• 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

Translator is #1*

R

Ryan Williams

Nielsen Audio Fall Ratings for Bryan-College station were released today and Brazos Valley Communications' regional mexican "Radio Alegria" KTAM (1240 AM) is #1*. Of course almost all the listening is on the translator K261EY (100.1 FM), which is very very decent throughout Brazos County. Maybe @Huff or someone else can jump in, but I can't recall a translator ever being #1* in any market.

See the full list here: Bryan/College Station

* Asterisk is because Bryan Broadcasting, which is the dominant radio company in the market, does not subscribe to Nielsen and none of their stations are listed in this release. With a share that high, I wouldn't be surprised if KTAM leads even if Bryan's stations were included.
 
Ryan Williams said:
Nielsen Audio Fall Ratings for Bryan-College station were released today and Brazos Valley Communications' regional mexican "Radio Alegria" KTAM (1240 AM) is #1*. Of course almost all the listening is on the translator K261EY (100.1 FM), which is very very decent throughout Brazos County. Maybe @Huff or someone else can jump in, but I can't recall a translator ever being #1* in any market.
Click to expand...
It's one thing to preface it as a translator being #1 if it was HD fed where 95% plus of listening is guaranteed to be coming off the translator, but there are plenty of AMs with translators that have led their market
 
lanceventa said:
It's one thing to preface it as a translator being #1 if it was HD fed where 95% plus of listening is guaranteed to be coming off the translator, but there are plenty of AMs with translators that have led their market
Click to expand...
At one point years ago, W238CH/WYDS-HD2 Decatur IL led the market with a 9.4 share in Eastlan's ratings.
 
lanceventa said:
It's one thing to preface it as a translator being #1 if it was HD fed where 95% plus of listening is guaranteed to be coming off the translator, but there are plenty of AMs with translators that have led their market
Click to expand...

I was not trying to be misleading. KTAM is a 380 watt coffee pot AM that is jammed into an FM tower. I'm sure there is accidental listeners on 1240, but it isn't a great signal and doesn't sound very good either. I would guess its share of the audience is a rounding error. Effectively all the listening is on K261EY, which is quite good.

This isn't a situation like KLBJ in Austin where the market is five counties and the AM gets out much further than a 250 watt translator can and the format is spoken word with many decades of AM listening habit. Maybe that one is 50/50 or 60/40.
 
1,000 watt Gospel WSOK-AM/Savannah was #1 there in the Spring '22 survey, thanks in large measure to its 180 watt translator.

WYDS-HD2/W238CH was #1 in the public Arbitron ratings in Spring 2013, though it was second to a non-subscriber.
 
b-turner said:
A translator could cover Bryan/College Staion proper with a listenable signal. Bryan Brodcasting would likely snuff them out. These guys have dominated in the market since I was there in the 1980s.
Click to expand...

Bryan Broadcasting has a regional mexican format on a translator in BCS too... "La Jefa", but according to Eastlan, it is substantially behind Radio Alegria.

I don't listen to either, so I am unsure if it is related to signal (Alegria is stronger in most of the market), programming, or first-mover advantage (or perhaps some of each).
 
I don’t log every release, but the Wayback Machine has one from a few years ago when Bryan was a subscriber. It’s not inconceivable that an 8 share could lead the market.

web.archive.org

Bryan/College Station - RadioInsight

BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION, TX RADIO RATINGS FOR SUBSCRIBING STATIONS AQH Share for Persons 12+, Mon-Sun 6AM-Mid Data Released: 8/8/23 Subscribers Added: 8/8/23 SubscriberFormatFA 21SP 22FA 22SP 23 KKYS-FMHot Adult Contemporary4.94.94.26.6 KPWJ-FMContemporary Christian4.94.96.66.6 KNDE-FMPop...
web.archive.org web.archive.org
 
Inconceivable? No. Improbable? Sure as the dickens. This is a graveyarder we're talking about here. Doesn't even make it to the hiccup of Kurten on TX 21, Ryan. The translator, while ok in Bryan and College Station, does not cover all of Brazos County. Go towards Navasota and it's struggling before you get much south of CS. Eastern reach is just about to Kurten, and northbound 100.1 begins to fade well before Robertson County. There's not a trace of either, of course, in Hearne.

Of course, when you're totally focused on a buttermilk-battered chicken fried steak from Johnny Reb's Dixie Cafe, who cares if you can hear KTAM or its relay translator in town??
 
kevtronics said:
Any reason why they never upgraded their graveyard channel AM signal to 1 kW?
Click to expand...
I imagine it has to do with 1240 being the "also-ran" country station behind WTAW, in its day, and with 250w full-time it was sufficient enough to cover the two towns back then. I can't think of an adjacent facility that would stand in its way of a power increase. KCOH, KWTX, and KTAE are all a pretty good distance away from Aggieland.

