R
rlewis
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What happen to the KPIG signal in San Francisco?
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I really liked the amazing variety of music on KPIG although the audio quality was not very good and the signal not very strong.
They bought the worst AM frequency in the bay area and tried to make it work. It was so poor because they used an indoor transmitting antenna - how weird is that.
Still I knew a lot of people who listened to KPIG but it never appeared in the ratings - not even at the very bottom - it was just absent. Even low powered college stations with few people listening were there at the bottom of the ratings but never KPIG.
Never understood what was up with that. There were not zero listeners but they never showed up - always seemed like a conspiracy against the station.
It also has caused me not to trust the published ratings.
However, it is not likely that KPIG will return. If it was going to happen, they would have bought a station like KSJO.
How great would that been!
They bought the worst AM frequency in the bay area and tried to make it work. It was so poor because they used an indoor transmitting antenna - how weird is that.
Still I knew a lot of people who listened to KPIG but it never appeared in the ratings - not even at the very bottom - it was just absent. Even low powered college stations with few people listening were there at the bottom of the ratings but never KPIG.
Never understood what was up with that. There were not zero listeners but they never showed up - always seemed like a conspiracy against the station.
It also has caused me not to trust the published ratings.
However, it is not likely that KPIG will return. If it was going to happen, they would have bought a station like KSJO.
How great would that been!
Nope - not an engineer - thought I read that on one of the posts in this forum about the kind of antennas they had.
However it is not important - the point I was trying to make (in case you missed it) was that KPIG had a poor signal and that may have contributed to the failure of the station - or not.
The format is gone and probably won't come back.
Now we will have to read all the postings about needing more "classic" rock.
However it is not important - the point I was trying to make (in case you missed it) was that KPIG had a poor signal and that may have contributed to the failure of the station - or not.
The format is gone and probably won't come back.
Now we will have to read all the postings about needing more "classic" rock.
RadioFanSF said:
Having a poor signal certainly didn't help, but the big problem was that it was AM. I'm a baby-boomer and grew up listening to music on AM, but I haven't been interested in listening to music in low fidelity monaural for about 35 years now. I used to tune in KABL standards from time to time..News and Talk on AM - no problem. But otherwise, forget it. And from everything I hear on these boards, younger listeners are even more resistant to the AM band.
I always tune in to KPIG on FM when I'm in the Monterey area, and I have listened on-line some, but that's about it. Now if they ever put the station on a Bay Area FM frequency- even one with a marginal signal, I would be a regular listener. But that's not likely to happen.
RadioFanSF said:
They did - and do - have an unusual antenna. It's not inside the building, but it's on the roof of a warehouse building in Oakland. It's doubly unusual in that it's a directional AM rooftop antenna, which requires multiple towers and a big roof. Before it was reconfigured, it was triply unusual in that one of the antenna elements wasn't a traditional tower but rather a vertical wire suspended from (and separated by an insulator from) a horizontal wire strung between two of the other towers.
It is quite true that the 1510 signal isn't great...better now than it used to be, especially over the city, but still nearly useless anywhere south of SF or Oakland thanks to the adjacent-channel interference with KSJX.
I believe the nighttime power increase has happened. I can receive them at night in Newark, and I never used to be able to. As far as ratings go, I'm pretty sure they didn't have a PPM encoder. They were just trying to sell time without even discussing ratings. Like others, I grew up listening to FM and found the audio quality dismal. But the programming more than made up for that. I too have many friends who used to listen.
The transmitter plant made for some unusual signal conditions here to the south. As Scott noted earlier, the antenna array is mounted on the roof of a warehouse. The ground system - such as it is - consists of chicken wire on the roof. When it was raining in Oakland the signal was significantly better.
Dave B.
The transmitter plant made for some unusual signal conditions here to the south. As Scott noted earlier, the antenna array is mounted on the roof of a warehouse. The ground system - such as it is - consists of chicken wire on the roof. When it was raining in Oakland the signal was significantly better.
Dave B.
RadioFanSF said:
It could be heard but it was an AM signal, and with few exceptions (such as SF Giants ballgames) people don't listen to AM anymore. Had KPIG been on SF in the Bay Area they might have had ratings comparable to Monterey. Maybe. However, that's not a guarantee, either. They tried it in Chico on FM and it bombed.
It didn't bomb in Chico as much as the new FM Talk format that replaced it!
I believe that at least part of the antennas are inside that building.
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Right. An antenna inside the building? It's been awhile since I had a laugh. And after reading that, you shake your head. Ever hear of radiation cancer? I wouldn't want to work in a place with a tower behind me radiating 2500 W. Just a 1000 w tube can heat the room.
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Right. An antenna inside the building? It's been awhile since I had a laugh. And after reading that, you shake your head. Ever hear of radiation cancer? I wouldn't want to work in a place with a tower behind me radiating 2500 W. Just a 1000 w tube can heat the room.
Starbucks said:
Right. An antenna inside the building? It's been awhile since I had a laugh. And after reading that, you shake your head. Ever hear of radiation cancer? I wouldn't want to work in a place with a tower behind me radiating 2500 W. Just a 1000 w tube can heat the room.
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The 5 towers of 1020 and 1150 AM in Los Angeles are partly "inside" a set of buildings. The 5-tower KTNQ array had a warehouse complex built around it, with the towers in "wells" with walls on all four sides... so from the roof, you look down to the tower base with 20-something foot walls around each one. The walls have part of the ground system on them, and a counterpoise system covers roofs and is strung above the parking and dock areas of the warehouses.
Many of us in radio have worked at stations with the transmitter and the studio at the same location. In many cases, the tower for AM was just a few feet from the building, or the FM antenna was just a matter of feet above it. Unless the walls and roof are a perfect Faraday shield, it's the same thing as having the tower inside the building...
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