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One of my old haunts returns to local ownership

M

Matt

I just read on R&R that WSIC, Statesville NC, is being sold by Mercury (Clear Channel) Broadcasting to a local owner. Hooray for that.

I worked for them for a couple of years back in the early 80's...a very nicely outfitted station for its day when it and sister WFMX were locally owned by Statesville Broadcasting.

Hopefully, it will be that again.

Selling WSIC frees WFMX to be uprooted and moved to Clemmons, and thence to the "Big City".

I wonder what ol' Dwight Barker would say about that?

Later...
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV, Reidsville, NC
 
Matt Smith said:
I just read on R&R that WSIC, Statesville NC, is being sold by Mercury (Clear Channel) Broadcasting to a local owner. Hooray for that.

I worked for them for a couple of years back in the early 80's...a very nicely outfitted station for its day when it and sister WFMX were locally owned by Statesville Broadcasting.

Hopefully, it will be that again.

Selling WSIC frees WFMX to be uprooted and moved to Clemmons, and thence to the "Big City".

I wonder what ol' Dwight Barker would say about that?

Later...
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV, Reidsville, NC
Click to expand...

Good. That's one less station for CC to run into the ground.
 
Hopefully, the "local" owner will do something to get the signal out of the parking lot
 
mediaspeaks said:
Hopefully, the "local" owner will do something to get the signal out of the parking lot
Click to expand...

Not much they can do to improve their signal. A few years ago they installed a folded unipole that made a big difference and they have a fairly new BE transmitter...

Being on 1400 a power increase is not possible...

The FCC came up with the Class IV stations to serve the local community and I think WSIC (stands for We Serve Iredell County) does just that...

Test123
 
I thought the FCC had relaxed restrictions on power for AM stations. It was now "whatever you could get to work on the frequency." That is how WHKY in Hickory landed 50,000 watts on 1290, which is one of the old Class III regional channels. I was just wondering.
 
wncmacs said:
I thought the FCC had relaxed restrictions on power for AM stations. It was now "whatever you could get to work on the frequency." That is how WHKY in Hickory landed 50,000 watts on 1290, which is one of the old Class III regional channels. I was just wondering.
Click to expand...

That's right...WHKY is on a regional channel...WSIC is on a local channel (1400KHz). Local channels used to be known as Class IV stations now they are known as Class C stations...Class C stations are on 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490 kHz.

Here is the FCC rule regarding power on Class Cs...

Class C station. A Class C station is a station operating on a
local channel and is designed to render service only over a primary
service area that may be reduced as a consequence of interference in
accordance with Sec. 73.182. The power shall not be less than 0.25 kW,
nor more than 1 kW. Class C stations that are licensed to operate with
0.1 kW may continue to do so.
Click to expand...

Testing123
 
Wouldn't you think the FCC would increase power for local channels in light of the manmade interference from computers, computerized traffic signals, etc. The 1935 power allocations just don't work any more! They could boost them all (like they did when the allowed the nighttime increase some years ago). Regional channels could be helped also - in fact - up the 50ks to 100, the 10s to 50 and the 1ks to 10K. Either do it, or accept the interference from those who do.
 
If we do as you suggest and just up the power, that won't solve alot of problems.. because then the stations will just be itnerfering with each other.. and you wouldn't want that either. Would you?
 
I am no engineer, but I disagree with the concept of interferring with each other. The concept was done about 30 years ago when the local stations that ran 1K day/250 watts at night were all allowed to go 1k full time. Since everyone increased power at the same time, the relationship between the signals at any given point was the same.

It would go a long way towards overcoming interference caused by powerlines and computers.
 
XTalker....

I can remember back to the mid '80s when I was working for a Class C AM on 1490. The owner and the Chief Engineer were going back and forth about increasing the night time power to 1KW. The owner was concerned that the increased cost of electricity would not be worth the increased coverage area. Long story short we went ahead and kicked up the power...

A few months later we started getting calls from listeners. Seems even though we had increased our night time power listeners in areas that could hear us pretty good before were having trouble picking us up. We checked through everything. One night we decided to turn the transmitter off. We went out to the car to see what we could hear. Sure enough we were picking up another 1490 pretty darn good.

In the end we (Class C stations) really did ourselves more harm than good by increasing nighttime power.

t123
 
test123 said:
In the end we (Class C stations) really did ourselves more harm than good by increasing nighttime power.

t123
Click to expand...

test123, I too have worked at a station on a local channel(1490) and I agree with you. I thinking bumping the night power to 1kw sounded good on paper, but in not in reality. When the FCC made that change--around 1980?--if we'd just gone from 250w to 500w nights??? Would THAT have helped--and not hurt? I wonder...
 
I worked a Class C on 1340 when the change ocurred and the increase to 1K at night helped greatly. It was a coastal area station with a tower about 15 miles inland. Couldn't reach the beaches at night at 250 - and the increase added a considerable amount of audience. We experienced no problems from other stations. I guess it depended a great deal on the spacing.

I guess my main point was that the theories of propogation of radio signals for AM - as outlined in the Communications Act of 1935 - did not take into account the mass of manmade interference that has really harmed AM radio over the last 30 years and is possibly worth some study.
 
I heard from a pretty good source that WSIC was going to carry the same Nascar programing (Races, qualifying, talk, MRN, PRN etc) that WFMX formally carried. If this is true, that would be good news at least for Iredell race fans. Anybody know anything about this? Thanks
 
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