But why would one do that for a graveyarder in 2026?
 
KTAM's history cards show that it did upgrade to 1 kW daytime in 1964, when the FCC granted near-blanket authority to class IV stations to go to 1000 watts day.

The current 380 watt day/night operation (which appears to date to 1986) is almost certainly a reflection of the extremely tall electrical height of the tower (226 degrees), which makes it much more efficient than a standard 90-degree tower. 380 watts into that tower produces roughly the same field strength that a 1000-watt signal would produce into a normal quarter-wave tower, and is thus the most the FCC would allow KTAM to use.
 
rosecitymedia said:
Inconceivable? No. Improbable? Sure as the dickens. This is a graveyarder we're talking about here. Doesn't even make it to the hiccup of Kurten on TX 21, Ryan. The translator, while ok in Bryan and College Station, does not cover all of Brazos County. Go towards Navasota and it's struggling before you get much south of CS. Eastern reach is just about to Kurten, and northbound 100.1 begins to fade well before Robertson County. There's not a trace of either, of course, in Hearne.
Click to expand...

Here is the thing though, the Bryan-College Station market is only Brazos and Robertson (Hearne) Counties. And the Robertson share of the market population is way less than 10% of the overall pie. Eastern Brazos is sparsley populated. Is a 250 translator a great signal? No, but from 460 ft in the middle of all population it is adequate, which is kind of the point of this entire thread.

rosecitymedia said:
Of course, when you're totally focused on a buttermilk-battered chicken fried steak from Johnny Reb's Dixie Cafe, who cares if you can hear KTAM or its relay translator in town??
Click to expand...

I've eaten there before and the Dixie cafe might be the best thing in all of Hearne. Their CFS is strong!
 
fybush said:
"...extremely tall electrical height of the tower (226 degrees), which makes it much more efficient than a standard 90-degree tower. 380 watts into that tower produces roughly the same field strength that a 1000-watt signal would produce into a normal quarter-wave tower..."
Click to expand...
scott could you explain that? my limited knowledge is only that a lower frequency station is typically on a taller tower, and that some stations use a 1/8 wave, or 1/4 wave or even a half or full wave. it seems like a full wave would be the best antenna, so i've always thought that if a full wave was simply too tall that the station would elect to use a factor of that. is that anywhere close to being correct? what does the 226 degrees mean? what is a standard 90 degree tower? i've seen some stations on the low end, near 600khz, that had a nearly 600 foot stick, and some others higher on the band that had 300 or even 150 feet. i've worked at a station that had a class A fm, 3000 @ 300 ft (back in the day), so our FM antennas were on the 300 ft tower and the 1400 khz am was a folded unipole attached to the fm tower. -thanks
 
amos1001 said:
scott could you explain that? my limited knowledge is only that a lower frequency station is typically on a taller tower, and that some stations use a 1/8 wave, or 1/4 wave or even a half or full wave. it seems like a full wave would be the best antenna, so i've always thought that if a full wave was simply too tall that the station would elect to use a factor of that. is that anywhere close to being correct? what does the 226 degrees mean? what is a standard 90 degree tower? i've seen some stations on the low end, near 600khz, that had a nearly 600 foot stick, and some others higher on the band that had 300 or even 150 feet. i've worked at a station that had a class A fm, 3000 @ 300 ft (back in the day), so our FM antennas were on the 300 ft tower and the 1400 khz am was a folded unipole attached to the fm tower. -thanks
Click to expand...
Look online for a table that shows the wavelength of every medium wave frequency. A full wave tower at the bottom of the dial is about 1800 feet high. That is not practical for an AM radio station. But at the top of the dial, a full wavelength tower is just over 500 feet high. Each frequency works best as close to at least a quarter wave antenna height.

180° is a half wave and 90° is a a quarter wave. Frequencies are measured metrically, but there are tables that convert them into American measurements.
 
davideduardo said:
Look online for a table that shows the wavelength of every medium wave frequency. A full wave tower at the bottom of the dial is about 1800 feet high. That is not practical for an AM radio station.
Click to expand...
Even less practical for the longwave broadcast band still used in a few countries. A full wave tower at the low end of that band (153 kHz) would be over 6,000 feet high.

Then think of the lowest frequency transmitters in the VLF (Very Low Frequency) part of the spectrum. The historic Swedish SAQ transmitter operates on 17.2 kHz, or a wavelength around 17,500 meters. Were that to use a full wave tower, the structure would be almost 11 miles high. That is why such stations use extremely long wire designs hung between support towers.
 


Back
Top Bottom