of WCLV as they will be running the syndicated “Classical 24” service in overnights.

1647540595312.png
 
MediaLover said:
Here's an FAQ page that addresses the changes: Ideastream Public Media & WKSU: Frequently Asked Questions

Main points include the mention of a signal boost coming to 89.7 later in the fall and that WVIZ 25.7 will simulcast 89.7 as well starting next week.

The moving of shows from both 89.7 and 90.3, including Folk Alley and the last two remaining nationality shows, to 89.7 HD4 is going to create some backlash.
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I thought it said that Folk Alley is staying on WKSU-HD2?
 
There are three nationality shows on WCPN. Only two will be moving to 89.7 HD4. The third nationality show is the German show. Host Dr. Joe Wendel has decided not to move and apparently it will be ending after this Sunday's broadcast.

Airing WKSU on 90.3 HD2 is overkill. WKSU should be covering NE Ohio quite well with their main signal and the numerous translators/repeaters. Hopefully, it will just be temporary and they can air something else on HD2 down the road.
 
skiwest said:
Airing WKSU on 90.3 HD2 is overkill. WKSU should be covering NE Ohio quite well with their main signal and the numerous translators/repeaters. Hopefully, it will just be temporary and they can air something else on HD2 down the road.
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Ideastream isn't one of my clients, but if they were, I'd be advising them to keep WKSU on 90.3-2 indefinitely. While 89.7 is a very good signal overall, there are significant areas where it's at or under the 70 dBu that's really the minimum these days for solid reception inside buildings.

104.9 takes care of the problem to the west, and 89.1 from Thompson is good to the far east, but along the 271 corridor in eastern Cuyahoga County and eastward into Mentor, the 89.7 signal is noticeably weaker than 90.3. I'd guess those are areas where WCPN currently has very solid listenership and support, so you want to make sure nobody loses a 70+ dBu signal for news-talk.

There's also the front-end overload that can wreak havoc on cheaper radios in the close vicinity of other FM sites. That can make the 89.7 signal iffy around the tower farm in Parma and around the 92.3/95.5 site off 271. It's helpful to keep 90.3-2 as a good alternative in both areas.

(I'm not a Clevelander but have spent decades driving through and listening closely to all these signals...)
 
I saw this in the FAQ:

"We are actively pursuing a technological solution to increase the accessibility of the 89.7 signal. We hope to have this signal boosting solution in place by Fall 2022"

I wonder what this means? Power increase? Move to another tower?
 
skiwest said:
I saw this in the FAQ:

"We are actively pursuing a technological solution to increase the accessibility of the 89.7 signal. We hope to have this signal boosting solution in place by Fall 2022"

I wonder what this means? Power increase? Move to another tower?
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My guess is that they're going to experiment with an on-channel booster for 89.7. The technology to do that has improved greatly in recent years, but it's still a challenge to avoid self-interference with your main signal, especially over fairly flat terrain like that of NEO.
 
VintageMac said:
So when you mentioned backlash, a two hour show is inconsequential in the scheme of things.
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Not really. Not everyone has HD radio and there are those that prefer to hear Folk on the main signal. The backlash will mainly be for the nationality shows, but there will be plenty of those upset of Folk regulated to HD subchannels only.
 
fybush said:
My guess is that they're going to experiment with an on-channel booster for 89.7. The technology to do that has improved greatly in recent years, but it's still a challenge to avoid self-interference with your main signal, especially over fairly flat terrain like that of NEO.
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This Q&A with Ideastream’s Kevin Martin kinda alludes to that:
Right, so there are technical fixes for that. It will require some capital investment. And we’re gonna give ourselves some time to do really do an analysis to see how we can fix some of those low-reception areas. And we won’t move 104.9 until we know that we’ve taken care of that.
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On-channel boosters would definitely help in downtown Cleveland. Not sure it’ll be enough for part of Lake County that will get so-so reception from WKSU or the Thompson/Ashtabula repeater.

The 104.9 transmitter is located as far close to the Avon—Westlake border as possible and can’t be moved further east without encroaching on WKKY.
 
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Nathan Obral said:
This Q&A with Ideastream’s Kevin Martin kinda alludes to that:

On-channel boosters would definitely help in downtown Cleveland. Not sure it’ll be enough for part of Lake County that will get so-so reception from WKSU or the Thompson/Ashtabula repeater.

The 104.9 transmitter is located as far close to the Avon—Westlake border as possible and can’t be moved further east without encroaching on WKKY.
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Don't forget K105 in Youngstown at 105.1 and that has a big signal too.
 
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MediaLover said:
Not really. Not everyone has HD radio and there are those that prefer to hear Folk on the main signal. The backlash will mainly be for the nationality shows, but there will be plenty of those upset of Folk regulated to HD subchannels only.
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It's only 2 hours so that is minimal impact. Most people have computers/iPhones etc. so they can find similar programming using other methods which might even sound better than from a signal which might come in weak depending on location.
 
VintageMac said:
It's only 2 hours so that is minimal impact. Most people have computers/iPhones etc. so they can find similar programming using other methods which might even sound better than from a signal which might come in weak depending on location.
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I disagree with you. Not everyone has smartphones or even access to the internet. There are also those who have never heard of HD radio as it never took off as it was supposed. We shall see come March 28.

I should add that a lot of people in Cleveland can't get 89.7 in homes. This is going to be a big issue until somehow the signal coverage is boosted.
 
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