Shorter Days Hurt WXKS-AM 1200

[Laurence Glavin]

After, um, SURGING to a rating with an integer to the left of the decimal point right after the Severin signing, WXKS-AM 1200 finds itself back in fractional territory again, at least the raw 6+ number. Cume holding on to six-figures. The latest numbers are for November (when Eastern Standard Time started) and early December, so there will be a few more months of difficult reception for WXKS-AM in the pre-dawn hours and after dark. There must be some Severin listeners out there...is he pulling the Jeff Katz trick of having many "guests" on because the calls are few and far between?

 

[raccoonradio]

These days the hosts are on vacation anyway...
WXKS isn't bad day or night where I am here in Beverly. (btw heard a bit of Dennis Miller from
Portland ME's WZAN 970 when up in Gloucester...of course the Portland stations come in well
across the water. (Which way to Millinocket? Well you could go THIS way...no wait. You could go
THAT way...Come to think of it...You can't GET there, from here.--Bert And I)

btw 1200 had prog talk from Oct of 04 till Dec of 06; 2 years and 2 months. WXKS 1200 has had
conservative talk since March of 2010. If it makes it past May of '12...and I have a hunch it will...
we can say it's lasted longer than the previous attempt at talk with Air America.



---------------------------------------------------
>>Shorter Days
"What's happened to time?"
"Maybe it's gone on strike"
"What for?"
"Shorter hours?"
--from the movie Yellow Submarine

Maybe we should say less sunlight...days are still 24 hours long from what I can gather

 

[raccoonradio]

By the way are you referring to the "6+" ratings here at radio-info.com, etc.? I don't know how
WXKS (AM) does in 25-54, 54-to-death, or other demos, but yes the "6+" ratings are pretty low.
They just can't get elementary school kids to listen to Jay Severin (As for sports radio, Finn's
Boston Globe article mentions WEEI-FM finished third in males 25-34 I think, while WEEI-FM
does a lot lower in the 6+

I would think female listeners and older listeners especially were very big on WODS and WROR
during Christmas

 

[DanStrassberg]

btw 1200 had prog talk from Oct of 04 till Dec of 06; 2 years and 2 months. WXKS 1200 has had
conservative talk since March of 2010. If it makes it past May of '12...and I have a hunch it will...
we can say it's lasted longer than the previous attempt at talk with Air America.

Just because the Progressive talk to which you refer (then under the WKOX calls) was at the same 1200 spot on the dial as today's right-wingnut talk (now with the WXKS (AM) calls) doesn't mean that you can make any sort of reasonable comparison between the two. And, Bob, you KNOW that to be the case! The signals are quite different: now, 50 kW-U DA-2 from Newton; then, 10 kW-D/1 kW-N DA-N from Framingham. The Framingham daytime signal, though good for 10 kW at 1200, was not competitive in much of the market; The 1 kW night signal simply did not reach most of the market. There was essentially zero local programming on WKOX; WXKS is local seven hours/day M-F. And most of all, management is actively committed to today's right-wingnut programming, whereas the WKOX management was actively committed to the failure of Progressive talk. Everybody knows that Clear Channel ran Progressive talk in several markets just to make the point that it wouldn't and couldn't work. Now, everything that CCU did to make sure that Progressive talk would fail is buried in the annals of radio history. For the most part, all that remains of Progressive talk is its legacy of failures.

 

[raccoonradio]

The 1200 signal is indeed stronger than before though not everywhere. Yes I do know that there is
a diff. in the signals, but I'm just pointing out that CC will probably stay with the conservative talk
longer, especially now with the better signal. I wonder if they would have kept the prog talk on
had the signal upgrade happened earlier. (Most of Premiere's shows are conservative but I will
note that I believe Randi Rhodes and Jesse Jackson have shows syndicated by them, but CC
feels an all-conservative lineup would work best for them...and they must be doing OK if they
can afford two local daily hosts. Maybe the music FMs help subsidize this...a "loss leader" deal.
And they get to clear the spots on the national shows. (CC has done the same thing in S.F.,
moving their shows--incl. possibly Rush--to their own property.)

And for the record WXKS AM still has problems in certain
areas, which is why some Severin fans on Facebook ask "Can't something be done about the signal?"
I have gone on there and explained they already DID boost it as best they could, why the signal
changes direction at night--as what happens with WRKO, too, etc. I'm just noting that the conservative
talk format will likely last longer in the end than prog talk did, and if anything it has been said that
WWZN does pretty well, considering, so prog talk fans do have that option.

In fact when word came that CC would discontinue prog talk on 1200/1430, Fybush's column said
1510 might be one place where prog talk could appear. Ultimately, it did.

>>There was essentially zero local programming on WKOX; WXKS is local seven hours/day M-F.

