Savannah- Time for 1290 to boost its signal?

[jmtillery]

First off, the license for 1290 has been deleted, but the frequency is still allocated to Ocala and therefore available for someone to apply for. That means that the interference issue is still there so CC can not up the power for 1290 here. Also, I believe the FCC still has a freeze on for major AM license changes. They opened up the window last year for changes, but only for a month or so. It was then closed again.

To answer your question, Witchlover, it is not too practicle. Without doing a full pattern study, I would say the best you could do was to add more towers to the array along with changing some of the components and bend the signal a little differently to the wanted directions. I am not sure CC owns enough land on Alfred St. to do this.

Guru, when we changed the 630 signal here in town, we completely did away with our 5kw night-time directional signal that we had. We are now non-directional with 5kw daytime and 52 watts at night. All we really did was move to another tower and took down the old ones on Oatland Island to make room for the new FM tower for WTYB.

I see this all time, but I am curious what is the advantage of taking a station from 5kw directional at night to 52 watts non directional? Whenever you downgrade your night power below 250 watts, you lose your class B status and become a class D. As I said, I'm just curious as to what the advantages might be in doing this?

Mark Tillery,
Former General Manager (1993 - 1999)
WTMC-AM 1290 Ocala, Florida
[email protected]

 

[rcombs]

There is no advantage.

 

[jmtillery]

There is no advantage.

This is where it gets confusing. If there is no advantage of reducing night-time power and reclassifying a dominant AM Class B to a Class D, why do it? Again, I'm only asking to satisfy my own curiousity because I have seen this before at other stations.

Also, regarding the WTKS 1290 upgrade, that station should be able to get an upgrade whether 1290 Ocala is here or not. The daytime signal is protected only to its 0.5mv/m ground wave contour. The WTKS and WTMC 0.5mv/m contour has never come anywhere near overlapping, so WTKS should be fine regardless of what is going on with 1290 Ocala. The only real protection either station had to be concerned about in the past is the night service since you have to be mindful of both ground wave and skywave patterns at night. Because if this, as many of you already know, those night-time signals bounce all over the ionosphere which, at times, greatly extends the 0.5mv/m night-time service contour.

And, although WTMC is older than the former WTOC (now WTKS), WTKS Savannah has operated on 1290 longer than WTMC. For this reason, WTKS has been the dominant station for this region on 1290 which is why WTKS has an authorize 5kw night-time while WTMC operated with 1kw-N DA-N E/W using three towers. WTMC operated for years with another 1290 in West Palm Beach, Florida, WJNO, operating with 10kw-DA-D, while WTMC also had a CP for 10kw-DA-D.

The point is WTMC 1290 Ocala was never the problem preventing WTKS from a signal upgrade during the day. The hold up in the past was due to under the old rules 1290 was classified as a regional class III AM limited to 5kw, regardless if more power was technically possible. Now that the FCC has cleared the way for any class station to operate on any channel, 1290 is free to upgrade to whatever power level is technically possible.

By the way, I think WTKS is an excellent News-Talk station.

Mark Tillery,
Former General Manager (1993 -1999)
WTMC-AM 1290 Ocala, Florida
[email protected]

 

[fybush]

There is no advantage.

This is where it gets confusing. If there is no advantage of reducing night-time power and reclassifying a dominant AM Class B to a Class D, why do it? Again, I'm only asking to satisfy my own curiousity because I have seen this before at other stations.

In a vacuum, you'd be right. In the real world where the value of the land under a big directional array can exceed the value of the station's license, or where an aging directional array can cost more to repair than the station is worth, it's not hard to see why these downgrades happen. Better to be left with a reasonable class D facility in such a circumstance than just to take the thing dark and hand in the license, right?

 

[jmtillery]

There is no advantage.

This is where it gets confusing. If there is no advantage of reducing night-time power and reclassifying a dominant AM Class B to a Class D, why do it? Again, I'm only asking to satisfy my own curiousity because I have seen this before at other stations.

