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The master list of Class B AMs that downgraded to class D

J

joebtsflk1

A recent entry in http://www.northpine.com prompted this topic. WAYY 790 Eau Claire WI is proposing to end its 5 kW, 3 tower DA night service in favor of 112 watts ND at night. WAYY will keep 5 kW ND for daytime. And yes, there is an FM translator in WAYY's future.

Another station that also went down that route (from searching the boards here) is WCVL, Crawfordsville IN, once 4 tower DA at night, now flea power ND.
 
To downgrade a licensed station with the understanding that a translator will never have to move, downgrade, or worse, is a risky gamble. I see every translator as a temporary benefit, just waiting to be yanked of the air with no compensation.
 
ai4i said:
To downgrade a licensed station with the understanding that a translator will never have to move, downgrade, or worse, is a risky gamble. I see every translator as a temporary benefit, just waiting to be yanked of the air with no compensation.
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It's much harder to put a genie back in the bottle then to keep it in. Why would the FCC rescind the FM translator authorization? Telecoms clamoring for additional spectrum and getting the high end of 88-108 MHz, with the FCC resettling the full-power stations as compensation? That's about as likely as decommissioning 540-1710 KHz and turning it over to hams.
 
CTListener said:
It's much harder to put a genie back in the bottle then to keep it in. Why would the FCC rescind the FM translator authorization? Telecoms clamoring for additional spectrum and getting the high end of 88-108 MHz, with the FCC resettling the full-power stations as compensation? That's about as likely as decommissioning 540-1710 KHz and turning it over to hams.
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Telecoms need UHF and microwave frequencies. VHF and below are useless for that kind of service. There is no chance whatsoever of either broadcast band being reallocated for any reason. Not only would that violate the ITU allocations and several treaties, but there's no reason whatsoever for doing so.

But hams in the Ancient Modulation band would certainly be welcome, at least by us hams. We'll take whatever we can get. :D
 
You don't "get" my point, that translators are secondary from the get-go.
Any full power station that chooses to move geographically or on the dial or both, or that can increase its facility must be protected by translators and LPFMs with no concern for these secondary stations

You just downgraded your AM so you could afford to put a translator on the only frequency you could find, 107.9. It is a good translator with 250w at more than 300m above average terrain and covers your market as well as the full power stations which are all 6kw, class "A"s. A station in an adjacent market moves from 96.9 to 96.7, which now makes 107.7 available by removing the IF spacing issue. I put my station on 107.7 and you go off the air with no legal recourse. No bargaining, no deals, no recourse, NO TRANSLATOR. This is how it works and how it has worked in many situations. Meanwhile, another AM has just modified its directional pattern and you cannot return your AM to its previous night pattern. A full power license is primary and more valuable than a translator which has a stronger signal and covers more people because it is written in stone.
 
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That is absolutely correct. Translators and LPFMs have suffered the fate of a station elsewhere moving to a new tower site, frequency or increasing power. The translator or LPFM can opt for another frequency at their expense if another frequency is even available. I suppose the encroached upon station might have cause to sue the station that moved, trying the angle they intentionally harmed their business but I have never heard of that being done, perhaps because the offending station was granted approval by a federal entity and by FCC rules had done nothing wrong. To set yourself up for this to happen could certainly backfire on you. The only cases I might consider are in more remote locations where several open frequencies allow for an easy move should a distant station cause the translator to move.

I get that running direction is a bigger deal than not. It is more technically challenging, costlier to construct and maintain, but flea power at night could hurt you

If the AM is going for the translator, then the lower nighttime power means the AM could, if I read the rules correctly, sign off at sunset if the night power is under 250 watts. How that applies when you have a translator is something I do not know. At one AM I worked our engineer could get us 260 watts nighttime but he suggested we file for 249 watts since we would have that option of operating 2/3rds of the time 6 pm to Midnight or simply going off at sunset. If the AM has low enough power then the added cost of running two transmitters can be reduced to just the translator.
 
