According to today's (3/21/2012) FCC Digest, the new tower is an existing structure about 100' from the tower WFME had been using. I believe the new HAAT is 207m (679'). To maintain the existing service contours, ERP is reduced to 23.5 kW circularly polarized. WFME has been operating under STA with the "improved" facilities for only a month or so. People have posted that the combination of the higher tower and lower ERP will yield a signal that won't penetrate midtown skyscrapers as well as did the old signal. The reception reports (for what they are worth) should thus make interesting reading.
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WFME 94.7 applies to make permanent its temporary move to a taller tower
- Thread starter DanStrassberg
- Start date
luperm said:
The application to make the move permanent has not yet been granted. Is the old tower self-supporting or guyed? With a distance between the old and new towers of just 31m (~100'), it strikes me that a sale of the property would make sense only if the buyer is the new owner of the station or the owner of the tower to which WFME is moving. That would be true especially if the old tower is guyed or the new tower is guyed and the guys pass through air rights over someone else's property.
These are all self-supporters.DanStrassberg said:
There is either 3 or 4 towers on the property next door along with a water tower.
It would make selling the property a little easier seeings as it eliminates another FCC hurdle in the sale of the property for another purpose other than broadcast (as if THAT exists
)Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
badjef said:
Both towers are side by side, one of them had (or still has) 94.7, the other one is the site for 91.1 WFMU.
Here's a link that includes a pic of the 2 sites in West Orange:
http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/showimage.php?i=5115&c=34
Also I see that WFMU has a CP to move it's antenna array as well,
It looks like might replace the location of WFME @ 180 feet above ground (up from 92 ft), but going from 1250 to 960 watts.
Yes, WVNJ-FM 100.3 was there.
Ironically, IIRC, the "baby peashooter" was, at least, a muscular 20-kw and the new "flamethrower" on the ESB was a far weaker 6-kw.
It wasn't that poor old transmitter's fault, as is sometimes said about executive rivalries or in boxing "the taller guy has an advantage," or as they say about what's most important in real estate......location, location, location.
Yeah, and you've got to think, if it is such a bad location, why would Emmis have used it as a backup in the first place?TimeIsTight said:
Ironically, IIRC, the "baby peashooter" was, at least, a muscular 20-kw and the new "flamethrower" on the ESB was a far weaker 6-kw.
It wasn't that poor old transmitter's fault, as is sometimes said about executive rivalries or in boxing "the taller guy has an advantage," or as they say about what's most important in real estate......location, location, location.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
It's a good location for a backup for NY stations, since New Jersey has a different AC power system, and has had juice during NYC blackouts. They've probably still got backup generators with either natural gas or big diesel tanks too. You can't do that at ESB.
But West Orange is also a good location period, just not as good as the ESB which is twice as high, and in the population center.
The coverage difference between the two sites really is that the ESB signal picks up about 15-additional miles out near the Nassau-Suffolk border, and gives up listeners in less populated Hunterdon, Warren, and Sussex counties in NJ, and the eastern edge of Pennsylvania. And those NJ counties are not in the NY Radio Market ratings and the Long Island area is.
Ironic, that WFME is now using the old WVNJ-FM tower, and WFMU may soon be using it too. But, remember there was a short-spaced co-channel station on 100.3 in Philly, and moving from West Orange to the ESB actually expanded the distance, and improved the situation. On the other hand, moving to the ESB would make two of WFME's short-space problems worse.
It's going to be interesting to see what comes down and what goes in at that West Orange site. Those old tower sites can be so valuable for other uses because there is no NIMBY problem, and the reasons that they were valuable locations for FM transmitting, makes them also valuable for many other communication uses.
The funny thing is, I was living in Jackson when WHTZ signed on at ESB. My signal strength from Z100 on a Sansui 9900 (I still have it), went from a 4 to a 2.5 with the "Flamethrower" and picked up much more interference from Philly.TimeIsTight said:
Ironically, IIRC, the "baby peashooter" was, at least, a muscular 20-kw and the new "flamethrower" on the ESB was a far weaker 6-kw.
It wasn't that poor old transmitter's fault, as is sometimes said about executive rivalries or in boxing "the taller guy has an advantage," or as they say about what's most important in real estate......location, location, location.
To set the record straight, Z100 signed on from West Orange, and it was delayed by 2 or 3 days. There was no WVNJ from Empire. If there was, it was through tests only.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
I had the same experience in Northern Somerset County. WVNJ-FM had been, by far, the strongest FM station on the radio dial in North Jersey. And it also dominated the embedded North Jersey section of the radio market ratings. I don't remember the S-meter numbers but when they finally switched transmitter location the signal strength dropped significantly and 100.3 was just like the other NY stations on the dial, and, like WCBS-FM, started to suffer from some co-channel interference from Philly depending on where in the area you were listening.
The West Orange signal is better in North Jersey, and Staten Island, and probably not much different than the ESB in Brooklyn, but for that 15-to-20-mile area in eastern Nassau and Western Suffolk the ESB signal put a whole new station on the dial that had been a noisy or blank spot before. Those spots on Long Island were in the NY Radio Market Ratings area and made a bottom line difference, while the listeners lost in Ocean, Hunterdon, Warren, and Sussex County didn't really matter to them since they weren't counted in the ratings.
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