Plus local newscasts at TOH during the day at least. This is something I had suggested during the
prog talk days: put local hosts on and do something about the signal. They did, only they decided
to house the conserv. talkers on and take on WRKO, WTKK, and for that matter WBZ (Rea at least
is right of center)

Premiere's lineup on talkers: while mostly conservative, note Rhodes and Jackson
http://premiereradio.com/category/view/talk.html

But you're right about the power boost and move from Framingham to Newton. I'm just noting that
most likely the cons. talk will last longer on 1200 than Air America did, but the signal improvement is
a big part of that. Point well taken, Dan.

 

[Jimmy128]

Did you read this?

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1391004

 

[raccoonradio]

A commentator on this site (bobbailey I think) said the following last March :

>>Pending Doom for Talk 1200: Then finally they will cut strings with that blow hard in the morning and the station will flip formats.......

It hasn't happened yet and it may not happen till at least after the '12 election. Sorry to disappoint him,
but the "pending doom" didn't seem to occur. (In fact they hired a big name, controversial talker
and are definitely still in the game...)

>>Did you read this?

Yup I saw it, and apparently it didn't keep CC from hiring him...Wonder if he gets to do his show from
his Manchester-by-the-Money abode, or if he has to drive into Medford to the XKS studios. My guess is
the latter.

 

[dumber than a box of hair]

I don't know how WXKS (AM) does in 25-54, 54-to-death, or other demos, but yes the "6+" ratings are pretty low.

In 6+, WXKS(AM) is in 29th place. In 25-54, 32nd. in 55+, 20th.

 

[raccoonradio]

thanks--they must sell some advertising (or are subsidized by the music FMs) to be able to afford Katz and
Severin. btw Rush makes about $50 million a year I think, and they want to "clear" the show to run ads etc.
Why wouldn't they want to be on a more powerful station (with Rush) like RKO or TKK?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121504302144124805.html
(2008--Rush's $400 million contract...and he's on a station that gets THOSE ratings?)

 

[indystorm]

Who the hell in their right mind would listen to Severin!? He's one of the worst conservative talk show hosts I've ever heard in my entire life. I mean, god, he's almost as bad as Michelle Mcphee... The two should do a talk show together on a local AM in Greenland or something so we don't have to hear them here. (Although I don't think Michelle is on anywhere, anymore) But seriously- this Severin guy is a rat. And just an FYI, I'm to the right of Rush, and also think Michael Savage would be the best president we ever had, just in case there is any confusion as to where I stand.

 

[raccoonradio]

Thankfully McPhee is on Ch 5 now, not talk radio.
Severin did have a run briefly--at one point he beat Howie in the ratings and he does have his followers. I prefer Howie, though if he's in an ad break, people can tune to 1200 and hear Severin spin some
Clapton guitar riff and go nuts about how great he is. Maybe about how great Clapton is, too
Jimmy Severino--he must have something still in him to have been hired by CC after he left Greater...

 

[LA_Guy]

1200 has only 199 foot towers, only around 1/4 wave at 1200. To get out you need taller towers that give you gain on the horizon. As an example, from Framingham they transmitted from a single 450 foot tower with 10 kW and their signal was just OK. Cut the tower height by over half and 5X the power and you've barely made parity with that 10 kW signal with the taller tower.

 

[DanStrassberg]

1200 has only 199 foot towers, only around 1/4 wave at 1200. To get out you need taller towers that give you gain on the horizon. As an example, from Framingham they transmitted from a single 450 foot tower with 10 kW and their signal was just OK. Cut the tower height by over half and 5X the power and you've barely made parity with that 10 kW signal with the taller tower.

The towers at 100 Mt Wayte are, IIRC, 189 degrees at 1200 but are also top loaded, which brings their electrical height to 214 degrees at 1200. IIRC, the inverse-distance field at 1 km was 440 mV/m/kW, for which you allegedly normally require 225-degree (5/8-wavelength) towers. Perhaps getting the efficiency up to 440 mV/m/kW @ 1km with 214-degree towers was accomplished by using a ground system that was somewhat better than the standard 120 1/4-wavelength radials. For example, there might also be a mesh ground screen around the tower bases. Or there could be more than 120 ground radials.

Anyhow, once the electrical height gets beyond 180 degrees, the vertical radiation pattern develops a high-angle lobe. That lobe can cause fading during critical hours and at night in areas close to the antenna (less than ~40 miles). Higher power is alleged to exacerbate this problem. That is why most tall AM antennas are no higher than ~200 degrees (5/9 wavelength). Whether the old WKOX was not powerful enough to experience this problem, I don't know. All I can say is that I live ~16 miles to the northeast of the Mt Wayte site--in the direction of the old 1-kw nighttime radiation maximum. There was plenty of QRM from distant stations, especially WTLA and CFGO, but I never noticed fading.