K
kf4rca
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Don't know if you are aware of this but directional antennas ARE available for the FM band. They are not off the shelf items but are custom made for each individual situation.
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Old WFOX tower
- Thread starter AMRocks
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Yes, but they are a lose, lose situation. If you have a 5 kw AM station and you go directional, you still put out a full 5 kw. What you don't send in one direction can end up going another direction. (I managed a 5 kw directional that probably put out 10 kw over our "city of license".
If I read the FM rules correctly, your FM directional antenna can be designed to send reduced power in one direction, but you are not allowed to take that power and focus it the other direction.
U
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Yes, that's right. AM directionals "shift" signal while FM "cancels"
A good analogy for AM; it's like a water filled balloon shaped as a perfect circle which in simplistic terms is a non directional AM. Squeeze the balloon and the water is displaced and the circle then becomes shaped. The number of towers, distance and height of towers all play a factor in what shape is developed.
FM directionals would simply chop off parts of circle without deflating remainder of balloon. FM directionals are very useful for modifying signals on the same and first adjacent frequencies but much less on second and third adjacent frequencies. On the commercial band, 92.1 to 107.9, stations must also deal with minimum mileage separation meaning stations must remain a minimum distance from each regardless of signal patterns.
The non commercial FM band and FM translators have no such distance restriction. They must simply not overlap signals thus why translators have much greater flexibility to locate and why the stations from 87.7 to 91.9 are physically so much closer together.
I am not sure about the technicalities of the FCC rules but isn't there a way a station can do an upgrade and force other stations to "move" involuntary as long as the station pays the expenses of the station(s) it "moves" and there is no loss in coverage for the involuntary moved stations. I believe WLJA Ellijay GA got "moved" from 93.5 to 101.1 against their will (according to a salesperson at WLJA).
Most of the moves that were practical and achievable were done right after the FCC rules regarding "major changes" were modified as part of the Docket 80-90 proceedings.
Some that were proposed back then continued to be litigated or otherwise held back until recent years... over 20 years after being initiated.
Prior to the rule change, a major change, such as a significant change in Community of License and a transmitter move of similar significance or a change in class of station could throw a licensee into a competitive renewal hearing as the FCC treated such changes as if they were new licences. After the Bonita Springs case, which triggered Docket 80-90, stations that made moves or big upgrades no longer put their license in danger.
IMHO, if there were a way to make a change in the table of allocations that would permit 97.1 to move closer to Atlanta, it would have been done by now.
In this case, a directional operation of 97.1 could not put any more signal towards the SW (and central Atlanta) while still putting a city grade signal over the community of license. If they moved to a tower farther to the SW than the CP location and directionalized to observe protection requirements, they would not gain any geography over what they have now.
In today's urban environment, the major issue would be finding an existing tall tower they could put a DA on; building a new 1000 foot or greater tower in populated areas is a very costly, difficult and uncertain process.
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Even with the signal issues in & near the city itself, 97.1 The River *still* clobbers Rock 100.5 in the ratings!!! (And they also defeated DaveFM - and going back even farther - 96Rock handily.)
Their signal is pretty darn good in most listening environments. Cheap radios in office & commercial buildings are the places where problems will be encountered.
Even with the signal issues in & near the city itself, 97.1 The River *still* clobbers Rock 100.5 in the ratings!!! (And they also defeated DaveFM - and going back even farther - 96Rock handily.)
Their signal is pretty darn good in most listening environments. Cheap radios in office & commercial buildings are the places where problems will be encountered.
A couple of questions. When 97.1 moves, will Cox have to build a tower at the new site or is this an existing tower they can go on? Is 95.5 staying on the old tower until they finally get to move to an in-town tower? If 95.5 has to stay on the old 97.1 tower will Cox take the top sections off and leave 95.5 and 97.1 auxiliary on the old tower?
Back in the day, a lot of North Ga stations had their EAS receivers tuned to 97.1. Looking at the GA EAS website:
http://gab.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/LP1-State-Primary-Regional-Relay-Stations.pdf
that is no longer the case.
Back in the day, a lot of North Ga stations had their EAS receivers tuned to 97.1. Looking at the GA EAS website:
http://gab.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/LP1-State-Primary-Regional-Relay-Stations.pdf
that is no longer the case.
Apparently they are going to be on a tower owned by Gwinette County and located next to a big water processing facility just north of downtown Buford. If you start at the dam for Lake Lanier and keep going east on Buford Dam Road, you pass this site before you get to the road that goes to Lake Lanier Islands. The tower according the ASR records is a little less than 200 meters tall.
In a hasty search I could not find any other BROADCAST transmitter at this location.
There is a marketplace that is just buried and lost in the "noise level" of things in the Metro Atlanta market. If you had a city or county with a population of 200,000 people in some other part of the nation, you might have quite market. (Boys and girls: Can you say Fort Wayne, Indiana?)
