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SOME NYC FM's WITHOUT HD SIGNALS-10/17/10

P

pjc1961

Around midnight on Sat. night/Sun. morning 10/16-10/17/10, most of the NYC FM stations that transmit from the Empire State Building lost their HD signals while some also lost their RDS data stream content that you'd see scrolling on a radio equipped with an "info screen/readout". Not sure if this was for transmitter maintenance or if there was some incident at the location which necessitated the HD's & RDS's being removed temporarily.

As of this writing (Sun. 10/17/10 around 7:30 AM ET), most HD & almost all RDS data has been restored.

Here's the last non-HD station (103.5 WKTU, 104.3 WAXQ, 106.7 WLTW were all just restored while writing this):

100.3 WHTZ

For 96.3 WXNY - No RDS data
For 105.9 WQXR - No HD? No RDS data? (due to this station's lower power output, not sure if it may be putting out an HD signal and/or RDS data since reception's a little dicey at my location...your accounts may vary depending upon location)
 
Update:

105.9 WQXR is in HD with RDS, leaving Z100 100.3 WHTZ as the last station to be without HD & 96.3 WXNY the last to be without RDS streaming data.
 
pjc1961 said:
Around midnight on Sat. night/Sun. morning 10/16-10/17/10, most of the NYC FM stations that transmit from the Empire State Building lost their HD signals while some also lost their RDS data stream content that you'd see scrolling on a radio equipped with an "info screen/readout". Not sure if this was for transmitter maintenance or if there was some incident at the location which necessitated the HD's & RDS's being removed temporarily.
Click to expand...

Sounds like one of the occasional Empire shutdowns, which happen from time to time when they need to do antenna work there. The non-HD, non-RDS signals you were hearing were probably coming from alternate transmitter sites such as 4 Times Square. I don't know of any NYC FMs that have backup HD transmitters...yet.

A good clue to an Empire shutdown is WBAI 99.5 being completely off the air; AFAIK, it is the only Empire FM with no alternate transmitter site.
 
Thanks for the info Scott.

Update: 8:25 AM ET: WHTZ 100.3 just had its HD restored & WXNY 96.3 just had its RDS data restored.

WBAI 99.5 was on the air continuously throughout at what appeared to be regular power levels.
 
WHTZ and WXNY have backups at 4TS.
When 96.3 was under NY Times ownership, they had a backup in West Orange, NJ near WFME, but when Univision took over they were going to move it to 4TS.
 
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