• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

This FM station shuts off at night

A

AnyHuman

Guest
I presume they're turning it off at night to save electricity. Last night I heard it turn off at midnight and now it's back on the air.
BTW for anyone curious about the format I heard Spanish Christian music last night and English Christian music today. The audio is kind of weird on 103.1 like their sound equipment needs to be fixed.
https://fccdata.org/?facid=976
 
AnyHuman said:
I presume they're turning it off at night to save electricity. Last night I heard it turn off at midnight and now it's back on the air.
BTW for anyone curious about the format I heard Spanish Christian music last night and English Christian music today. The audio is kind of weird on 103.1 like their sound equipment needs to be fixed.
Click to expand...

The availability of syndicated programming and the ease of local automation have made it easy for many stations operate in the overnight hours. But there is little gain in smaller markets where there is not much post-midnight work and activity, so it is not uncommon for stations to sign off at 11 PM, Midnight or 1 AM.

For lower power stations like this one, the savings in electricity are minimal. They may just find running 24/7 to be unnecessary.

It's amusing to remember that many stations in the late 50's and 60's decided to go 24/7 simply to avoid the occasional problem where the transmitter would not start cold at 6 AM. In that era of hollow state transmitters and less reliable components, it was better to run through the night to be sure that the station was on the air at the start of morning drive time!
 
Before FM was really a factor, most(AM)stations used to sign off by 1AM. In Portland, I can only think of KEX, KISN and KWJJ that ran all night.
 
There are a number of Mexican stations that shut down overnight, programming 6am-12am.

There are also the rural NCS stations in the state of Campeche that have limited broadcast hours. One broadcasts from 6am to 8pm and the other two close down at 6pm. All three have a common playlist, too.
 
AnyHuman said:
I presume they're turning it off at night to save electricity. Last night I heard it turn off at midnight and now it's back on the air.
BTW for anyone curious about the format I heard Spanish Christian music last night and English Christian music today. The audio is kind of weird on 103.1 like their sound equipment needs to be fixed.
https://fccdata.org/?facid=976
Click to expand...

And it's a rimshot of El Paso, not some extremely rural station!
 
KPAS has had that format for decades. I would’ve thought it would be on 24 hours by now just because, as David said, it’s so easy to do. Then again, making money with religious programming isn’t as easy for standalone stations as it was 10+ years ago. Being on FM probably helps a little, but preachers can reach their audience via streaming easily and cheaply today and don’t need radio as much.
 
I haven't heard any commercials of any kind, so not sure how KPAS makes money. The audio sounds to me like it doesn't have any compression whatsoever, so the louder songs are distorted somewhat, while the quiet parts of music are barely audible.
I heard Christmas music earlier but now it's back to regular Christian music. If I were them I would play Christmas music up until tomorrow at least, but KPAS is not mine.
As for the format I'd say it's soft Christian music and some gospel. But none of the pop stuff like what you'd hear on K-Love.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The station has no website, Facebook page, nothing... I haven't heard any way on the air for listeners to contact it, in fact I've been listening and only have heard 1 or 2 announcements which just say the call letters. So there's no way to tell them about the bad audio unless you call the phone number listed with the FCC, which I'm not going to do. I just don't know how the heck they make money or why no website exists. Most other stations I've heard of have Facebooks at least.
 
Actually, there is a way to contact them... Wow these people are old school, and that might not even be a bad thing! I just heard their end-of-day message played right now before 103.1 shut off for the night.
They announced their studio and transmitters are located at a certain address. Googling the address took me to this page which seems to be a listing for a cell tower, owned by the person who owns KPAS-FM.
http://www.cellreception.com/towers/details.php?id=1052127
They also said the station is licensed by the FCC, and to address all comments to the owner, and mail the comments to the address which is listed with the FCC for this station.

Maybe some engineer reading these forums near El Paso can fix their sound equipment for them. Hopefully Algie's nice LOL...
 
So many of these preach & teach stations are brokered... if you can't sell the overnight, you might as well sign off. Anything else would cost you money - not just the electricity but the programming itself.
 
It's not even brokered. At least not during the holidays. Mostly what I heard was just music, but they did play a half-hour Christian show on Sunday morning.
 
Here's a clip of KPAS as it sounded on December 23.
https://www.sendspace.com/file/d8foak

As you will be able to hear the sound is distorted somewhat, but at the same time it's kind of quiet on the transmitter. Hopefully they aren't using a bad engineer.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom