WASP/WESA

[PHIL Z]

What has Happened to WASP 1130 ,WESA 940 I know "Froggy" is on am 940 the once strong signal that could be Heard down the Mon River in Pittsburgh's South Hills and Hill District . I was in California Pa, on Monday A few Miles Away from am 940's Transmitter and I had to turn my radio up to hear it! WASP the Once Strong Local News and Info Leader
In the Tri County Area has been reduced to 1Kw with a "Pickle".I could listen to WASP 1130 am on 37st at Penn Ave in Lawrenceville. Are they running Am 940 at lower power? What A shame 2 Great Stations wasted.

 

[Parttimer]

Keymarket is what happened to them. The business equivalent of people who bought houses they couldn't afford on bad mortgages.

 

[radiogeek07]

Any word on the whole Key Market situation in Wheeling involving their supposed fore-closed tower?

 

[Whiplash]

Don't forget about WCVI as well. I could take any of these radio stations, giving them back to their towns and completely make them viable again. What a shame!

 

[Biz Listener]

Don't forget about WCVI as well. I could take any of these radio stations, giving them back to their towns and completely make them viable again. What a shame!

The real question is whether or not those towns even want to have them back. It's not the 1930's any more. As has been discussed many times on many threads, the people who live in "rimshot" towns increasingly see themselves as residents of the suburbs of the nearest major city, not some small town. If the people who live in Rimshotville perceive themselves as Big City Suburbanites instead of Rimshotvillians, how is programming small town stations to serve the small town market going to work if the small town people don't want to be reminded that they live in a small town rather than the 'burbs of the Big City?

 

[Pratte4Life]

Biz- I disagree and agree, if you can believe that.

For instance, read Jason Togyer and he'll say that when he was growing up in McKeesport he would meet people with a great amount of pride say that they had never been to Pittsburgh, as McKeesport was a self-sufficient city.

I still shake my head at that. Even if you held on to a belief that Cox's department store was far better than Kaufmann's, you never went to a Pirates game? The Carnegie Museum? A concert at the Syria Mosque? You couldn't get accepted to college?

But the idea was that these people held on to the belief they were McKeesport citizens, dammit, not Greater Pittsburgh Metro.

Obviously, that is far less common today than it was in 1955. But I still see remnants of this mindset.

It's when I go outside the city and tell people that I'm from Pittsburgh- City of- and quite proudly I might add.

And I sometimes get responces from people who insist that they would never go there if they didn't have to, etc. etc.

These people generally don't like the city. They identify with the town they live in- not Greater Pittsburgh Metro (heck, you get people who live IN Pittsburgh who will give their address as the neighborhood they live in- as in Sq. Hill, PA 15217).

And these people are as close as even West Mifflin (which borders the city on the Southeast corner).

Now, I don't know if these guys listen to the radio, and somehow I feel that these sort of people also aren't exactly the type to spend their money on great extravagances.

Like ketchup, earrings, or an automatic transmission.

But, on the other hand, that sort of fella would figure to cling to things like AM radio. He'd figure to want to keep his money local.

 

[cingram]

I enjoy speculation as much as the next guy.

1340 probably would make a decent combo with WLSW, if someone could have both of those stations at the same time.

The AM would have to be extremely local, right down to the obituaries, recipes, and lost dog reports (think WMBS).

Whether someone could make enough money in the Connellsville area to make such a project worthwhile, I cannot say.

C.

 

[Biz Listener]

Obviously, that is far less common today than it was in 1955. But I still see remnants of this mindset.

I saw remnants of it when I lived in Pittsburgh. I see similar attitudes down here in the Atlanta metro.

Though most of what I saw when I lived in Pittsburgh (Ok, when I lived in the suburbs in Allegheny county outside the city limits.) was that people identified where they were from or where the lived to whatever level was meaningful to whoever they were talking to. To someone from Canonsburg, I'd say I lived in the North Hills. To someone from Ross Township, I'd say I lived in West View. To someone from Cleveland, I'd say I lived in Pittsburgh. All three statements were accurate, but the degree of precision depended on who I was talking to.