In a vacuum, you'd be right. In the real world where the value of the land under a big directional array can exceed the value of the station's license, or where an aging directional array can cost more to repair than the station is worth, it's not hard to see why these downgrades happen. Better to be left with a reasonable class D facility in such a circumstance than just to take the thing dark and hand in the license, right?

Scott,

What you just did is point out the advantage of a voluntary station downgrade which addressed my original question -"What is the advantage of downgrading a dominant AM station from a Class B to a Class D". Another poster replied with "There is no advantage", hence, the reason I asked the question again as I saw no real point in downgrading, or making any changes, if there was/is no advantage or benefit in the change.

I totally agree with your reasoning and assessment.

Mark Tillery,
Ocala, Florida
[email protected]

 

[smedge2006]

What is reasonable about a class D facility in a market the size of Savannah?

Has 630's downgrade allowed anyone else to upgrade at night?

 

[rcombs]

Toccoa, Ga WNEG

 

[jmtillery]

What is reasonable about a class D facility in a market the size of Savannah?

Has 630's downgrade allowed anyone else to upgrade at night?

With the decline in AM station values, in some cases the land hosting the tower site has become more valuable to developers than the total value of the station license. For this reason, some station owners elect to sell the transmitter site and relocate the AM antenna system to a single tower. Of course, in the case of a directional night-time pattern, moving to a single tower requires a reduction in night-time power equivalent to the lowest power level (or null) in any paticular direction under the former directional pattern. If that lowest power level is less than 250 watts at night, the class is reclassified from its previous class B to a class D.

Some AM stations you would never, under any circumstances, downgrade to a class D. These would include heritage stations suchs as WDBO Orlando, WFLA Tampa, WGN Chicago, WSB Atlanta and so on.

In other cases where the AM station's total billing is something less than desired, in some cases the owner can actually make money to off-set the revenue losses by selling the transmitter site previously housing multpile towers, and diplexing the non-directional day signal on a single existing tower.

From a business standpoint, that is the only real advantage that I see in downgrading.

Mark Tillery,
Ocala, Florida
[email protected]

 

[Witchlover]

WTKS' signal doesn't seem to be able to cross the county line for the past week or so. Does anyone know what the problem is? If I am not mistaken, the problem began before recent weather issues occurred. If I am wrong about that, it is an error in fact, not a slam against the station. This does seem to be a recurring problem, however, and I am curious what is at the root of it. My guess is a chronic equipment problem, but if anyone knows differently . . . .

 

[w9wi]

Some AM stations you would never, under any circumstances, downgrade to a class D. These would include heritage stations suchs as WDBO Orlando, WFLA Tampa, WGN Chicago, WSB Atlanta and so on.

Ignoring for the moment the heritage status of WGN and WSB, IMHO there wouldn't be much point, from a technical standpoint, in downgrading either to Class D.

As Class A stations, they aren't protecting anyone right now. They're also already non-directional at night -- they only need one tower to operate at 50kW as Class A.

Now, as Class A stations that one tower does need to be taller. 152m for WSB, 156m for WGN unless they can show only 152m will be approved by the FAA. (not that 4m will make much difference...) If the stations were to downgrade to class *B*, they could use shorter towers - 82m for WSB, 84m for WGN. That would reduce the amount of land that would be necessary to guy the tower properly.

There would be no point in further downgrading to Class D as the same minimum tower height requirement would still apply -- no further land could be saved by going from B to D.

The one way a downgrade to Class D would make sense for these stations is if some other station on(/near) 720 or 750 wanted to upgrade in a way that couldn't be accomodated with a Class A station on the frequency. For example, WWII in Pennsylvania wanted to upgrade from D to B.

Of course, there is little chance any existing Class D station could afford to pay WGN/WSB enough to get them to agree to downgrade...

 

[vchimpanzee]

Is someone actually using the WWII call letters or is that a typo?

 

[w9wi]

Is someone actually using the WWII call letters or is that a typo?

The WWII calls are for real: http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=26973.

I forget what the format is these days but I'm pretty sure it was nostalgia when they got the calls -- so they probably do mean what you think they mean..