The electric cost of running the transmitter is pretty much a rounding error with modern solid-state AM transmitters. Gone are the days of dumping 900 watts into a dummy load to hit that night power. I figure a 112 watt TPO would run something like $5 to $10 a month as opposed to shutting off the transmitter depending on efficiency and the price of electricity in your neck of the woods.

Another station for the list: WXLW 950 Indianapolis. Has a CP to go Class D with 13 W at night.
 
We have one here in Phoenix: KMIK/KHEP 1580 is going from 50 kW night to 95 watts night.

The dramatic drop is two-fold. The night pattern was highly directional and required six towers on a rather prime piece of land. While the sale was pending, one of the towers crashed down as its guy anchor had rusted. An inspection revealed the other five were about to be goners as well. I'm expecting the land will be sold and developed for some industrial use; it is squeezed between a trailer park and a freeway.

It helped that the new owners already owned an AM and plan on diplexing the two stations on one tower.

The supreme irony is that this move will unite the former KHEP transmitter shack, with KHEP sign still on, with an actual KHEP station! (The former KHEP, now KXEG 1280, changed its calls in 1999.)
 
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WCVL downgraded way before it was possible to get an FM translator. The pattern went in a ribbon straight east and west, missing a lot of Montgomery County. 5 watts though....
 
I was reading about the whole WOWO/WLIB thing in the 90's on 1190 what was the real story?

Was Inner City at the time upset they had to Power Down at night, I would think it was a d**k move for in to buy WOWO and make them Class B
 
The whole WOWO/WLIB fiasco was tragic. This is how I understand the whole thing:

The FCC approved the purchase of WOWO by Inner City ... even after petitions were presented to the FCC, asking that the purchase be denied.
Inner City purchased WOWO for the sole purpose of reducing WOWO's nighttime power and changing the pattern to provide protection for WLIB.
After succeeding in reducing WOWO's nighttime power to 9.8kW and changing the pattern, Inner City sold WOWO at a loss.
 
frankberry said:
The whole WOWO/WLIB fiasco was tragic. This is how I understand the whole thing:

The FCC approved the purchase of WOWO by Inner City ... even after petitions were presented to the FCC, asking that the purchase be denied.
Inner City purchased WOWO for the sole purpose of reducing WOWO's nighttime power and changing the pattern to provide protection for WLIB.
After succeeding in reducing WOWO's nighttime power to 9.8kW and changing the pattern, Inner City sold WOWO at a loss.
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By the 1990s, there was no need for WOWO to cover most, if not all of Indiana. Their rock days under Westinghouse were long over, and they were a plain-vanilla adult contemporary station at the time of the sale to Inner City, and went to syndicated talk 2 years later.

At 9800 watts at night, they still cover the Ft. Wayne market, and that's all that matters. They're still 50 kW ND when it counts, and they air the usual talkers with some local shows during the day. But other than local programming, their programming is available on other stations within their coverage area -- Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coast to Coast, etc. They could downgrade to 10 kW days and it wouldn't matter. They'd still cover NE Indiana well.

And the bottom line is: New York is still orders of magnitude more important than rural NE Indiana, even with Indiana's 2nd largest city in the middle of it.
 
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KeithE4 said:
They could downgrade to 10 kW days and it wouldn't matter. They'd still cover NE Indiana well.

And the bottom line is: New York is still orders of magnitude more important than rural NE Indiana, even with Indiana's 2nd largest city in the middle of it.
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In fact, they felt they needed an FM translator to compete; that 75 watt FM covers about 60% of the total market population.
 
Inner City originally wanted to bump WOWO down to a Daytimer (no more Komet hockey), but Federated had sold other stations to buy WOWO from Inner City and have them agree to the 9800 watts at night. (By the way, regular listeners don't want to "DX" syndicated shows they like from distant markets.)
 
gr8oldies said:
(By the way, regular listeners don't want to "DX" syndicated shows they like from distant markets.)
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Which is why few people outside of NE Indiana listened to WOWO once their music days ended. Their daytime signal covers the northern 2/3 of Indiana, plus southern Michigan and eastern Ohio, but carries the same right wing babblers that air on many AM (and probably a few FM) stations all over that region.
 
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