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The FCC approves transfer of license for WHIL-FM

Fox 10 News has been unable to reach Elizabeth Brock, Director of the Center for Public Television and Radio for Alabama Public Radio for comment on the transfer.
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Yeah I can relate. I've e-mailed APR about this a few times now and got no answer.

I wonder if WUWF in Pensacola will change up their programming when APR takes over? There will be some overlap of programming that didn't exist when WHIL was independently programmed.

I was also hoping they'd install an HD system so we could get some more choice. WUWF is nice but their buggy exciter and my radios don't get along. I either get silent dropouts on the main channel or no decode at all depending on which radio I use.

It's also sad to note the radio reading service will be going away. I volunteered for the RRS on WBHM in Birmingham years ago and it was a blast.
 
I was recently told that WUWF didn't expect the WHIL transfer to APR to take place "anytime soon". Guess they were wrong. I heard that WHIL was just an organizational mess and no one (at WUWF) is surprised that they failed... too many cooks in the kitchen.
As for changing up programing, WHIL's signal has a significant null in the direction of Pensacola... it's signal isn't that good over here... but it could be safe to assume that WHIL will be simulcasting the Tuscaloosa and Selma APR stations. WUWF claims to be doing just fine and have no immediate programming changes planned unless listeners complain (speculation that some might be upset that all classical music has moved to the HD-2... I was apparently the only person to complain about the loss of Exponential Radio).
Hopefully the people with APR can figure out a way to improve WHIL's signal.. a taller tower perhaps?

Also, Zach, I was told that WUWF is only running 85kw right now (and has been for a while)... saves money on the power bill. That may be causing your reception issues. They concentrate on the Pensacola - Destin audience.
 
poledo, it makes sense for each station to concentrate on its own town since they're not really big regional signals like some of the other stations, so maybe the overlap won't be noticed by many people. I didn't know until I moved down here that Mobile and Pensacola are actually two radio markets! APR will be simulcast 100% on WHIL as I have learned.

Funny thing is as much as I concentrate now on Mobile broadcasting I didn't realize WHIL had a directional antenna. It seems to be pretty strong in the outer suburbs of P'cola, like up near the mall and 9 Mile Road, though. It doesn't surprise me about WUWF skimping on power. I think that's common for cash-strapped operations. If that's true, they still put a very good signal into Baldwin County considering the distance. I do get some HD decoding but it's not reliable enough to be useful. Especially if Xponential radio is gone. :(

I'm sure they could move up to a taller tower (WKRG's tower is real close and already hosts a few FMs) but I doubt they'd move it, with the closeness of the other public stations (WMAH puts a secondary signal into Mobile.) Washington County is kind of a no man's land for public radio but there's no money there.

One thing that's kind of going underreported in this is the impending demise of the radio reading service that WHIL carries on their SCA. It serves about 500 Mobilians with news and magazine readings but when APR takes over the WHIL studio and staff are being made redundant, to use the British term. And that means Alaprint will have nowhere to go.

I rarely write "radio stories" or promote my blog but this is an exception. I've learned that APR's reading service is being shut down, as is WBHM's in Birmingham.

So while I'm happy to have APR programming down here, I hate to see a service for the blind go away. If they're ditching the SCA they should at least throw us a bone with HD and duplicate the lineup on WUAL, which has Xponential on HD-2 and jazz and BBC World Service on the HD-3. Coming in now with a new install they could probably deploy the full 6% power level from the get-go.
 
I had completely forgotten about WHIL's reading service for the blind. I wonder if WSRE TV still has their reading service on the SAP? If so, they now cover all of WHIL's listening area.

I didn't know that HD radio was 6% now, the same person that told me WUWF was only running 80-85kw told me that the HD was at 6kw. I corrected him and told him I thought it was probably 600 watts. He wasn't an engineer so he said I could be right.

WHIL's signal along I-10 and north of Pensacola is just fine but when you get downtown or go out to Pensacola Beach and along Hwy 98 to Navarre it might as well be w"NIL". It's pretty easy to tell where their null is. WHIL is the only FM that I have heard an obvious signal null on, just like AM's that have nulls within sight of their tower strobies.
 
poledo said:
I had completely forgotten about WHIL's reading service for the blind. I wonder if WSRE TV still has their reading service on the SAP? If so, they now cover all of WHIL's listening area.
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Well I'll be. There is an alternate audio channel on WSRE 23.1. I never noticed that before. Being a PBS outlet I imagine they preempt reading a lot for DVS (descriptive video service).

poledo said:
I didn't know that HD radio was 6% now, the same person that told me WUWF was only running 80-85kw told me that the HD was at 6kw. I corrected him and told him I thought it was probably 600 watts. He wasn't an engineer so he said I could be right.
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I believe it's 6%, but I'm no engineer so that could be wrong. It originally was 1% and the majority of HD installs now are that. WUAL in Tuscaloosa is supposedly 6% which seems logical from my experience of getting solid HD decodes in Hoover and Birmingham with little effort.

