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Renda gives away 1360

Parttimer said:
The just -vacated WKZV site would encounter very little resistance because it has already been a site for 30+ years. It also is probably close enough to Wheeling so that the COL would not have to change.
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Once more, with feeling:

Any full-time AM station has to provide 5 mV/m coverage of its city of license both day and night in order to be licensed.

WWVA must have a deep null in its nighttime pattern to protect the other former I-B clear channel on 1170, KFAQ (ex-KVOO) in Tulsa.

Draw the line from Washington to Tulsa and you'll quickly see that Wheeling falls squarely in that null.

WWVA can only be licensed to a community east of its transmitter site.

As for the former WKZV site, you're more than welcome to go before the relevant zoning boards and try to make the case that because two short, skinny towers used to be there, they can automatically be replaced with the three 400-foot towers needed to generate the minimum efficiency level required for a class A signal like WWVA.

Insurance likely paid for the rebuild after the storm.
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In part, no doubt. But they did a top-notch job of completely rebuilding that site, including some pieces (like the ground system) that weren't damaged by the storm. You don't do that if you still plan on moving.

104.7 has had conversations with NBC Sports Radio, meaning ESPN stays on 970. ESPN wants clearance of daytime talk shows, 104.7 wants to be local and just needs network shows for nights and weekends.
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Clear Channel keeps its syndication business in-house these days whenever it can. If they're going to use anything on a hypothetical sports 104.7, they'll pull Fox Sports Radio (run by CC's Premiere division) back in from 540 before they'll give inventory to competitor Dial Global (NBC Sports Radio).

ESPN on 970 is an anomaly. Pittsburgh is the only major CC market that carries ESPN, and I can't imagine that stays as a long-term scenario given how competitive the sports network market has become in the last few years.

If CC's really determined to go sports on 104.7, the much more cost-effective move at this point would be simply to ditch ESPN (which can always go back to a clearance on 1250, where Disney's just filler), put the talk on 970 and go sports on the FM. Or just ditch talk completely, as CC did in Boston, and let Rush go back to KDKA. What CC loses in local ad sales, it makes up over on the Premiere side with the money CBS would pay for Rush.

970's not a good enough signal for talk? Yeah, probably not - but 1250 is, and it would cost CC a lot less for that signal than for a hypothetical move of WWVA.

Yes, Renda could part with WSHH as well in the future with that signal going to Keymaarket or Salem.
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Indeed they could - but only if it benefits Renda in the end. There's still nothing in your original scenario that provides any benefit to Renda.

The Tampa scenario was a lengthy series of moves that saw them trade up from daytime 820 to 620 WDAE. A broker held and operated 620 for a while to make it work.
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Ah. That set of moves. Two key things to know about that: first, it wasn't Clear Channel then. It was a much smaller and more aggressive operator, Lowell Paxson, who was trying to build a Florida-wide network of multiple AMs (news and sports) in each market. It was only when Paxson decided to exit radio and focus his efforts on Pax TV that he sold to Clear, and the signals Clear got from Paxson are the same ones it still owns today.

Second, there were no transmitter moves or frequency changes involved in that whole series of shuffles. Paxson kept trading up from mediocre signals to better ones as they became available, but the signals themselves stayed where they were. The only facility work that happened was after Clear ended up with 620, when it sunk a lot of cash into rebuilding that station's corroding towers.
 
I really can't understand why anyone would sink any great amount of money into an AM radio station these days.
 
Good discussion, Scott. I suspect the end result will fall somewhere between my scenario and yours.

Just one more comment on 970 and ESPN, I'm told ESPN is paying CC to carry the daytime shows for national sales purposes, which they chose to dump from 1250 rather than continue a local sales effort. ESPN will stay where it is.
 
There's another issue to consider re a WWVA move to the KZV site and that is swamping. With all of the new town houses around that area CC will be required to deal with all QRM problems. That means having someone detune all those garage doors that pick up and demodulate the station. Is also includes telephones, baby monitors and electric ranges whose timing systems are swamped by the 50KW (65 horsepower) signal.
 
Let's ask a simpler question.... How much would 1170's coverage of SW PA improve from its current site simply by eliminating the second-adjacent 1150? Maybe enough that an 1170/910/HD2 combo becomes the home of what's now on 104.7?
 
I go by the "David Eduardo Rule": in the AM environment of 2013, you don't get reliable mass-audience ratings in any zip code where your AM signal is less than 15 mV/m.

WWVA puts almost exactly 1 mV/m at Gateway Center. Even if you eliminate WGBN's 2.91 mV/m on a second-adjacent channel, that's still not enough of a signal to do anything useful with. WAVL does 1.38 mV/m at Gateway Center.

By way of comparison, KDKA delivers 94 mV/m at that location. 970 delivers a whopping 119 mV/m. Even WKBN delivers just under 2 mV/m there.

Imagine you're walking around at the point there. What AM signals do you consider "usefully strong"? I'd say 1510 from Monroeville is a marginal player at best there, and it delivers nearly 8 mV/m by day. WEDO does about the same, and the new WZUM on 1550 clocks in at about 5.5 mV/m. If those signals are right on the edge of usability, WWVA is somewhere far below, even without adjacent-channel interference.

