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What's Going On in Shoreview?

RomanPort

RomanPort

Hi!

When I woke up this morning, I checked my radio as usual and noticed that every single FM station from the KMSP tower in Shoreview was on a low power backup transmitter. This includes KQRS, 93X, JACK FM, K102, The Wolf, Classical MPR, KDWB, Cities 97, and The Fan. Not a big deal, I've seen it happen before. What I haven't seen before are the stations being out for this long. With the notable exception of the two Cumulus Media stations, KQRS and 93X, all of the aforementioned stations are still on backup transmitters instead of their 100 kW primaries.

Interestingly, I noticed that full power HD was switched on for KQRS and 93X around 6 PM this evening, but they kept the low power analog transmitters on. About an hour later, 93X's main transmitter switched back on and they tried to switch on the main transmitter for KQRS, but switched it back off ~30 seconds later. About an hour after that, KQRS was brought back up to full power. Since then, I haven't noticed any changes.

Additionally, I also noticed that since KQRS was brought back up to full power, it's been spewing out interference over a relatively large chunk of bandwidth and obliterating whatever is on 92.9.
1657255878362.png

I'm pretty confident that the main transmitters for the other seven stations will remain off-air for at least the rest of the night and into tomorrow morning. I assume something must've broke, but I don't quite understand how things are only broken enough to take out those seven stations but not the two Cumulus ones. Unless it's something to do with how they're being combined to send up the tower? Just curious if anyone happened to have seen any news surrounding the site. Thanks!
 
RomanPort said:
Hi!

When I woke up this morning, I checked my radio as usual and noticed that every single FM station from the KMSP tower in Shoreview was on a low power backup transmitter. This includes KQRS, 93X, JACK FM, K102, The Wolf, Classical MPR, KDWB, Cities 97, and The Fan. Not a big deal, I've seen it happen before. What I haven't seen before are the stations being out for this long. With the notable exception of the two Cumulus Media stations, KQRS and 93X, all of the aforementioned stations are still on backup transmitters instead of their 100 kW primaries.

Interestingly, I noticed that full power HD was switched on for KQRS and 93X around 6 PM this evening, but they kept the low power analog transmitters on. About an hour later, 93X's main transmitter switched back on and they tried to switch on the main transmitter for KQRS, but switched it back off ~30 seconds later. About an hour after that, KQRS was brought back up to full power. Since then, I haven't noticed any changes.

Additionally, I also noticed that since KQRS was brought back up to full power, it's been spewing out interference over a relatively large chunk of bandwidth and obliterating whatever is on 92.9.
View attachment 3231

I'm pretty confident that the main transmitters for the other seven stations will remain off-air for at least the rest of the night and into tomorrow morning. I assume something must've broke, but I don't quite understand how things are only broken enough to take out those seven stations but not the two Cumulus ones. Unless it's something to do with how they're being combined to send up the tower? Just curious if anyone happened to have seen any news surrounding the site. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Hi There! I don't know what is going on at the KMSP tower location, but wanted to comment on the interference your spectral analyzer seems to indicate for 92.5Mhz. I've seen this before. Mostly with some of the newer high power FM/HD transmitters. Especially if they've been off for a long while (cold) and first powered up. The FM/HD exciter can take awhile to, for lack of a better way to explain it, stabilize and maximize certain parameters. If you'd like I'd be happy to provide you more information regarding this. pfp
 
pfpengineer said:
Hi There! I don't know what is going on at the KMSP tower location, but wanted to comment on the interference your spectral analyzer seems to indicate for 92.5Mhz. I've seen this before. Mostly with some of the newer high power FM/HD transmitters. Especially if they've been off for a long while (cold) and first powered up. The FM/HD exciter can take awhile to, for lack of a better way to explain it, stabilize and maximize certain parameters. If you'd like I'd be happy to provide you more information regarding this. pfp
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it! Yup, I've seen that it takes some time to stabilize after a cold start too. However, even when I checked ~7 hour later, the transmitter was still putting out the same amount of junk. Looks like they went and put it back on a backup as well ~8:30 this morning.
 