And I ran across people who'd brag they never went downtown. I recognized that as usually nothing but hyperbole, but then most people engage in a bit of hyperbole every now and then.

I think the important thing regarding this particular discussion is that the people who genuinely identify with the small town (ie. "Rimshotville") are increasingly few in number. And, that number is constantly getting smaller and older.

The chances that small stations licensed to cities that only exist because Allegheny county politicians cling to their little political domains like pit bulls hanging on to steak bone will ever be able to survive for very long by promoting themselves as "hometown" stations gets worse and worse every year. The last thing any smart businessman should want to do is to get involved in getting an increasing share of a decreasing market.

 

[Parttimer]

For instance, read Jason Togyer and he'll say that when he was growing up in McKeesport he would meet people with a great amount of pride say that they had never been to Pittsburgh, as McKeesport was a self-sufficient city.

That sort of sentiment is held by many people in many places. When I was living in Florida a few years ago there was a controversy over a county commissioner who objected to the blanket "Tampa Bay" references covering the whole region. They angrily stated, "when I was growing up it wasn't Tampa Bay, there was Tampa and St. Pete and Clearwater...."

So really that whole conversation is just reflective of what has resulted from progress and modern suburbanization.

And think about this... a lot of FMs were licensed to these small towns originally as well. Star is still licensed to New Kensington. 106.7 was a Beaver Falls station. 95.1 moved from Grove City PA into the Youngstown market.

The issue is even more pronounced down south where if you use the Orlando market as an example, only 6 of the 20 or so FMs that serve that market are licensed to Orlando. The rest are all move-ins from surrounding counties. Biz lives in Atlanta now, owners have tried to move stations into that market from as far away as Birmingham (about 2 hours away).

The difference is that technically it's a lot easier to move an FM. You're only dealing with a tower, not a ground network, and since most are non-directional all you have to do is play around with tower height and wattage.

If AM didn't have these technical limitations most of the AMs would have moved into larger markets as well.

 

[Biz Listener]

Biz lives in Atlanta now, owners have tried to move stations into that market from as far away as Birmingham (about 2 hours away).

Actually, I live and work in Gwinnett County. I'm farther from Downtown Atlanta than downtown Washington PA is from downtown Pittsburgh. But if I said that I lived in Lilburn, Georgia that wouldn't mean anything to anyone who wasn't from around here. All of the radio stations that I listen to identify themselves as "Atlanta" stations, though they usually refer to the area as "The Metro". Some of those "Atlanta Metro" stations are located farther from the downtown area than my home neighborhood!

 

[Parttimer]

For a long time, Atlanta was one of the most profitable radio markets in the US because it had a really small number of stations for the size market it was. That's because the original table of frequency assignments drawn up by the FCC was created before the sunbelt started to boom.

The south also has something we don't have much of here, full "Class C" FM's. They are 100kW on towers as high as 1,300 feet and cover huge areas. We don't have them in the northeast because large markets are closer together, and we have to protect Canada. By comparison, a lot of New York City FM's are 10kW on top of the Empire State Building.

But if you could get one of these big blowtorches licensed to a small town, you could move the tower halfway to the big market and put a city-grade signal over both, and thus you fulfill your technical requirement for local service and can sell in the big market. What a concept.

Again, I'll use Orlando as an example since I know it. You have stations in that market (and some of these are the top-rated stations) licensed to cities such as Daytona Beach, Mt. Dora, Deland, Cocoa Beach and Titusville... almost a 50-mile radius.

The most aggressive move-ins here involved 105.9 and 106.7. Clear Channel somehow convinced WAMO to give up 105.9 in exchange for 106.7 and some cash. 106.7 had been a very troubled signal during its Beaver Falls days, and Sheridan had to eventually buy 107.1 and move it further away from the city to move 106.7 in to Wexford. (You can never get closer to first-adjacent channels, those are ones that are .2 away on the dial... there is some room to play with second-adjacent, which is a .4 space.).

