Sacramento - Stockton Market?

[Big D]

I've sometimes wondered why the Sacramento radio market never encumbered Stockton. I mean, we've got one of the tallest tower farms in Walnut Grove with all the market's TV and yet 3 FMs. The population for such a market would be around 2.4M, bumping down from #27 to #19 or so. Which would presumably mean better advertising dollars, right?

I know it's a bit of a stretch when you're limited to a Class B signal, but a decent city grade contour over both metro areas (as 88.1 & 89.7 do) would still get listeners. I'm disregarding 88.9, since the height of the formers seem to perform better than 50kw @ 500'.

Thoughts?

 

[1069_KIFR]

It seems all the Sacramento TV stations have a Stockton Bureau and use Stockton/Modesto in their ID's. So why not combine the valley!

 

[Madmansam]

It seems all the Sacramento TV stations have a Stockton Bureau and use Stockton/Modesto in their ID's. So why not combine the valley!

Even the Stockton licensed TV Stations (KOVR-13, KQCA-58 & KTFK-64) are based in Sacramento, while our Clear Channel Stockton radio stations (KWSX-1280 & KQOD-100.1) are based in Modesto.

 

[DaveBayArea]

Television transmitters are allowed full power to a height of 2,000 feet. Meanwhile, full-power FM's in this part of the country are limited to 500 feet HAAT before they have to reduce their ERP. This essentially means it would be difficult for one FM station to cover both markets with a decent signal. If this were Colorado, where the limit is 100,000 watts at 2,000 feet - yes. But not here.

I highly doubt if any of the full-power Sacramento signals could relocate to Walnut Grove and still meet mileage spacing requirements. Even if they could, they'd lose a huge number of listeners in Sacramento. Stockton is a weird sort of step-child, because their FM's are mostly class-A's, but Stockton residents can receive a few Sacramento signals fairly well, and the two big Modesto signals (103.3 and 104.1) do extremely well there. For a while at least, Clear Channel was simulcasting KFBK on their AM signal there. I guess that would be one way to combine the markets, much like KFOG, KFOX, and KSOL do in the Bay Area.

Dave B.

 

[audiophantom]

This would never happen for 2 key reasons;

Clear Channel would stand to lose radio stations from combining the markets. By having one metro Clear Channel would clearly be over the limit. While CBS and Entercom would be in the clear.

The second reason would be adjacency issues. In combining the markets, most if not all, stations would have to relocate their transmitters to cover both cities, which could create problems for markets like San Francisco, Modesto and Santa Rosa with neighboring frequencies.

The other problems to this idea are; Arbitron, they would stand to lose revenue by combining the markets and Arbitron doesn't like to turn lose of a dollar quickly. Also advertisers in Stockton would get the short end of the stick in this deal. Local direct advertisers would see ad revenues jump substantially making radio almost impossible to fit within their budgets, giving regional chains the upper hand. This could possibly force some business to lose out on being competitive and ultimately close.