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Wasted 50KW AM signals

Maybe it's a good thing that a nearly one year old thread has been revitalized. After reading some of the latest posts, I flipped on the ol' AM band and scrolled to the upper end of the AM band, where I landed on Radio Disney on that Big Ol' 50 kW flamethrower on 1560 in the Big Apple. And it's coming in fairly well at the Radknowski listening post in Beautiful Nearly-Downtown South Buffalo New York, USA.

There was a song playing with a cool hook "Nobody's Perfect" and then the very good, very young sounding jock came out of it, backsold it and went into a very good, well-produced phoner with a young girl. It wasn't lurid or suggestive. They talked about her homework being done and only then was she allowed to turn on the radio... and what was she listening to? AM.

Ayy- Emm.

How cool for the AM die hards here. Young kids... going to the AM band. Disney must have kept their ESPN and Disney AM's for a reason. They must know somethin', y'know what I mean?

Radio Disney caters to kids and tweeners and they use it to promote their Disney synergies with great promos, great cross-promotions, funny, entertaining, non-insulting programming that invites the kids to be a part of something.

I have a friend who's a great fan of Disney and raised his (now teenage) kids on Disney because he felt it was safe as well as entertaining.

Y'know, there's something that could be learned from this little radio listening experience of mine this evening... all thanks to this revitalized thread.

Cool.
 
Would "Disney" be a better fit for WWKB than what Entercom is doing now with Progressive Talk? Sounds like Disney would be a nice fit, bringing kids to the AM band. They could even cross promote their other AM properties. Or would Disney just siphon potential listeners away from Kiss?
 
KB 1520 stinks now, they should use a all news format like WCBS 880 or WINS 1010 or a full service am.Also I would like to mention WWVA 1170 is a waste of power.
 
I like the idea of Radio Disney another underserved age group. I'd rather the kids listen to it than the smutty stuff that gets played on the Urban/CHR stations.

1560 is not the usual Disney outlet. Most of the Disney stations seem to be real dogs with bad signal problems. I'm thinking of the stations in Miami and Charlotte.
 
Sidebar question re: "KB"...

Does anyone know how long have they had their current antenna pattern?

When I was in college in Iowa in the late '60s, we listened to KOMA (from Oklahoma City on 1520) on a nightly basis. Despite KOMA's reasonably good skywave signal, WKBW was clearly audible underneath as often as not. KB seldom, if ever, was strong enough to override KOMA's signal, but could be at least mildly annoying sometimes.

Looking at today's coverage map from Radio Locator, this would seem all but impossible with the current pattern. (I was in southeastern Iowa, about 30 miles west of the Mississippi).

Thanks to anyone who might be able to shed some light on this. (We can debate later which of the two was the better legendary top-40 blowtorch!)
 
Here's the official Electrical Field Strength pattern as noted on the WWKB license documentation from the FCC website. Not much RF headed West, SSW or WSW. As far as I know the present pattern dates back to the station's move to the 1520 allocation.

Knowledgeable sources have told me that KB, when it moved to 1520, could have been licensed as directional night only (DA-N) using the present DA-1 pattern. If this is true, I'm wondering if the station would have been permitted to operate N-DA until local sunset at Oklahoma City. Of course, it's all water over the dam at this point.
 
That's interesting Jim. I wonder why KB wouldn't want to be non-directional during the day?

As directionals go 3 towers is not too bad. 710 in Miami is 50KW with 6 towers at night.
 
JimPastrick said:
Here's the official Electrical Field Strength pattern as noted on the WWKB license documentation from the FCC website. Not much RF headed West, SSW or WSW. As far as I know the present pattern dates back to the station's move to the 1520 allocation.
Click to expand...

That's my point. My location in southeast Iowa would've been right in the null....but the nighttime signal was regularly audible underneath a fairly decent skywave signal from KOMA. Judging from the FCC document and from Radio Locator, that shouldn't be. That's why I thought perhaps they had a different pattern in the 60s.
 
The current KB pattern dates all the way back to the end of March, 1941, when the move to 1520, the upgrade to 50,000 watts and the launch of the Hamburg transmitter plant all happened simultaneously. It hasn't changed in its technical parameters since.

As far as why KB wasn't ever licensed for DA-N, when I worked there a half a lifetime ago I was told by TPTB that the DA-1 configuration was chosen for a couple of reasons;

1)Better 24/7 coverage of the core market, accomplished essentially by not wasting power over the water (the current pattern basically nulls Lake Erie and cuts very little into coverage of the metro, while enhancing field strength considerably in Erie and Niagara counties)

2)Stronger signal penetration to the east toward Rochester at all hours, where they figured they had a shot at a significant listenership because back in 1941, there were only three stations licensed in Rochester, only two with network affiliation (and I was told neither one of them was an NBC Blue network affiliate like KB was at the time; Rochester only had NBC Red from WHAM and CBS from WHEC). Oddly, that didn't work out well at first, but proved to be a bonanza years later. KB's greatest ratings penetration into the Rochester market came between about 1958 and 1971, when its signal provided the only hit radio programming the outer 'burbs of Rochester could hear because of WBBF's very limited signal. KB's prominence in Rochester ended around 1972 when, first, competition from WAXC, then competition from FM, took away a lot of both BBF's and KB's audience in the Flower City.