But Forsyth County.... is it part of Atlanta? Is it part of the the Northeast Georgia mountains? Is it part of Alpharetta and North Fulton? Is it part of Johns Creek? ANSWER: Probably "all of the above". But if someday someone decides that Forsyth County/Cumming/Highway 400 has become an identifiable stand-alone market, this new location for 97.1 would make it a great facility to serve that market.
In a hasty search I could not find any other BROADCAST transmitter at this location.
There is a marketplace that is just buried and lost in the "noise level" of things in the Metro Atlanta market. If you had a city or county with a population of 200,000 people in some other part of the nation, you might have quite market. (Boys and girls: Can you say Fort Wayne, Indiana?)
But Forsyth County.... is it part of Atlanta? Is it part of the the Northeast Georgia mountains? Is it part of Alpharetta and North Fulton? Is it part of Johns Creek? ANSWER: Probably "all of the above". But if someday someone decides that Forsyth County/Cumming/Highway 400 has become an identifiable stand-alone market, this new location for 97.1 would make it a great facility to serve that market.
They might dream up another market, if most of the folks in the affected area do one of following and creates a financial reason for the agencies ask Nielson to do a break out. Like #20 Nassau-Suffolk (Long Island):
http://ratings.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb321
which think is really NYC, but Connoisseur Media can pitch it's cluster to it's (small) 2,454,700 folk part of the NYC market. But the demos in this market have a lot of $$$ to spend.
I doubt Atlanta will be "broken apart" in the next decade or two. The Athens "market" might expand. It all depends on the Agencies.
http://ratings.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb321
which think is really NYC, but Connoisseur Media can pitch it's cluster to it's (small) 2,454,700 folk part of the NYC market. But the demos in this market have a lot of $$$ to spend.
I doubt Atlanta will be "broken apart" in the next decade or two. The Athens "market" might expand. It all depends on the Agencies.
An embedded market is created when a group of stations in a larger geographical area are willing to pay for a breakout report; that involves enhancing the sample so it can stand on its own as well as being folded into the umbrella market. The sole choice is made by the stations involved. Usually, this is a case where those stations cover a well defined part of a market but not the whole market. Agencies don't pay for this so they don't have much of anything to do with the process.
Breaking a market into several parts or combining two markets into one requires first that in either case, the necessary percentages of listening go to the home stations in the market. Then the stations involved vote to determine whether Nielsen will do this.
One example where stations voted "No" was the three decades ago plan to combine the Riverside San Bernardino market with LA. Stations in both markets, in thier majority, saw that their ratings would be fragmented more and did not like that. On the other hand, in 1980 the managers of all the Dade and Broward County, FL stations voted to combine the MIami and Ft Lauderdale markets into one. We voted "yes" and created a Top´15 market, thus bringing higher rates and more national dollars.
If an area splits from a big market, the market may lose market rank and thus may lose a lot of billings. There is little to gain, and in a market like Atlanta that made it into the top 10, maybe as much as $100 million to lose. It would never be voted favorably by the clients. Again, the agencies don't have much to do with this at all.
Well, I used a poor choice of terminology in my post. "Market" is obviously a reserved, well-defined word in broadcasting and those of you active in the industry today understand the word that way.
There must be another word that I should have used to paint the picture I see.... and obviously I see a picture that may be obsolete and non-functional.
When I said there is this market I probably should have used a word like community or something else. We have a county that has grown from 30,000 people to 200,000 people in recent years. It's part of Atlanta.... but it isn't part of Atlanta. It's part of the Northeast Georgia Mountains... but it only has one rather minor mountain. The politicians have split the market/community/space between two different congressional districts.
So here is this geography that is the seventh fastest growing county in America. Here is this geography that is the second must Republican county in America. Here is this county that has the highest income per household of any county in Georgia.
Can you wake up in the morning, turn on the radio and hear news about this county? No. Can you turn on your radio Friday night and listen to a local football game? No. Now that our four-lane is approaching capacity during rush hours, can you turn on your radio and to drive to and from work and get guidance on maybe "bailing-out" and taking a back road? (If we kill someone on that road, it make make the news TOMORROW on Atlanta Market Radio... but only if it is a spectactular wreck.
But there is a rather logical reason why radio has not survived in this county. Back when there were only 30,000 people and the county seat was miniscule, the few locally owned businesses that could be significant advertisers have been replaced by malls full of national chain stores who simply attach themselves to the Atlanta Market advertising agendas.
Forgive me for being so naive and to wish that we could return to the days when you might run into the morning man on local radio when you went for coffee down on the square.... that you might rub elbows with the high-school play-by-play announcer in Sunday school class. I guess it's time to learn how to pull up the traffic cameras along the expressway on my smart-fone. I'll just have to stop at McDonalds for a cup of coffee and be my own traffic reporter.
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