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WBBF on 98.9

fybush

fybush

Administrator
Staff member
Last week, Cumulus filed a license to cover for W255DH, the 250-watt translator on 98.9 that's going on the 103.3 tower (right by the 198/33 interchange) to relay WBBF 1120, which means that for now it will be a simulcast of WHTT.

One poster here said he heard it faintly from over near Transit and Losson on Friday - but I happened to be in town again on Saturday and it was definitely not on the air.

I'll be curious to know if anyone hears it again any time soon. Its directional pattern should make it an easy catch anywhere within city limits and in most of Cheektowaga, with decent fringe coverage going south and not much signal into the Northtowns at all.

(Useless trivia: the WBBF calls were on 98.9 here in Rochester for a few years in the late 90s/early 00s before that signal became WBZA; because it's on the west side of town, the Rochester 98.9 puts a somewhat listenable fringe signal at least as far west as Transit Road and occasionally even beyond.)
 
Can confirm no WHTT 98.9 translator signal in the Northtowns. Actually still getting 98.9 WBZA signal in my driveway. Not a great signal, but it's there and listenable.
 
Prescott Joe said:
Also, wasn't WBBF on AM 950 back in the 60's and 70's???
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It sure was - that was a legendary callsign over here, as far back as the early 1950s and well into the 1980s. I think it was 1982 when they finally went from top-40 to talk on the AM, and the callsign survived on 950 into the 1990s.
 
RadioGuy1864 said:
Anyone hear any rumors about what's going on the new FM metro signal? I don't think the plan is to re-broadcast WHTT.
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They're likely looking to broker it. That's what it was in the past. Perhaps it'll happen in the post-Covid world. Or, maybe they'll go Oldies... ;)
 
fybush said:
It sure was - that was a legendary callsign over here, as far back as the early 1950s and well into the 1980s. I think it was 1982 when they finally went from top-40 to talk on the AM, and the callsign survived on 950 into the 1990s.
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For many years, Jack Palvino, the Top 40 PD of WBBF, was in the Broadcasters Idea Bank as was I. Met him at one of the conventions... held in beautiful downtown Pottstown, PA, and hosted by Herb Scott. Of course, that was in the 60's when I had Top 40 HCRM1.
 
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Or religious broker 😜 if I had it, being in Lackawanna, I would go urban. Funny how no one was talking about oldies until I made it hugely successful. Everyone said it could not be done because of the mess made when KB tried it again. Ironically, no oldies format in the entire country has the 12 plus share WECK has. Imitating is the biggest form of flattery. Wait til I get a 50 k in Buffalo and blow these idiots out of the water with a new format. They think WECK is giving them problems? They ain’t seen nothing yet. The big groups are falling my brothers and sisters. Within 6 months, I will have a biggie signal in Buffalo.So there, now you know
 
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KB was a mess with oldies due to mismanagement but also likely due to not having any FM's to go with it. That, and the fact that the station has been irrelevant longer than it was ever relevant. It had about a 30 year run of relevance and now more than 30 years of being a complete and total wasteland. I have to believe that if it weren't for co-located WGR making money that ETM would've explored turning the license in and selling the land the transmitter site is on to developers. How long can they justify spending the money to run a station like that solely to keep anyone else from having it? But of course they are doing that with 107.7 as well so it must be a corporate strategy.
 
KB was indeed a dumpster fire when it returned as an Oldies format, but I'm told by at least three sources that the first plan to take 1520 Oldies occurred a few years earlier, probably 2000-2001. A veteran Buffalo PD was in line to program the station. Files were loaded, playlists were set, audio processing had been tweaked. But the format change was scuttled at the very last minute by Entercom corporate which feared KB would adversely impact WBEN.

Years later, when Clear Channel was flipping heritage big signal upper band AM stations (such as WCKY, Cincinnati) to Oldies, Entercom bought in to the format. The intent at the time was not to have an FM, but to re-energize dormant AM stations. Unfortunately the format and execution was misdirected. KB was playing an incoherent blend of Oldies from 50s to mid 70s, with veteran DJs like Don Berns and Jack Armstrong who were K-Big jocks in the late 60s and early 70s. Neither Armstrong nor Berns, while they were first at KB, played the Skyliners or Joey Dee and the Starliters. Had KB played the Oldies hits from 63 through 75 (Beatles through Chicago) it would have done far better.

That said, like so many of Clear Channel's AM Oldies stations, the bloom would have eventually faded from the rose and KB would probably be where it is today, on life support running ESPN.
 
