cowboyup said:
Radio-locator, and the FCC, show 104.3 as having 50,000 watts. It's 97.3 that shows as having 30,500 watts. I can understand the confusion as those stations have swapped frequencies several times.
Also, keep in mind that both are class C2 stations. The maximum for a C2 is 50,000 watts, but antenna height is restricted. In other words, a station can be the technical equivalent of 50,000 watts with significantly less power but a lot more height. So, it's entirely possible that 97.3's 30,500 watts is equal to 104.3's 50,000 in terms of coverage.
I can give you a couple of extreme examples of stations running at low power but high wattage equivalents. There are the cases of an FM in Nashville, TN (WRLT) that runs 200 watts but is the technical equivalent of 6,000 because it's on a transmitter over 1,100 feet tall and one in Vermont (WCVT) that operates at 400 watts but is the technical equivalent of 25,000 because its transmitter is roughly 2,100 feet high. The Vermont station, by the way, will soon be a 50,000 watt station operating with only 1,000 watts of power as its transmitter will go up another 600 feet soon. So, it will have a signal on paper that will be equal to 97.3 and 104.3 but only 1/50 of 104.3's power! Again, those are extreme examples, but you get the idea.