I figured WUWF was 6% because of how well their HD seems to work in Pensacola. I could be wrong. 6% of 100 kW would be 6,000 watts, wouldn't it? I really AM that bad at math. ;)
 
WHIL started out with a 200 ft tower on the Spring Hill College campus. Around 1990 they decided to go for wider coverage at 1000 ft up the old WKRG TV tower. There was a second-adjacent channel short spacing problem between 91.3 WHIL and 91.7 WEGS Milton. WHIL had to utilize a directional antenna to slightly reduce the radiation in the direction of WEGS.

FM DA nulls are not deep like you see on AM station coverage maps. I don't know if the rules have changed, but back then the FCC had just decided to allow short-spacing, only up to 8 km (5 miles). I forget what the actual numbers were, but FCC would not accept a DA design that had more than X db of difference of radiation between the deepest null point and the circular part of the radiation, and the rate-of-change could not be more than X db per degree of rotation. In other words, the nulls weren't deep, and they were generally broad.

WHIL's signal, or lack of it, in the Pensacola is not because of which side of the tower its antenna bays are mounted on.

My station in the same time frame, WDLT 98.3, in upgrading from Class A to C2, chose to short-space two other stations in order to get a slightly more advantageous xmtr site; so it had to implement a DA. This was in the early 90s, and I knew book-chapter-verse about the topic back then.

The short tower on the SHC campus, BTW, was once the site for WPAN TV 53's translator that pretended to import its signal into Mobile.

I doubt WHIL ever thought it would replace WUWF as the Pensacola area's first choice for NPR programming (same goes for replacing Mississippi Public Radio along the Miss coast), but WHIL nonetheless wanted to improve its reach. That 200 ft tower on Old Shell Road didn't cut it.
 
As for WHIL going up higher on some tower ... this might result in their having to deepen the null toward 91.7 WEGS, and perhaps having to put in another null in the opposite direction (isn't there also a 91.7 on the Miss Coast?).
 
Learning something new several times a day... I had always thought WHIL's null was to protect WPSM 91.1 in FWB. That station is first adjacent located dead center in the observable null.

Also, Zach, the way I interpreted the conversation was that the HD signal of WUWF was 6% of their licensed power of 100kw, therefore 6kw, since I thought the law was 1% max I responded with my "are you sure it isn't only running 600 watts." When I asked about putting Exponential Radio back on as an HD-3 I was told that would degrade the analog signal... confused... I'm don't have a clue how it works. WUWF has the equipment and funding to broadcast at 100kw, they're just not pumping all the allowed power to the analog signal at this time. I didn't ask how long they had been doing this, I was just told it wasn't necessary.
I was also told that the new 88.1, WOLM, in Biloxi had no impact on WUWF... another hint that WUWF has no interest in reaching Mobile. The only competition on WUWF's radar are WKGC and WFSU (WFSW). Also, WEGS, being registered with the FCC under the name of "Florida Public Radio", gets WUWF some grief from people who assume it's owned by the university.


Since I brought up WSRE earlier in this thread I'll share the sad story from tonight's WEAR news.

http://www.wsre.org/pressroom/StateFundingCutsDeepImpactWSRE.asp

FL's new Yankee Gov. Scott vetoed funding for public broadcasting which is resulting in WSRE laying off 5 of their full time employees. This may reduce the amount of local programing on Pensacola's PBS station. Of course this probably means WSRE's "SightLine reading service" will also get cut. Good thing they got that nice state-of-the-art studio and one of the strongest HD transmitters in the Mobile/Pensacola market before the money was cut off.

I must stop typing. This is getting out of control.
 
WHIL's DA may indeed take into consideration 91.1 FWB. Back then I knew both the GM and CE of WHIL and I remember them mentioning 91.7 Milton as a problem. I don't think 91.1 FWB existed back then, and their radio-locator map shows it to be DA - perhaps it protects both 91.3 (adjacent) AND 91.7 (3rd adjacent).

WHIL passed, at the time, for a full C, as it was over 984 ft haat, thus avoiding being downgraded to a C1 (Class C stations back then had a time frame in which to get above 984 [300 m] or be downgraded). The intermediate classification, C0, did not exist at the time. I dunno if WHIL is now considered a C or C0. That would define the km of required separation to 91.7 and 91.1, both of which seem to be C3.
 
I looked at a Broadcasting Yearbook 1994 on line. It sez 91.1 FWB came on in 1985, but that publication's listing had it with 380 watts @ 120 ft haat (real blowtorch, there!), so I doubt WHIL had to factor it in.
 