Is the KB tower site woth anything as development land? That's probably the highest and best use right now. Turn in the license and sell the land.
 
RadioGuy1864 said:
Is the KB tower site woth anything as development land? That's probably the highest and best use right now. Turn in the license and sell the land.
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Turning in the license makes it available to someone else. I've read here before that they don't want that to happen.
 
Also Entercom isn't likely to turn off WGR which is at the same location in Hamburg. That real estate likely isn't worth a whole lot as Buffalo isn't growing rapidly population wise.
 
Also Entercom isn't likely to turn off WGR which is at the same location in Hamburg. That real estate likely isn't worth a whole lot as Buffalo isn't growing rapidly population wise.
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The estimated value of the Big Tree Road real estate is said to be well above market value. There's said to be extensive land-locked acreage beyond the land under the towers, extending south to Foster Brook. As with any former AM site, land reclamation can be costly, no matter how pristine the site.

Within the last 15 years, a newer housing development sprung up on the immediate west edge of the Big Tree Road transmitter site. One of the WGR towers stands at the edge of several home owners' back yards. With 55 thousand watts of RF blasting away, there's little doubt that the families living in that subdivision have a problem tuning WGR and WWKB on their AM radios... or any other devices in their homes.
 
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Rusty Bridges said:
The estimated value of the Big Tree Road real estate is said to be well above market value. There's said to be extensive land-locked acreage beyond the land under the towers, extending south to Foster Brook. As with any former AM site, land reclamation can be costly, no matter how pristine the site.
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AM sites, unless transformers with PVC were discarded there, are not particularly costly to prepare for housing or commercial / industrial usage. The copper radials are not hazardous, and will be fairly easily removed, as will tower and guy wire bases... no harder than removing an old sewer duct or building column. And the transmitter building is just that... a building that can be removed like any other obsolete structure.

I've seen it done; with an adequate crew and enough transport vehicles it's not much more than a couple of day's work.
 
As long as WGR is as healthy as it is, Big Tree Road is in no danger. The four towers at the corners of the site form a broadly-spaced parallelogram for WGR's night array, with the daytime signal coming from one of the corner towers. (It's moved around over the years; I think it's the one at the northwest corner now, but don't hold me to that!)

The WWKB three-tower array is made up of one of the WGR corner towers and two more in-line towers that sit near the southeast corner of the site. It sits entirely within the space occupied by the WGR night array.

Yes, the site is now surrounded by housing to the east and west, but it needs to be where it is for WGR. There's no economically viable alternative for Entercom to move WGR anywhere better, and you don't mess with an AM station that's still as successful as WGR has been.
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(Bringing this thread full circle, the original WBBF 950 site in Rochester is now hemmed in by what was supposed to have been a very upscale housing development. If that development had succeeded, I have to imagine the 950 site would have become a prime development target, given that the station, WROC, is an afterthought and most of its listenership is on an FM translator anyway - but the developer went bankrupt and the pressure is off, for now. Entercom actually just spent a bunch of money last year doing tower work at the site to fix some structural problems.)
 
Here is an intriguing pair of question:s

How many AM stations have permanently signed off to allow the land to be sold?

How many AM stations have signficantly downgraded to use less land or to use another station's existing site? (Example: 710 in Los Angeles and 630 in DC) By downgrade I mean much lower power (at least at night) and much less coverage.
 
fybush said:
As long as WGR is as healthy as it is, Big Tree Road is in no danger. The four towers at the corners of the site form a broadly-spaced parallelogram for WGR's night array, with the daytime signal coming from one of the corner towers. (It's moved around over the years; I think it's the one at the northwest corner now, but don't hold me to that!)

The WWKB three-tower array is made up of one of the WGR corner towers and two more in-line towers that sit near the southeast corner of the site. It sits entirely within the space occupied by the WGR night array.

Yes, the site is now surrounded by housing to the east and west, but it needs to be where it is for WGR. There's no economically viable alternative for Entercom to move WGR anywhere better, and you don't mess with an AM station that's still as successful as WGR has been.
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(Bringing this thread full circle, the original WBBF 950 site in Rochester is now hemmed in by what was supposed to have been a very upscale housing development. If that development had succeeded, I have to imagine the 950 site would have become a prime development target, given that the station, WROC, is an afterthought and most of its listenership is on an FM translator anyway - but the developer went bankrupt and the pressure is off, for now. Entercom actually just spent a bunch of money last year doing tower work at the site to fix some structural problems.)
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Not that ETM has to start selling Real Estate to raise funds, but in theory could WGR be diplexed with WBEN on Grand Island?
 
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