Interesting. I had the chance to listen to 92.5 FM, the HD1 and HD2 channels yesterday around 9:30pm. If there was still something going on with the rf signal it sure wasn’t audible. Don’t recall ever hearing such awesome sounding HD’s and the FM was impressive as well. Especially considering you’re dealing with the 75us pre-emphasis curve and the audio processor having to manage limiting and clipping with that large of a higher frequency boost. Did notice the HD signals weren’t available earlier in the day as well as several other stations in the Cities that I tuned in.
 
Heard it from an engineer friend who heard it from an engineer friend (doesn't quite have the same ring as that REO Speedwagon lyric...) in St. Cloud, but it looks like they're doing some work on the Shoreview tower for the rest of the month. All of the stations are running from IDS, where their backups are located. I'm guessing that the Cumulus guys are opting to go back on their mains at the end of the day even though it's more work to go back and forth.

It seems that every day, except for Sunday, the main transmitters are shut off almost on the dot at 7:30 AM and are turned back on sometime after 6 PM. I wonder what work is being done at the tower. I was in the area Saturday and my curiosity got the best of me so I drove to the site, but couldn't see anything going on.

Without the adjacent local stations KDWB and KEEY, I can finally listen to WHMH out of Sauk Rapids in HD consistently, so there's that. Saturday morning there was also some decent E-Skip going on, so I was able to hear some Canadian stations on the east coast right where the HD sidebands of our locals would usually be. Haha!
 
Heh, somebody with Cumulus is having some major problems with HD. Keep seeing it switch on for 5-10 seconds at a time, switch off for 5-10 seconds, and so on. Power level is all over the place too. I think this might be a backup HD transmitter from IDS, or at least some kind of different configuration. It doesn't have any track info, and it has a "-FM" suffix in their station name which their main transmitter doesn't use. Surprised how seamless the HD/analog transition is while listening in HD. It's not perfect but it's a whole lot better than I'd expect, haha.
 
Perhaps they were experimenting with HD at their backup site? Had heard over a year ago there was interest in adding HD capability to the 92.5 and 93.7 backup signals. Seems to me the weekend would be a better time to do something like this. Would the transmitter combiner up there have the bandwidth necessary to accommodate the HD side bands? Were they tuning that I wonder? Might explain the varying power levels you brought up. The difference between say a -20 dBc signal vs the current maximum allowed -14 dBc power level is quite a lot!
 
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IDS charges more for HD, so it was not done when I was there. Also, it doesn't make sense since they are not really doing anything 'big' on the HD-2 channels for either station.
 
Not sure what you mean big? Lots of commercials? You sound like a fellow who is probably well aware that things rarely ever stay the same in broadcast radio for too long. Things may be ramping-up technically for a reason. I’ve been listening to KQ FM since ‘82, and they’ve certainly undergone many changes over the years. Including the addition of the HD1 several years ago. Which I prefer hands down over the analog FM. As a new listener to their HD2 channels, I say, good for them. Hopefully, we don’t start hearing lots of annoying commercials though!
 
Interesting that 93.7 HD2 “The Machine” & 92.5 HD2 “The Bear” have been on all weekend. Usually they’re on all day Sunday but not Saturday’s. During the week they reliably go down around 7:3am and back up between 5:30pm - 6pm. It all makes sense now learning about the guy cable work. Now there’s a challenging job! No thanks.
 
Looks like the stations are still on backups, and the Cumulus ones have been consistently switching off HD during the day from 7:30 AM to ~5 PM. They're running HD way, WAY too hot compared to their analog signal at night though.

HD on KQRS is running so much stronger than analog that my analog-only Sony tuner likes to occasionally, when their analog fails or there's even mild multipath interference, start playing nothing but pink noise until I switch channels and switch back. I think it has something to do with some kind of auto-alignment the tuner does that gets confused by the strong IBOC bands for HD. I'm guessing it quietly adjusts the tuning to one of the IBOC carriers when analog gets just a smidge weaker thinking that it is the FM carrier. It'll never fix itself because HD is stronger than the analog signal. I have to switch channels and switch back to get it to reset.

