WARM

[NigelWick]

Back on after 24 hour absence.

 

[kewgardens]

Matters little. A former AM station that set the tone for quality broadcasting now beyond being on its last legs with a crappy signal and a cheap satellite service. Besides radio types, who is left to listen or care?

 

[NigelWick]

Yes, it matters little. Sad. The on, off, on, off thing will alienate the few listeners that are left. Unfortunately, if you want oldies, your choices are Gem, where they talk WAY too much about nothing, and WARM

 

[cowboy72]

listen to wilk..they play some oldies, jazz, and alot of other music..they use them for bumper music that should be 10 to 15 secs. long, but when they want to fill time (when theres no callers,) they will play at least half the song.warms been on life line for years, and they do talk to much on the gem.

 

[ka2xuk]

How many times a month does WARM go off the air? And do they have the Allentown geek come every time it's down, or just hit the reset button and hope to god it comes back on? They were off on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago, and as of tonight they are once again off the air. Fellas, I believe the end of WARM has either come or is near. Cumulus will not put a dime into it, and Phil is probably won't be volunteering his time to fix the transmitter for a company that canned him.

Well, that's what happens when one "engineer", an I.T. guy based in Allentown, has to cover everything from Binghamton to Ephrata, a footprint of about 200 miles. I'm waiting to see what happens if one of the cash cows in that cluster, such as Magic or 97.9X, takes a lightning hit and goes off the air.
As for calling Phil...the corporate VP of engineering hates him and that animosity dates back many years, when Phil turned down a job with a Cumulus cluster in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The reasons: The AM facility was a death trap, the regional engineer who would have been the supervisor drank like a fish, and Cumulus wanted him to sign a non-compete agreement. Phil not so diplomatically told them to stuff it. So Phil's still out of work and the Wilkes-Barre cluster continues to deteriorate.

 

[ka2xuk]

listen to wilk..they play some oldies, jazz, and alot of other music..they use them for bumper music that should be 10 to 15 secs. long, but when they want to fill time (when theres no callers,) they will play at least half the song.warms been on life line for years, and they do talk to much on the gem.

Yes, but WILK is a talk station, not an oldies station. People don't listen to WILK for music, except for the oldies show that they air on Saturday nights. However, if you like smooth jazz, WILK-FM plays that on their HD-2 channel.

As for Gem, at least they're locally owned, locally operated, and locally programmed by local people.

 

[Board Editor]

MOVED: TIO: WARM

Some posts in this topic have been moved to Take It Outside.

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[ka2xuk]

Now that all of you know who I am, I will write in the first person. I have more anger toward Cumulus because of what they are doing to the Wilkes-Barre cluster of stations than because of what they did to me. For, knowing what I do about them, I should consider myself fortunate NOT to be working for this vile company.

The folks in Atlanta and their regional people here will soon enough learn a valuable lesson about engineering: You can take a seasoned "old school" transmitter/RF engineer with decades of experience, have him take a couple of courses at a community college, and he/she will get the Microsoft and Cisco certifications in computers and networking. I was sent to a course on the Audiovault automation system by a station where I worked some years ago and passed...and I can still set up one of those systems. But you cannot take a young I.T. guy and give him the decades of RF experience...unless he/she spends decades working alongside the experienced RF people. The trade schools and community colleges don't teach those things. Not even the E.E. programs at the major universities teach everything that can possibly go wrong with a transmitter...and vacuum tube theory is not taught at all in those courses, even though a lot of stations still use tube-type transmitters.

You don't buy produce at a fish market and you don't buy fish from a greengrocer. So why expect an I.T. guy to put the transmitter back on the air? Keep your engineering staff intact and let the RF guy fix the transmitter and the I.T. guy keep the viruses out of your network.

Cumulus, at least in this market, will probably learn a bitter lesson when those clouds that are their namesake start throwing lightning bolts at their transmitter sites.

Phil G., a/k/a KA2XUK and K2PG
Licensed 43 years (amateur) and 39 years (commercial)

 

[ty_kleinle]

WARM has been off air for over 48 hours, doesn't Cumulus need to file a STA with the FCC?

 

[DaveWilliams]

Your frustration can be very much appreciated Phil as I went thru a similar incident with my last job. After being at a station in Baltimore for 3 1/2 years, at thje end of the day, I was called in the office and told that was my last day. I told the cooperate engineer the things that were pending, said goodbye to the afternoon jock and walked out the door, NEVER to go back to the place! I went on unemployment and tried looking for some work, even tried the contract route again but just couldn't get anything rolling so I said that was it and looked into going on a pension, which I did and was also able to get a disability due to some health issues. Now I do work for a small FM station, up to 10 hours a month, a small AM station (1 visit per month) and take care of www.oldiesradio1620.com, an Internet station. Let them live with the problems now, THEY made the call and move on with your life. So 45 years of commercial radio announcing and engineering (48 if you include what I'm doing now) has been enuff! I'll sit by the sideline now and just laugh and shake my head and say "Good luck" with anything that goes down now.

Dave Schmidt
(aka Dave Williams)

PS: You can go 10 days befoire requesting an STA but they cost money now, I think $145.

 

[ka2xuk]

WARM has been off air for over 48 hours, doesn't Cumulus need to file a STA with the FCC?

Only if the outage lasts for more than ten days.

Phil G.