Out-of-market listening isn't the factor it once was, but KB's pattern is in part a remnant of the days when significant out-of-market audience was a reason why some technical decisions were made especially regarding big-market, big-signal stations. Plenty of the big 50 kW blowtorches are more directional than they have to be for purely technical reasons. KB is directional because of a desire to blast into adjoining markets. WOR in New York is, because of a plan to go after not only the core NYC audience but blanket the 'burbs in Connecticut and the Hudson Valley where growth was happening when the pattern was drawn up around 1967, at the expense of coverage in more sparsely populated northwest New Jersey. KGO in San Francisco nulls out the Pacific in order to blanket the Bay Area. And WBZ in Boston boosted its signal in its core market bigtime back in the late 1930s with a seaside transmitter location that nulls the Atlantic Ocean and almost doubles field strength virtually everywhere on land. There may be more such examples but those come to mind immediately.
 
Great explanation. Thanks. It still doesn't explain why "KB" was regularly in the nighttime background of KOMA back in late '60s Iowa, but great info and history nonetheless.

You can also add WWL (KB's "sister" in New Orleans) to the list of 50kw (former) Class 1-A blowtorches that are directional when they doesn't have to be. Their signal somewhat nulls the Gulf of Mexico.
 
WWL New Orleans, much like WBZ Boston, is DA-1 (according to Lynn Deppen, Keymarket Radio) by choice, not FCC license. This to put more signal on land than spreading it over the Gulf of Mexico. However, when storms and hurricanes threaten, WWL can go Non-DA and has done so from time to time. Magnificent signal.

Another point about WWKB, courtesy Tom Atkins, former Chief Engineer for the Entercom cluster and now VP Engineering for Backyard Broadcasting. WKBW signed on at 1380 kHz. KB's three 1520 kHz towers were initially designed for 1480 kHz, the frequency it was to occupy before the FCC assigned it to 1520.

As to your KB questions, I have no idea why you could hear the station so clearly underneath KOMA given KB's easterly directional signal. It shouldn't be that way, but it is afterall, AM, and stranger things have happened.

Tony Magoo has noted that he heard KB when he was in Viet Nam... that's a helluva skip around the globe.

Some things are unexplainable.
 
chalk up one nomination for KDKA 1020. This historic signal is now a pathetic joke.
Repeats of O'Reilley, pay-to-play realtor, financial counselor and medical quack shows,
Tradio (no, I am not kiding...Tradio!) and a mid-day guy whose claim to fame was that
he drove a local minister to suicide by outing him.
 
At least there are more choices to listen to than all the rush/beck/o'reilly idiots...
[/quote]

You may think they're idiots, but they rule the airwaves! Of course people of your ilk would love to shut them down with the re-enactment of the "fairness" doctrine.
 
cyberdad said:
Sidebar question re: "KB"...

Does anyone know how long have they had their current antenna pattern?

When I was in college in Iowa in the late '60s, we listened to KOMA (from Oklahoma City on 1520) on a nightly basis. Despite KOMA's reasonably good skywave signal, WKBW was clearly audible underneath as often as not. KB seldom, if ever, was strong enough to override KOMA's signal, but could be at least mildly annoying sometimes.

Looking at today's coverage map from Radio Locator, this would seem all but impossible with the current pattern. (I was in southeastern Iowa, about 30 miles west of the Mississippi).

Thanks to anyone who might be able to shed some light on this. (We can debate later which of the two was the better legendary top-40 blowtorch!)
Click to expand...

Back in the late 70's, I reard KB several times in Nevada when KOMA signed off for transmitter maintenance on Sunday nights. Of course, thats impossible now.
 
I don't think any intelligent pragmatic person wants to shut down Rush, Beck, etc. anymore than I don't think any intelligent pragmatic person wants to shut down Schultz, Rhodes, etc.

As a political independent, I'd rather see equal opportunity to hear voices from both ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately, in many locations, most, if not all, of the voices reflect just one point of view.

One could argue that a "wasted" 50KW signal is one that offers a monolithic point of view....for either side of the debate. Unless....of course...a 50KW signal like "KB" is offering the great public service of presenting an alternative perspective.
 
cyberdad said:
I don't think any intelligent pragmatic person wants to shut down Rush, Beck, etc. anymore than I don't think any intelligent pragmatic person wants to shut down Schultz, Rhodes, etc.

As a political independent, I'd rather see equal opportunity to hear voices from both ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately, in many locations, most, if not all, of the voices reflect just one point of view.

One could argue that a "wasted" 50KW signal is one that offers a monolithic point of view....for either side of the debate. Unless....of course...a 50KW signal like "KB" is offering the great public service of presenting an alternative perspective.
Click to expand...

There has some talk among members of congress to study the merits of the FD. As a conservative, I wouldn't want to see the other side shut down because of a government mandate. Besides, they provide us with great comic relief. If they (left-wing) can draw good ratings, they should exist. "Right-wing" talk radio serves a purpose in that it provides us with information the mainstream media, which is left-of-center fails to tell us. If the mainstream media was objective, people like Rush, Hannity, etc. probably wouldn't be popular. I know they are considered entertainers, but they provide news that is "missed" by the mainstream media.
 
We're getting off topic here, but I would argue that 20-30 years ago mainstream media was left of center...and perhaps still is today to a point. But to my observation (as a Sigma Delta Chi national award winning former journalist) today's media is simply more lazy and timid than anything else.
 
MOVED: TIO: Wasted 50KW AM signals

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

[iurl=http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=89145.0]http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=89145.0[/iurl]
 
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