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WCTZ 96.7 FM Now Wants to Move Tower to New Rochelle

B

Barry

Scott Fybush mentioned tonight in his website, NE Radio Watch, that WCTZ has amended its application to the F.C.C. for relocating its tower, currently in Stamford CT.
Instead of moving to a location in Yonkers as was requested a while back, the application is now to relocate the station's broadcast tower to the top of the Trump Tower, in New Rochelle NY.
The article states that operating from that site with 3.1 kw at 462', the signal should reach most of Manhattan, southern Westchester, the Bronx, Fairfield County, and "big chunks" of Queens, Nassau, Fairfield and Bergen Counties.
Info filed with F.C.C.: http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/eng_fm.pl?Application_id=1398188
 
Well, judging by the strength of K-Joy even at my place in lower Manhattan I may have a good chance at catching WCTZ if/when they actually make that move. Hopefully, they won't make a radical flip in format when they do. I think there's a hole (albeit small) that can be filled that WLTW and WWFS aren't filling, even if it's from a suburban station. Right now I can get a faint signal of WCTZ, so it should be theoretically easier after the move. And it should motivate them to file complaints against pirates who are squatting the 96.7 signal in the city. Same with WFAS and their 103.9 signal.

I just wish WEBE would move their signal closer to Manhattan :)P) but that won't happen, ever. At least I have internet streaming to pass the time, until internet streaming in cars becomes widely accepted.
 
It's going to change its format, guaranteed. There's no room for three AC stations in the city and many more in the suburbs.

Wonder what its new format will be.
 
We always hear about these applications, but do they ever actually happen? I think it has been at least 2 years since we first heard about WCTZ moving to Yonkers, and nothing happened there. Now it's New Rochelle. How long would it take for the app to be approved and the station to actually move?

I live a few miles west of Newark and right now there is a very strong pirate on 96.7. Up until about 3 months ago I was able to receive a pretty clear signal from WCTZ here.
 
The Yonkers location would have made the station a bit more listenable in Newark, because New Rochelle is right on the Long Island sound. I wonder if more than just "chunks" of Nassau would be able to pick the station up because many CT stations have strong signals over LI, although New Rochelle is farther west and south than CT.
 
ansky212 said:
We always hear about these applications, but do they ever actually happen? I think it has been at least 2 years since we first heard about WCTZ moving to Yonkers, and nothing happened there. Now it's New Rochelle. How long would it take for the app to be approved and the station to actually move?
Click to expand...

Not long at all - a matter of just a few months, if they're sufficiently motivated, to get a new transmitter and antenna in place at whatever location they might end up choosing.

But you've got to remember how this game is played: it's not about moving "96.7 the Coast, Fairfield's Greatest Hits" into NYC or Westchester or Nassau. The impetus behind the WCTZ and WFAS-FM apps, when they were originally filed several years ago, was to take advantage of what was then a red-hot market for FM signals. It's a pretty good bet that Cox or Cumulus never had any intention of operating a standalone NYC rimshot FM themselves. The game was to find a willing buyer (and there were a lot of them back then) who'd take the relocated 96.7 or 103.9 off Cox's or Cumulus' hands for a very large sum of money. Remember when Univision paid $60 million for 92.7?

So far so good...but then the market crashed. (Note that Univision ended up paying less for the full-market 96.3 signal than it had paid for 92.7.)

The way I read the latest action (or inaction, as the case may be) is that Cox and Cumulus are buying time while waiting to see if the market recovers. If a buyer comes along for 103.9, Cumulus has the site all built in the Bronx for them...but for now they're still licensed in Westchester.

As for 107.9, it can't move in. The rules that allow 93.5, 96.7 and 103.9 are based on short-spacing - because those three stations were already short-spaced to the NYC second-adjacent class Bs (93.1, 93.9, etc.) prior to the adoption of the present spacing rules in 1964, they're not spacing-restricted to the stations on the Empire State Building at all. Those three As were the only ones that *could* move in, because they were the only ones not blocked in by co-channel As nearby. (You can't move 94.3 in from Long Island, for instance, because it would be short to 94.3 in Asbury Park.)

In the case of WEBE, it has to maintain full spacing to co-channel signals on 107.9 in Tobyhanna, PA and Burlington, NJ (Philadelphia), as well as to adjacent-channel signals. It's pretty well boxed in where it is.
 
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