The only way to make WWVA a player in Allegheny County is to have it transmit from somewhere in Allegheny County, and that somewhere has to be west of Pittsburgh to be useful both day and night. That brings in yet another problem: the ideal area you're starting to zoom in on happens to be out around Moon - and the FAA isn't going to look kindly on three 400-foot towers going up near the airport, even if you could somehow find the land and get the zoning clearance.
 
Too far out of the center of town. Too hilly (lousy ground conductivity - AM sites want to be down low in wet areas). Not a big enough parcel of land for three towers.

There's an additional issue nobody has mentioned yet with regard to moving WWVA out of its existing site: WCUE 1150 in Cuyahoga Falls also blocks WWVA from any significant northward relocation. The proposed WWVA-to-Stow move would have included purchasing WCUE and taking it dark. A move to the site you're discussing would also require WCUE to be moved out of the way.
 
hypwr said:
Even with Sen. Byrd gone, the WV representatives will not allow their only 50KW to leave the state.
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Not much they can do to stop it from happening. It wasn't Byrd who ended up stopping the WWVA move to Stow, it was internal CC politics. If CC proposes to shift WWVA from being the umpteenth local service to Wheeling and turning it into first local to Moon or Zelienople or whatever, it's Congress' own actions - section 307(b) of the Telecommunications Act, to be exact - that pretty much obligate the FCC to allow the move to happen.
 
Scott Fybush said:
Parttimer said:
The just -vacated WKZV site would encounter very little resistance because it has already been a site for 30+ years. It also is probably close enough to Wheeling so that the COL would not have to change.
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As for the former WKZV site, you're more than welcome to go before the relevant zoning boards and try to make the case that because two short, skinny towers used to be there, they can automatically be replaced with the three 400-foot towers needed to generate the minimum efficiency level required for a class A signal like WWVA.

[qu
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The WKZV site Has House's All Around it. When it was Built in 1969 it was the Only One Their. I Cannot see the People Living Their let a 50 KW FullTime 3 or more Tower Site Be Built.
 
Perhaps I'm naive. I never would have thought about the machinations some have suggested regarding WWVA. And I seriously wonder if the only thing Renda really wanted, beyond the tax break and the dumping of a costly engineering monstrosity, was to improve its AM 1160 in Homer City and its Indiana-Westmoreland County stronghold.

We presume, of course, that Pentecostal Temple pulls the plug on AM 1150 after it takes over AM 1360 ... which will be a better signal no matter where it will broadcast at night, with reduced power from Calvary Cemetery or if donors can rebuild those towers across the Yough from Olympia Shopping Center.

But what do I know?
 
1170 is not going anywhere.

Renda is not doing anything but getting rid of 1360. No strategies behind it. They are not smart enough. And, think of all the troubles they are having plus markets they have left.

There is NO NEED for a second FM sports station in this town. There were not many begging for a first. CC uses the PBP rights on DVE to boost its own image, same with the X. To throw all PBP on 104.7 makes no sense.

As long as the current lineup on 104.7 is tied to CC, they will not change formats on it.
 
Jkf said:
1170 is not going anywhere.

Renda is not doing anything but getting rid of 1360. No strategies behind it. They are not smart enough. And, think of all the troubles they are having plus markets they have left.

There is NO NEED for a second FM sports station in this town. There were not many begging for a first. CC uses the PBP rights on DVE to boost its own image, same with the X. To throw all PBP on 104.7 makes no sense.

As long as the current lineup on 104.7 is tied to CC, they will not change formats on it.
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While you may be right about Renda, 104.7 will go sports before year's end. There is a lot more money there than with the rapidly declining talk format.
 
Scott Fybush said:
I go by the "David Eduardo Rule": in the AM environment of 2013, you don't get reliable mass-audience ratings in any zip code where your AM signal is less than 15 mV/m.

WWVA puts almost exactly 1 mV/m at Gateway Center. Even if you eliminate WGBN's 2.91 mV/m on a second-adjacent channel, that's still not enough of a signal to do anything useful with. WAVL does 1.38 mV/m at Gateway Center.

By way of comparison, KDKA delivers 94 mV/m at that location. 970 delivers a whopping 119 mV/m. Even WKBN delivers just under 2 mV/m there.

Imagine you're walking around at the point there. What AM signals do you consider "usefully strong"? I'd say 1510 from Monroeville is a marginal player at best there, and it delivers nearly 8 mV/m by day. WEDO does about the same, and the new WZUM on 1550 clocks in at about 5.5 mV/m. If those signals are right on the edge of usability, WWVA is somewhere far below, even without adjacent-channel interference.

The only way to make WWVA a player in Allegheny County is to have it transmit from somewhere in Allegheny County, and that somewhere has to be west of Pittsburgh to be useful both day and night. That brings in yet another problem: the ideal area you're starting to zoom in on happens to be out around Moon - and the FAA isn't going to look kindly on three 400-foot towers going up near the airport, even if you could somehow find the land and get the zoning clearance.
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Scott Where Are You getting Your readings?
 
Why would WWVA move towers and studios anywhere, especially since they had to erect new towers after that horrific windstorm? One would have thought that to be the time, ONLY if they had wanted to do that in the first place and actually had a viable plan for a 'quick' move. I don't know their current ratings, but they're not hurting right now.
 
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