That's the $10 question.
If it is just "transmitter work" at 4TS, and they'll be off, then probably not.
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So what other stations broadcasting from 4TS will be off the air...
- Thread starter Spareparts
- Start date
If it is just "transmitter work" at 4TS, and they'll be off, then probably not.
Hahaha
If they weren’t paying rent when the primary was on Empire, they’re definitely not paying rent when it’s a backup
WQXR would be a better candidate as their power dropped to 610 watts when they moved from 96.3 to 105.9.
It sounds like Ariel didn't collect enough quarters in her paper cup when she was working for the Friends of 'BAI. 
Maintenance shutdowns take place at community antenna sites for regular inspection and minor repairs to antennas, structural inspection of the tower, or new antenna installation. Everything on the tower gets shut down to protect the tower climbers from RF exposure.
If you want to stay on the air through maintenance or emergency repairs... you pay to have an aux site. While it is possible for this work to be done at night it's far less efficient and more costly and you'd end up with many more nights of outage versus what could be accomplished more quickly during the day.
If you want to stay on the air through maintenance or emergency repairs... you pay to have an aux site. While it is possible for this work to be done at night it's far less efficient and more costly and you'd end up with many more nights of outage versus what could be accomplished more quickly during the day.
WBLI out at Patchogue is one of the reasons why WQXR is only 600 watts.
Plus WQXR is licensed to Newark, and at one time, their tower was in West Orange.
Additionally, WBLI protects WQXR with a directional antenna.
They also have 105.9 in CT too.
I don‘t recall 105.9 ever transmitting from West Orange. I knew about downtown Newark and a couple of sites in NYC ...but not West Orange. What can you share about it?
West Orange was/is an aux site. It was never the main site for 105.9.
To flesh out some of the answers above: because 105.9 in Newark and Hartford and 106.1 in Patchogue all existed before the current class and spacing rules were adopted in 1964, they exist in a proximity that wouldn't be allowed if they were built new today.
Hartford had more power than the other two earlier on. Patchogue and Newark were both the functional equivalent of today's class A signals while Hartford was a B.
"Pre-1964" signals have been able to expand through mutual interference agreements, which is how WBLI became a full class B (but with DA protection to Newark and Hartford) and how WNWK/WCAA/WQXR was able to go to Chrysler and then Empire as a B1.
There were similar agreements with other short-spaced pre-64 stations, most notably 103.3 Princeton/103.5 Lake Success/103.7 Newton and between WBLS and Boyertown PA on 107.5... and of course Newark and Media PA on 100.3.
Before 1960, quite a few stations were low ERP on AM towers. All stations were protected to the 1 mV/m contour (now generally called the 60 dBu F(50,50) contour) with protection ratios of 10:1 at 0 kHz, 2:1 at 200 kHz, 1:10 at 400 kHz, and 1:100 at 600 kHz. They used no contour overlap to allow all stations at the time. All, or almost all, stations were fully protected under the previous rules. In the early 1960s, the FCC reduced the protected contour of Class Bs to 54 dBu F(50,50) and started the constantly changing Section 73.207 distance separation requirements and Section 73.213 for short spaced stations, allowing them up to full ERP and full HAAT for their class, in particular, 50 kW/500 feet cochannel and first adjacent Class Bs were allowed to be 25 miles short spaced, then 124.5 and 79.5 miles respectively. The FCC also created the rules that allowed short spacing. Short spacing is mutual. I'll see if this will paste, the extremely popular version of Section 73.213 until about 1980. Now, stations are frequently forced to have DAs where the actual licensed measured pattern is very distorted and the arc of the nulls are often much less than the required relative field level in most cases, even in the maximum directions, if they move the TL. These are shown in many license applications now online, which I have reviewed.
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It does have a purpose - it broadcasts Pacifica content into NYC. It's not a great listen, and it's incredibly poorly run, but Pacifica's and the local board's sense of purpose and mission (and the democratic inertia David alluded to) is the main reason the station doesn't get sold for multi millions. They believe they're doing good work, and it's their station, so none of us get to decide what is done with it.
In any case, given the state of station sales, if it ever did get sold it'd become an Air1 outlet. 95.5 and 99.5 for EMF, nice and neat and tidy.
I would imagine most operators would be kicking themselves for not selling 99.5 2 decades ago (or even a decade ago) when terrestrial sticks were still worth a lot more than they were since the late 2000s slide in station prices that has continued. I’m sure it could still fetch more than most other signals today, but I bet when WFME 94.7 was sold to Cumulus, WBAI was worth a LOT more being a NYC full class B (on par with all of the market’s other big FMs) in today’s adjusted dollars. I bet they’ve turned down a ton of sweet offers over the years.
Of course, the WBAI facility would probably require costly upgrades by anyone who bought it - a lot of times their equipment seems to barely be hanging on, just like the company. I would find it pretty cool to see what their equipment looks like.
But of course all of this is hypothetical, as long as Pacifica continues, WBAI will likely continue. I would be surprised if Pacifica is kicking themselves over any past decisions. Quite similar to religious broadcasters in the fact they believe in the message they are getting out (or, well, as of right now, WBAI is attempting to) and will do whatever possible to continue getting it out.
Of course, the WBAI facility would probably require costly upgrades by anyone who bought it - a lot of times their equipment seems to barely be hanging on, just like the company. I would find it pretty cool to see what their equipment looks like.
But of course all of this is hypothetical, as long as Pacifica continues, WBAI will likely continue. I would be surprised if Pacifica is kicking themselves over any past decisions. Quite similar to religious broadcasters in the fact they believe in the message they are getting out (or, well, as of right now, WBAI is attempting to) and will do whatever possible to continue getting it out.
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Unless the FCC ownership rules are changed. I believe that if iHeart could buy another FM, they would. I think that's the case in several major markets. How would they do it? Their cash flow is huge, even though they have a lot of debt.
I believe that if there's concern about the commercial band becoming filled with non-com religious stations, the only solution is for the FCC to revisit the ownership limits. I think there's a good case to remove them entirely. There are no new owners waiting in the wings. That was proven by Cumulus a few years ago. But to either remove AM stations from the limits (which iHeart opposes), or just allow one more station per group in the Top 25 markets would make a big improvement. Unless that happens, you will continue to see commercial properties sold to non-com religious operators, because they're the only ones with cash.
There's a boatload (maybe it's a battleship-load) of right-wing talk stations out there, many of which operate under the cover of being "religious" broadcasters. Hundreds (thousands?) of them. There are very few trying to sell any kind of a left-wing ("liberal", "progressive", whatever label you want to apply) message. To its credit, Pacifica has hung on with that mission for decades, and unless you also feel the wingnuts should be eliminated from the broadcast bands -- and we'd have no argument if you did -- then there's nothing wrong with Pacifica continuing to try.
The problem comes from them being bad broadcasters. They didn't used to be, and in isolated cases they aren't. (As an example, listen to the Thursday evening music block on Berkeley's KPFA, and see if it doesn't remind you a bit of late 60's WNEW-FM, assuming you're old enough to remember it.)
But for the most part, they're anarchists, and there is no real management, and no one with the power to say no to bad ideas, or You're Fired to poor execution. If that structural problem could get fixed, and then they magically won the PowerBall or MegaMillions lottery so they could pay off the debt and bring the physical plant up to contemporary standards, then they might serve a real purpose in advocating for progressive approaches to our national problems. Note that I'm not saying left-wing ideas are all winners, many of them aren't, but neither is the right-wing agenda.
But as things stand now, WBAI and its Pacifica brethren are just too few and too chaotic to be effectual.
,/soapbox>
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