• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

What's New with 1330-AM

Sure, you could probably move 1330, but why? As Scott has suggested, moving the transmitter location and picking a new COL is the easy part. That doesn't move the nulls which would remain necessary to protect Canandaigua (2 adj) and/or 1340s in Lockport and Auburn (1st adj.) So, depending on where you ended up (other than Ontario) the same protection limits would deepen the nulls towards the station you moved closer to, with some relaxation in the nulls towards stations in the opposite direction.

The upshot: even if you could move 1330 in to, say Webster or Irondequoit, the limits would become far more stringent towards Lockport and Canandaigua. So you'd have to employ deeper nulls, with perhaps more towers, to accomplish that. Now your coverage would not only suck over Greece, Gates, Spencerport and the western side of the city, you'd have to lop off Brighton and Henrietta too.

Construction costs could rise steeply if you wound up with, say, five or six towers. Complexity of the array design would increase and you'd fritter away precious time left on the CP waiting for the amendment to be approved and for your DA contractor to redesign the array.

If somebody is serious about building out 1330 they'd better get humpin' on it. Once it's on the air, even on an STA they'd have breathing room to file for minor changes to move it or whatever. But then you'd be talking about building a first-generation site, then paying to build a second site...land, towers, phasors, ATUs, ground systems.....times TWO. Thank you: for one, I'll pass.
 
Moving Up The Band

Looking into CPs that are about expire, how about WJJL. Looks like the clock's tickin' on that puppy too. January 17th, 2009. Tick, tock.
 
Re: Waiting for the Lightning to Strike

SirRoxalot said:
Western Syracuse? They don't even make Rochester reliably. Not nice to lie in the name of God...
Click to expand...

I have never heard them with any significant readability in Brighton which is just southeast of the city of Rochester.
 
WASB could put a very loud boombox in front of their tower behind the EconoLodge in Brockport and get better coverage in Spencerport than 1590 does.

The "West Syracuse" coverage claim would presumably apply to WRSB/1310, which, well, doesn't get that far even under massive amounts of static.

Back to the 1330 Ontario - are the religious broadcasters still interested in funding these crummy rimshot signals that allow them to claim they're "on the air in Rochester", even if it's not reality?
 
OhioMediaWatch said:
Back to the 1330 Ontario - are the religious broadcasters still interested in funding these crummy rimshot signals that allow them to claim they're "on the air in Rochester", even if it's not reality?
Click to expand...

Aside from the WASB/WRSB folks, I can't think of one that would be interested, and I doubt WASB has any money. FLN doesn't do AM, nor does EMF. CSN and Mars Hill already have sufficient coverage in the market. And Swaggart's got that station in Albion (I think that's where it is) which does surprisingly well reaching Rochester. No, I don't think there are any takers in the religious community.

Here's a question, though: could that station be moved such that it could get a lobe over Clinton Avenue? If you can cover the Hispanic population, you could probably make some money as a Spanish-language station, even if you couldn't cover any of the 'burbs.
 
I think we're nearing that point here in the Cleveland market, when you start asking what kind of Spanish-language broadcasters start popping up. We were just kicking around the disposition of the market's classical FM (west-side rimshot) if the station's operator were to land on a better signal with five FMs up for sale.

As for Rochester, I'm not sure if a station like the potential 1330 would probably end up being would be of interest to the major players in Spanish-language radio, even if they managed to squeeze every ounce out of the signal as you suggest. And I think most of those players (SBS, Univision, Entravision, etc.) have no interest in Rochester as a rule, let alone a puny AM that needs massaging to get a decent audience under its RF.

So, you're back to what Mr. Savage was talking about...the expense of constructing this station, putting up any number of towers for a very tight directional pattern that inches a quasi-listenable signal to Rochester's potential Hispanic listener base.

If you're thinking about a small, community operation...they probably don't have the cash. Could they buy a broken, existing low-watt AM signal? Sure...but not the investment this would require.
 
Savage said:
It would probably be cheaper to buy WROC than build even a moderately listenable version of 1330.
Click to expand...
I tend to agree with you Bob, it doesn't make any sense to spend money on a radio operation that signal goes no where. I mean look at the success of the Brockport station.
Or as Jim writes, the audience consists of fish between 25-54.
 
Re: Moving Up The Band

Radknowski said:
Looking into CPs that are about expire, how about WJJL. Looks like the clock's tickin' on that puppy too. January 17th, 2009. Tick, tock.
Click to expand...

This is a far less critical deadline than 1330's, since WJJL is on the air and licensed from the Buffalo Ave. site in Niagara Falls, and since the CP for the West Seneca move is mutually exclusive with WJJL's existing facility. So even if WJJL lets the existing CP expire, all they have to do is refile for the exact same facility on 1/18/09. It will be granted, and they'll have until 2012 or so to get it built.

But if 1330 expires unbuilt, anyone who wants that facility will be starting from scratch (and waiting for a new application window!)
 
What someone could do, is purchase the existing 1330 in Springville (which never shows up in the Buffalo book anyway and could probably be bought affordably), apply to move the TL to Brighton or Henrietta, and change COL to Brighton, Henrietta or even Rochester proper. Under the current FCC rules, IIRC, as long as no other existing station experiences greater interference, that comes under the realm of a "minor change." And such a move would actually, if built out properly, represent a REDUCTION in interference to existing co-channel service in Erie, PA, and potentially to the adjacent-channel stations on 1340 in Lockport and Auburn, compared with what building out the Ontario 1330 while leaving Springville in place on the channel would do. A 3-tower array might be enough to get it done.

Assuming Entercom's not interested in selling 950, that's the next-cheapest way to get that Latino station into the market, and the 5 mV coverage contour for a 1000 watt DA signal would hit nearly all such a station's target population (about 50,000).
 