J Alex Bowab said:
As for WHIL going up higher on some tower ... this might result in their having to deepen the null toward 91.7 WEGS, and perhaps having to put in another null in the opposite direction (isn't there also a 91.7 on the Miss Coast?).
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The 91.7 in MS is WAOY, owned by American Family Radio. Their 60 dBu protected contour circle goes from the LA to AL border almost perfectly. The TX site is near Saucier.

Going back to the directional restrictions on FM, I too wonder if the FCC has loosened up their requirements. There are some new non-comm CPs scattered across the state, with some real odd patterns, like this for a Piedmont station. The contour map doesn't look quite as odd but it's still a far cry from most FM directional patterns I see.

poledo said:
Also, Zach, the way I interpreted the conversation was that the HD signal of WUWF was 6% of their licensed power of 100kw, therefore 6kw, since I thought the law was 1% max I responded with my "are you sure it isn't only running 600 watts." When I asked about putting Exponential Radio back on as an HD-3 I was told that would degrade the analog signal... confused... I'm don't have a clue how it works. WUWF has the equipment and funding to broadcast at 100kw, they're just not pumping all the allowed power to the analog signal at this time. I didn't ask how long they had been doing this, I was just told it wasn't necessary.
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I don't know much about the technical side of HD, either, but I don't see how changing the channel split on HD would affect the analog signal. Just having HD period affects the analog signal somewhat. Maybe what your contact was trying to infer was it would reduce the bitrate of the HD-1 (primary) feed, which is logical.

WUAL's HD-3 mostly runs BBC World Service and is in mono, even for the jazz programming. For background audio it's OK but it certainly doesn't sound great. The HD-1 doesn't sound bad. Not as good as some our locals that don't run any subchannels, though, like i100 or BLX.

poledo said:
I was also told that the new 88.1, WOLM, in Biloxi had no impact on WUWF... another hint that WUWF has no interest in reaching Mobile. The only competition on WUWF's radar are WKGC and WFSU (WFSW).
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WOLM has a tiny signal. It barely covers all of Biloxi and Ocean Springs. Last time I was through the area I recall losing it before reaching Pascagoula going east and Gulfport going west.

poledo said:
Since I brought up WSRE earlier in this thread I'll share the sad story from tonight's WEAR news.
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Sorry to hear that. I find myself watching WSRE more than WEIQ because of their programming choices. Plus it's a solid OTA signal whereas WEIQ is much weaker here in Foley. Or it used to be; they supposedly boosted power a while back and I have checked their signal lately.

Odd that WUWF is content with serving Pensacola while WUWF's signal upgrade puts them in full contender status in Mobile and Baldwin Counties.
 
If the new WOLM hadn't been allocated to the Biloxi market and no other christian stations are in the way, I bet that WUWF would be looking to take advantage of Mobile's loss of local public radio. I know the rules are looser for the non-comm band so I assume that if WOLM didn't exist WUWF might have been able to move to the old 107.3 tower or possibility one of the Wilcox Road towers and keep it's C1 (or better) classification.

My wildest rant during that recent conversation with my contact at WUWF was along the lines of, "if you guys are doing so well, WUWF should have (1) bought WHIL's license, (2) traded it to one of the christian stations (preferably Mobile-Pensacola WBHY, although they could have also settled for the commercial Pensacola-FWB station WKFP or Pensacola DMA only non-com signals WEGS or WTGF, (3) maximized the new signal, and (4) split the WUWF programming between two analog signals, one for NPR talk and one for eclectic music. That tangent was so out there it didn't even garner a response.
For those of you that have followed my posts on this board (and N. Florida), this rant was exactly the type of nonsense that flows out of my head without thought.

Another interesting article published today covering the budgets of both WUWF (NPR) and WSRE (PBS), yeah it's biased, but most of you can read between the lines:
http://inweekly.net/wordpress/?p=5376
I hope this is a permanent link.

As for WSRE's budget, do any of y'all know how much PBS charges WSRE to carry V-Me? There's nowhere near enough Mexicans around here to justify that WSRE-23.4 sub channel.
 
Mississippi Public Radio has an 88.1 located between Meridian and Hattiesburg. Occasionally one can hear it interfering with WUWF in the Mobile area. I think that station (WMAW?) would preclude WUWF moving any closer in the direction of Mobile.
 
Now that WHIL's settled into being an APR station, I've been told that WUWF is adding some radio reading service type programming to their newly-added HD-3 subchannel. Right now it's just a time-delayed repeat of the main feed, but the plans are to pepper in some RRS stuff in the future.

Also, the software update that gave them the ability to add the third channel fixed whatever glitch caused my "good" Insignia to not decode. I listened to them in HD for a bit this morning and it was perfectly solid.

Still no response from APR about future plans for WHIL in HD or anything else.
 
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