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Speculation: What's coming to 87.7?

Just what New York needs, another Caribbean station. Now 87.7 will sound like a pirate station, right where it belongs next to another pirate on 87.9. It's even worse than Korean, there are more than 20 other Caribbean stations in the area if you count all the pirates, and most of the pirates sell advertising and can always undercut 87.7's billing rates.

I remember in 2005 I thought 87.7 was a pirate with a Russian format.

87.7 is now New York's "niche" format wheel, from Russian to dance to rhythmic/dance to standards to indie rock to Caribbean. That's 6 formats in a little over 2 years! 105.1 at least spread its formats over 5 years and had more mainstream formats.

One thing's for sure, 87.7 FM will never get more listeners than it did in September 2009. It's a miracle for ANY format to hit 1 million listeners on a low power 87.7. Now, its cume will be just above the HD2s and below the out of market stations. It would be beaten by the pirate stations in the ratings if Arbitron rated pirates.
 
Hasn't Island Broadcasting noticed that there are more than 20 Carribean stations available? Seriously, Island is just ruining WNYZ. They should've just revived the Smooth Jazz format like what another LPTV in Chicago did when nearby WNUA switched to Spanish.
 
Island definitely knows about 87.9, and has complained to the FCC about it, because I emailed the owner of Island directly about the pirate station. I can hear Caribbean pirate stations all over the dial at That Big Blue Building in Queens.
I'd say that there are only 2 other formats 87.7 could have that could beat Pulse's 1 million peak cume, smooth jazz or country.

Island is a business, and as such, it will lease 87.7 to the highest bidder. So far, Indie Darkroom and the Caribbean station are the highest bidders. The Christians and Koreans probably had the lowest bid.
 
The problem with the Carribean pirates is that it's a political nightmare for the people that go in and shut them down and they know that within 12 hours they will be back again. The fines aren't steep enough to stop them and the politicians have long looked the other way.

During the 80's the FCC would go in and not shut these stations down but instead turn down their power. Hello, they aren't supposed to be on the air....yet other pirates playing oldies music got raided and had their equiptment smashed and power cords cut in the very same borough. Hmmm......
 
Then the solution is to increase the fines, not decrease the power. It should be,

First visit: warning
Second visit: $10000 fine + confiscation of transmitter and antenna
Third visit: $50000 fine + jail

Streetz 96 has been fined multiple times, they were off the air for a few months, but they are now back and I presume they got a more powerful transmitter since I can hear them further from Newark than I could in the past. For a station billing more than $10,000 a year, not hard to do in this market even for a pirate station, the fine is a cost of doing business. The government bureaucracy is so slow that it takes years to fine a pirate, and longer to actually enforce the fine.

Pirates are not being shut down anymore. If you think that only Caribbean pirates aren't left alone, there's a dance pirate that has been on for years and covers 20 miles of the NJ Turnpike. You could start an oldies pirate tomorrow and broadcast it on the first adjacent of CBS-FM for years before they even visit you.
 
Could the Caribbean programming already be gone, after 3 days? Indie Darkroom is on WNYZ once again, this morning. The West Indian shows are supposed to run each day at 5 AM- 8pm, according to Indie Darkroom's announcements.
The few days that the Caribbean programming has been on, only music and canned ID's were broadcast. I did not hear any dj's.
I'm going to guess that it is real tough to find anyone interested in leasing a significant block of time on WNYZ. As has been discussed, many radios do not tune down to 87.7. And in the near future, the F.C.C. may require low power TV broadcasters such as WNYZ to switch to digital signals, which would be inaudible on a radio. As a result, any programming being leased on the station may have to be suspended just as it is starting to build an audience. That is not a good business model.
WNYH on Long Island took years to find a broadcaster willing to lease the frequency. It finally started carrying Korean programming within the last year.
Though Pulse 87 on WNYZ did pull in an impressive amount of listeners at its peak (given the disadvantageous frequency and signal), I am skeptical it made much/any money. There were only a handful of advertisers, and some were for questionable products. And it had to be rather costly to have the well known personalities that they hired, especially Star. I am neither pro or anti dance music. But I think it is probably inaccurate when the dance fans blame the demise of Pulse 87 solely on a parent company that had financial problems. If Pulse 87 was truly profitable, it probably could have been sold to another broadcaster, and kept on the air. Perhaps a dance format could be successful on a "regular" frequency in this area, but that is a topic for another thread.
 
I'm going to say this again, there was an Internet dance station interested in leasing 87.7, but they got no response from Island.

Yes, a dance format will be successful on a regular frequency.
 
Nick said:
I'm going to say this again, there was an Internet dance station interested in leasing 87.7, but they got no response from Island.
Click to expand...

Yes, but at that time, Party won the bid. If that dance station were to still be interested in leasing, then I can understand why Island is not responding to them.
 
Nick said:
Just what New York needs, another Caribbean station. Now 87.7 will sound like a pirate station, right where it belongs next to another pirate on 87.9. It's even worse than Korean, there are more than 20 other Caribbean stations in the area if you count all the pirates, and most of the pirates sell advertising and can always undercut 87.7's billing rates.

I remember in 2005 I thought 87.7 was a pirate with a Russian format.

87.7 is now New York's "niche" format wheel, from Russian to dance to rhythmic/dance to standards to indie rock to Caribbean. That's 6 formats in a little over 2 years! 105.1 at least spread its formats over 5 years and had more mainstream formats.

One thing's for sure, 87.7 FM will never get more listeners than it did in September 2009. It's a miracle for ANY format to hit 1 million listeners on a low power 87.7. Now, its cume will be just above the HD2s and below the out of market stations. It would be beaten by the pirate stations in the ratings if Arbitron rated pirates.
Click to expand...

Island doesn't care what's on the air, so long as the check clears you can put yaks mating on the air for all they care.
 
Anything else: the sound quality of the stream from Pulse is awfull, strange sounding soundprocessing, strange EQ. I hope they fix that
 
Nick said:
erwin33 said:
Nick said:
erwin33 said:
Anything else: the sound quality of the stream from Pulse is awfull, strange sounding soundprocessing, strange EQ. I hope they fix that
Click to expand...
It's only a 64k stream
Click to expand...

Yeah I know but I mean the sound quality, not the bitrate.
Click to expand...
Are you listening to the Windows Media or the MP3 stream?
Click to expand...

Windows Media Player but that makes no sense in sound quality, it's the same source.
 
The processing sounds similar to how it was on 87.7 FM. Maybe they are using the same airchain and no one tweaked the processing.
 
Russian pop music and dance programming is back on WNYZ 87.7
The program is apparently called Radio Positiv.
So I believe the brokered lineup is now: Russian on weekdays: Indie Darkroom weeknights after 8 PM: And Carib Star (West Indian programming) on weekends.
 
Does anyone know if the new Russian programming on 87.7 has a website? I would be very interested in hearing the stream if it exists.
 
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