I don't really see why they need to switch off HD during the day either if it's coming from the same place their analog signal is from, IDS. They only switch off HD on days they're actually working on the tower in Shoreview, so it seems to me that HD must be coming from Shoreview. It doesn't make sense though, as I know analog comes from IDS and I don't think they're allowed (or even able to) to broadcast them from different locations?
 
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The problem with my tuner and the strong HD is just intermiddent enough that it's hard to get the start on video (although of course their analog went out while I was typing this, haha). However, here's a video of what it sounds like when it happens. Just imagine music suddenly cutting to this static before the video starts. Despite analog coming in clear as day, it gets confused by the IBOC and tries to demodulate it as FM, producing nothing but static and a faint hint of the out-of-tune analog signal, until I switch channels and switch back.


(excuse the mess, was in the middle of a project when it happened)
 
RomanPort said:
Looks like the stations are still on backups, and the Cumulus ones have been consistently switching off HD during the day from 7:30 AM to ~5 PM. They're running HD way, WAY too hot compared to their analog signal at night though.

HD on KQRS is running so much stronger than analog that my analog-only Sony tuner likes to occasionally, when their analog fails or there's even mild multipath interference, start playing nothing but pink noise until I switch channels and switch back. I think it has something to do with some kind of auto-alignment the tuner does that gets confused by the strong IBOC bands for HD. I'm guessing it quietly adjusts the tuning to one of the IBOC carriers when analog gets just a smidge weaker thinking that it is the FM carrier. It'll never fix itself because HD is stronger than the analog signal. I have to switch channels and switch back to get it to reset.

I don't really see why they need to switch off HD during the day either if it's coming from the same place their analog signal is from, IDS. They only switch off HD on days they're actually working on the tower in Shoreview, so it seems to me that HD must be coming from Shoreview. It doesn't make sense though, as I know analog comes from IDS and I don't think they're allowed (or even able to) to broadcast them from different locations?
Click to expand...
Apparently the engineers at Cumulus are more industrious than those at iHeart or Audacy. I bet those PDs inside Utica are hopping mad.
 
RomanPort said:
Looks like the stations are still on backups, and the Cumulus ones have been consistently switching off HD during the day from 7:30 AM to ~5 PM. They're running HD way, WAY too hot compared to their analog signal at night though.

HD on KQRS is running so much stronger than analog that my analog-only Sony tuner likes to occasionally, when their analog fails or there's even mild multipath interference, start playing nothing but pink noise until I switch channels and switch back. I think it has something to do with some kind of auto-alignment the tuner does that gets confused by the strong IBOC bands for HD. I'm guessing it quietly adjusts the tuning to one of the IBOC carriers when analog gets just a smidge weaker thinking that it is the FM carrier. It'll never fix itself because HD is stronger than the analog signal. I have to switch channels and switch back to get it to reset.

I don't really see why they need to switch off HD during the day either if it's coming from the same place their analog signal is from, IDS. They only switch off HD on days they're actually working on the tower in Shoreview, so it seems to me that HD must be coming from Shoreview. It doesn't make sense though, as I know analog comes from IDS and I don't think they're allowed (or even able to) to broadcast them from different locations?
Click to expand...
They likely don’t have transmitters capable of HD transmission at the backup site. Why spend the extra money for the backup that sits unused for 99% of the time?

It honestly wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the backup transmitters are old too. Again, they don’t get used often, so they don’t need to be as nice/new.
 
Looks like the stations are finally starting to come back to full power. KQRS switched on their full power transmitter sometime in the last 12 hours, although it looks like 93X is still on a backup for now. Only a few weeks late, haha!
 
KQ's engineer passed away the 3rd week of August.
Not sure who's helping for the time being.
On another note, Audacy still does not have a full time engineer, that's over two years.
 
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