It took many years to get 104.7's tower into the city from New Kensington, where the original site was located with WKPA. And of course Froggy used to be WESA.

For a long time WLSW was rumored to be upgrading and moving in closer as well, but there was some issue with Ohio stations and maybe selling the station to Cumulus, and that eventually fell through.

There aren't many other opportunities I can see in Pittsburgh to bring anything in from further away, although the one I can think of is WLER on 97.7. It would be tricky between BOB and Froggy, although now Keymarket has a repeater in Monroeville on 97.5 for that Christian format they are doing.

92.1 in New Castle could also likely be moved in, although you'd have to get Pitt's 10-watter off that frequency. Cranberry would make a great city of license.

 

[MsMusicRadio]

Richmond Va is loaded with move-ins that have done quite well. 92.1, 95.3,96.5,99.3, 101.1,104.7,105.7,and 107.3. Only 94.5,98.1,102.1,103.7,and 106.5 were always licensed to Richmond. Now all have city coverage and call themselves Richmond stations.

 

[kenhawk1160]

The real question is whether or not those towns even want to have them back. It's not the 1930's any more. As has been discussed many times on many threads, the people who live in "rimshot" towns increasingly see themselves as residents of the suburbs of the nearest major city, not some small town. If the people who live in Rimshotville perceive themselves as Big City Suburbanites instead of Rimshotvillians, how is programming small town stations to serve the small town market going to work if the small town people don't want to be reminded that they live in a small town rather than the 'burbs of the Big City?

Biz...yes, they do want them back. However, the current holders of these licenses paid far more for them than they were worth. If they were being sold at the true value of their licenses, they would have ended up in local hands. They can still be viable if run efficiently.

 

[Parttimer]

Probably the key reason that the Butler trio and WJPA are successful is that there's no debt service.

 

[kenhawk1160]

Probably the key reason that the Butler trio and WJPA are successful is that there's no debt service.

That, and the fact that we superserve our cities of license and the surrounding area. We're everywhere you can imagine in Butler County, and when I was at WJPA in the late 90's, it was no different.

While I was at WJPA, the owners made a play to acquire WESA AM/FM, but they weren't able to make it happen. They knew that market very, very well, and they could have made that station into a real success. They also allegedly looked into WCVI and WPQR, but it was going to take someone with DEEP pockets to turn that mess around, since they had been allowed to stagnate all those years.

 

[mc_billy_bob]

It's amazing. I live in Charleroi (the city of license of AM 940) and I can not pick it up for the life of me. What the hell! What happened? Should the mid-mon have it's own station.Ya. But ours ain't worth a crap. I sound dumb but hopefully someone gets what I'm saying.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I worked for a time in Canonsburg, and despite being a relatively close-in bedroom
community of Pittsburgh, the people there very definitely went to great lenghts
to establish an identity separate from Pittsburgh. If 540 wasn't on automated
Disney 24/7 I am sure they would enjoy having a great local service.

940 seems to be badly under-modulated. I think they just juice up the tower
every day to keep the license and pay no attention to what is going out. WASP used
to put a strong daytime signal into my house, but I understand they lost a tower and
had to drop to 1KW non-directional.

 

[kenhawk1160]

940 seems to be badly under-modulated. I think they just juice up the tower
every day to keep the license and pay no attention to what is going out. WASP used
to put a strong daytime signal into my house, but I understand they lost a tower and
had to drop to 1KW non-directional.

If anything, 940 is OVER-modulated, if you've listened to the audio. It's bangin' pretty good with the simulcast.

WASP had to move because of the Route 88 widening project at Blaine Road and I-70. That property was taken by eminent domain, with the building and towers being knocked down. They didn't have much of a choice than to do what they ended up doing with that.