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Silent WTOT 980 Marianna

S

smedge2006

Why has it gone silent?

Is there any chance it could be moved to an adjacent market such as Tallahassee (which has a shortage of good AM facilities).

The station's nighttime power was listed as 340 watts nondirectional -- pretty good for a non-major market class B. (For comparison, WDBO and most of the early Florida AM's were licensed to 500 watts ND at night before getting directional antennas to go to 5 kW in the 1930's and 1940's.)What could they do at night with a couple or three towers? If WTOT is deleted, does that help the nighttime coverage of other 980's in Florida at Gainesville and Pompano Beach?
 
Good example of a station that just outlived its usefulness. Don't know if GM Ed Cearley is still up there running WJAQ, but he had done a great job for many, many years in one of the toughest little markets on earth. Yeah, kind of a cute town, but one with just 6,000 people... a small retail base... 2 AM/FM combos... and a million Class C FMs booming in from Dothan & PC... plus all the TV stations & newspapers picking off the few decent accounts in town. Whew. Yet, WJAQ does okay. At one time they also had the Graceville FM and turned it into a simulcast WTOT-FM. Is that still there?

Yeah, you could probably move 980 and kick the power up. Easiest move would be to a site north of Panama City; maybe west of 231 along route 20--far enough out that a 3-tower DA could cover all of Bay County, day and night with an array shooting out in the Gulf. You'd want to shoot south/soutwest. If you could get 5-kw or 10-kw fulltime it could be a player in some sort of news-talk-or-sports format. Then again, we're talking Panama City, home of a thousand FM sticks already. Yeah, you could probably move it to Tallahassee, instead, but not as easily. The real question: When would you get your money back? The answer: Never.
 
I don't know the reason why WTOT is silent, but noticed it was off during a recent trip through there.

WTYS AM/FM seemed to be the station of choice for the folks we went to visit. I mostly remember WTYS
due to the late Bill Dunkle (another story in itself.)

Tallahassee is another tough AM radio market. 1330 here has just gone silent. Relevant Radio's
attempt at a CP for 880 just got tossed by the FCC..not sure what's happening with 880.

Except for WNLS 1270. the only other AM station to show at all in Tallahassee ratings was
Thomasville's WSTT 730, a gospel station.
 
TOT has been silent for quite a while.....they need a new transmitter....don't think you can do a move on this one due to 980 in Pensacola..
 
cceng said:
TOT has been silent for quite a while.....they need a new transmitter....don't think you can do a move on this one due to 980 in Pensacola..
Click to expand...

Well, remember that both WTOT (1-kw) and WRNE (4-kw) had been running non-directional during the day without apparent interference, and that WRNE's night-time directional rig shoots westward--away from Marianna and Panama City. And, again, it was apparently effective enough to allow TOT to run it's night 340 watts non-DA. With a 3-tower rig in the north part of Bay County--nulling both west & east and a primary lobe to the south--it should work.

But speaking of AM DA rigs that could benefit by moving away from the beach, has anyone ever done such a study for 590? The best part of that signal hits nothing but fish and the night pattern is so severe it can't be heard in far too many neighborhoods. What's it protecting--Atlanta? Wouldn't moving the sticks up to say, Youngstown, allow it to have a killer signal in most of Bay County? Seems to me that WDIZ is the real "sleeping giant"...
 
Can't really see any financial benefit....Real estate costs would make it cost prohibitive...being at the low end of the dial requires big coils, big towers and wide spacing of towers ;)
 
cceng said:
TOT has been silent for quite a while.....they need a new transmitter....don't think you can do a move on this one due to 980 in Pensacola..
Click to expand...

Charlie....they still have that BTA-1R? Didn't they have a whole 'nother one of those transmitters for spare parts?
Be great ham rigs for somebody that wanted some "big iron" . Maybe they were "Curtisized" :)
 
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