Bob1370 said:
What someone could do, is purchase the existing 1330 in Springville (which never shows up in the Buffalo book anyway and could probably be bought affordably), apply to move the TL to Brighton or Henrietta, and change COL to Brighton, Henrietta or even Rochester proper. Under the current FCC rules, IIRC, as long as no other existing station experiences greater interference, that comes under the realm of a "minor change." And such a move would actually, if built out properly, represent a REDUCTION in interference to existing co-channel service in Erie, PA, and potentially to the adjacent-channel stations on 1340 in Lockport and Auburn, compared with what building out the Ontario 1330 while leaving Springville in place on the channel would do. A 3-tower array might be enough to get it done.
Click to expand...

Except that you can't remove first local service from Springville. (You could get 102.5 or 99.5 or one of the other south hills FMs to change COL to Springville to rectify that issue, but why would they do that?) And you still have adjacent-channel protections to Lockport and Auburn, second-adjacency to Canandaigua, and so on to contend with.

You COULD buy Springville, take it silent, and upgrade the Ontario CP somewhat, but you've still got that ticking CP deadline to contend with.
 
I like that this board is active with a few topics in play. I like that there's a diversity of ideas and opinions. I like that most posts are civil, yet some joyful exasperation appears. I like reading and writing about AM radio. This noted, I have to say, this thread has gone from the ridiculous to the absurd with the suggestion of taking 1330 in Springville off the air, and moving the Ontario COL-a to COL-b. We've been reading too many Marvel Comics, or is it Unpopular Mechanics? Or Mad Magazine, Broadcast Edition. 1330 AM looks like the black hole of the AM band in both Springville and Ontario. I looked at the contours of Springville, sandwiched into Springville, protecting 1330 Erie and 1340 Lockport and Jamestown and even 1320 Pittsburgh. Couldn't help but think, "Why?" What a mess.
 
I've been at the WASB facility many times. My wife both worked there under previous ownership, whatever that was, and volunteered under current ownership, which I believe is the Gates Baptist Temple, or whatever they're calling themselves now. TERRIBLE!!! TERRIBLE!!! TERRIBLE!!! I'm guessing thaey haven't had an equipment upgrade since they signed on as WADD in the '70s. They have NO production faciliities and they sound HORRIBLE!!! And I live in Brockport.
 
qman said:
I've been at the WASB facility many times. My wife both worked there under previous ownership, whatever that was, and volunteered under current ownership, which I believe is the Gates Baptist Temple, or whatever they're calling themselves now. TERRIBLE!!! TERRIBLE!!! TERRIBLE!!! I'm guessing thaey haven't had an equipment upgrade since they signed on as WADD in the '70s. They have NO production faciliities and they sound HORRIBLE!!! And I live in Brockport.
Click to expand...

The best thing that could happen to WASB is to go dark. Nobody, at least with any broadcasting experience, is going to buy a station with a signal that mostly feeds Lake Ontario's aquatic life (and those who failed to pay off their loanshark).
 
Personally I can't see how WASB is making any money. It must cost more to pay the electric bill than what the owners have put into that station.
On the other hand religious broadcasters are rolling in the dough, so don't be surprised to see more "pass the plate" programming on the AM dial in the near future as more and more AM stations go out of business or are sold.
 
I'd like to see Springville keep SPQ. My wife's folks live there, and since they dumped ESPN for a return to live programming, I actually enjoy listening to it for the local flavor whenever we visit. I'll take Tradio and farm reports over another religious thumper any day.
 
I suppose it is rather telling how limited-use this 1330 CP is that no religious outfit has tried to buy it and put it on the air. Granted, they usually stick with FM...but still! ::)

Of course, at this point, the smart money is waiting a few more months, maybe a year, for the major players in commercial radio to really go down in flames as the credit crunch continues and the recession kills ad revenue. I'll wager that at least some of the Class A signals (and weaker Class B's) will be sold before Halloween next year, and sold for a song.
 
aaronread said:
Of course, at this point, the smart money is waiting a few more months, maybe a year, for the major players in commercial radio to really go down in flames as the credit crunch continues and the recession kills ad revenue. I'll wager that at least some of the Class A signals (and weaker Class B's) will be sold before Halloween next year, and sold for a song.
Click to expand...
I'll take that bet. The question I pose is sold to who? If these big companies are losing their shirts, who is going to be able to afford to buy the stations you mention? Credit is already tight and some of the stations that might be on the market are not worth the asking price. Besides if advertisers pull back on spending money how are these new owners going to make payroll, let alone pay off their loan?
 
I'll take that bet. The question I pose is sold to who? If these big companies are losing their shirts, who is going to be able to afford to buy the stations you mention? Credit is already tight and some of the stations that might be on the market are not worth the asking price. Besides if advertisers pull back on spending money how are these new owners going to make payroll, let alone pay off their loan?
Click to expand...

These are valid questions, but you're ignoring the enormous pressure that companies like CBS, Entercom and Clear Channel are under to raise capital. Many of them have tremendous debt loads; well beyond anything they could hope to earn in normal operations. In some cases, probably beyond what they could hope to raise even if they sold every license at a "normal" price.

As for "sold to who", the answer is: the same people that bought radio stations back in the 1980's and early 1990's, back when you could buy a station in a small or medium market without needing a seven-figure loan just for the license, nevermind the first six months of operation. I think the aforementioned pressures to sell, coupled with a likely drastic cut in ad revenue, are going to drive down license prices so much that eventually someone will buy it because it'll make sense. Probably a pubradio or religious outfit; many of them are still doing decently well. At least for the moment.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom