WHRC-95.7 Hickory/Charlotte NC-Signal analysis

[vibe]

I'm not a techie but while driving home to New England last Sunday AM-my scan button locked into the station about 50 mi S of Charlotte on I 77. As opposed to a lot of religious ranting,raving, hooting and hollering, the station was playing an Accoustic rock feature which kept me locked on the station for 3+ hours. Good stuff!
The 100kw-1000' station started to have some slight fades N of Elkin NC but then regained strength quickly and blasted in to about MM 14 in VA (hillsville). Despite a large mountain range in the way, the station was listenable (in most spots) to the I-77/I-81 interchange and even for 5-7 mi N on I-81-near Pulaski VA. That has to be 100 mi+. No special receiver-just stock AM/FM/cassette/CD in my Crown Vic.
Most people would have given up on this station long before the NC/VA border with the first sign of ading but I managed to listen to it at least 35-40 beyond the radio locator contour maps for fringe area.
Of course I would have changed the dial if the music wasn't so kicka$$.
Anyone out there listen to stations that are way out of their market area??? What is the furthest station do you listen to on a regular basis? Here in New England, we don't have those big sticks except for the elevator music played from Mt. Washington.

 

[AckDX]

I have picked up WGBH all the way to New York State. On Nantucket it comes in very well.

 

[BRNout]

Here in New England, we don't have those big sticks except for the elevator music played from Mt. Washington.

WHOM has been out of the elevator music business for more than 10 years. They're pretty much a straightforward adult contemporary formatted station now. And yes, they have an awesome signal.

How unfortunate that the FCC sees fit to continue nibbling at the edges of their range by permitting co-channel translators in places that used to receive a moderate strength signal from them. Central MA comes to mind.....

 

[vibe]

I was a little harsh with the elevator music comment. But how much Celine can one stand? And yes, translators like the one on 94.9 in Worcester MA (which gets out a good bit because of the Paxton tower location) take significant bites of a coverage area like HOM's. That's not right..

 

[charlestondxman]

That is a great signal for that station. 95.7 is actually WXRC. Here, I can listen to several FMs from distant places. The one I probably most frequently listen to is WTCB from Orangeburg, SC. That station is 92 miles away, and has some great programming. They are the only AC station left in our area, as all of the rest have already flipped to Christmas music. It has local people on almost 24/7, except for a couple of hours on Saturday night and Sunday.

I listen to that, along with WYKZ from Beaufort, which is a Savannah station, but I listen to it because of its music selection.

I used to listen to WKML and WFLB from Lumberton, NC frequently, about 150 miles away, any time during the summer, as they were very good stations to listen to, and still are. 95.7, however, cannot be heard now due to a new local 95.9.

 

[BRNout]

I was a little harsh with the elevator music comment. But how much Celine can one stand? And yes, translators like the one on 94.9 in Worcester MA (which gets out a good bit because of the Paxton tower location) take significant bites of a coverage area like HOM's. That's not right..

In answer to your question, not much at all!! ;D

WHOM's format never appealed to me, but their incredible range has always impressed me enough to look for it whenever I would travel to a new place in the region. That's how I know that you can listen to it all the way from Sherbrooke, PQ over to the Penobscot Bay region of Maine south to the South Shore suburbs of Boston. WHOM also used to come in as far south as the higher northeast hills of CT. That reception has been scotched now by the inappropriate siting of the Paxton translator at 94.9. WHOM was receivable in almost all of the area now covered by that translator and, in some portions of central MA, it actually had a moderately strong signal.

It's just astounding that the FCC chooses to ignore the laws of physics when it comes to allocating frequencies! Then again, it's all politics and money - isn't it?

 

[vibe]

My words exactly!

 

[fybush]

It's just astounding that the FCC chooses to ignore the laws of physics when it comes to allocating frequencies! Then again, it's all politics and money - isn't it?

It's more complicated than that, in a way. Remember that WHOM is only as big as it is because it was there before 1964, when the current allocations rules came into effect. That's when the decision was made - and remember, we're talking 45 years ago already - to limit FM coverage in the northeast to relatively small areas. You can call that politics and money, if you like - but it also reflects the reality that there are only 80 channels in the commercial FM band, and even in 1964 there was much more demand for space on the FM dial than could be handled by allowing every station interference-free coverage to the very end of its potential line of sight.

As early as 1964, then, it was at least theoretically possible to slot in another 94.9 signal in central or eastern Massachusetts, as well as in northern New York and elsewhere. The only thing that saved WHOM's coverage for as long as it did was a certain amount of luck: the even older 94.5 allocation in Boston prevented a 94.9 in eastern Massachusetts, while the 94.7 in Springfield prevented a 94.9 in most of the rest of the state. But by the mid-80s, the 94.3 on Cape Cod had moved to 94.9, obliterating WHOM in much of eastern Massachusetts, while another signal in northern Maine had also moved to 94.9, wiping out WHOM's eastern fringes.

WHOM's huge coverage made sense, from a public service standpoint, when the station went on the air in 1958 (and even more so when its Mount Washington predecessor went on the air in 1939) - FM stations were few and far between, and the broad coverage from the top of the rock brought FM service to areas that would otherwise have had none. Does it still make sense, in anything but a sentimental way, in 2009? I think there's an argument to be made that more people in central Worcester County are getting useful public service from a Worcester County-based WTAG signal on 94.9 than they'd ever have received from a fringey signal aimed at a market almost three hours away.

Which is to say - there's a difference between "able to be received, under ideal conditions" and "providing an actual useful public service." And if anything, it's even more clear-cut on FM than on AM: on AM, anything you add to the dial anywhere in the country increases the noise floor, and thus reduces the useful local nighttime service area, for everything else on the channel. But a Worcester translator on 94.9 has no effect at all on WHOM's coverage of its own local service area in northern NH and southern/western Maine.

 

[vibe]

But Scott-the citizens of Central Mass were already receiving useful service with a 5000 watt low dial position (580) Worcester station. The translator on 94.9 simply repeats the programming of that station. The only benefit, I can see is that the station sounds better in FM.
If you owned something but were forced to give it up because somebody perhaps needs it more, you wouldn't be happy? I wouldn't.
I'm just glad there was no area translator to interfere with my enjoyment of the primary station on 95.7 while driving in North Carolina-Virgina, particularly while listening considerably beyond the fringe area contours shown on radio locator.

 

[fybush]

Nobody was "forced to give" anything up in this case. Citadel bought WHOM knowing full well that not all of the station's real-world coverage was protected from interference. Citadel doesn't sell advertising time on WHOM in Massachusetts, and it derives no ratings benefit from any theoretical WHOM listenership that might exist in Massachusetts (there is none, incidentally, at least according to Arbitron).

Is there an argument to be made that the 94.9 frequency in central Mass. could be put to a higher use than simulcasting WTAG? Sure there is, and LPFM advocates are busy making it. I hope they succeed. In the meantime, though, I'd bet that there are, in fact, a substantial number of people deriving useful service from WTAG on 94.9...and certainly more than were deriving any useful service from deep-fringe WHOM reception. Keep in mind that as good as WTAG's signal is, it does have some fairly deep night nulls to the SW and especially to the SE, down around Northborough and Milford - and that as you go east, you get into a first-adjacent mess with WEZE.

As for your 95.7 experience, I've taken that drive, too, and I'm a big fan of WXRC as well. Keep in mind that as a class C station in Zone II, WXRC is protected from interference for a considerably larger distance than our class B signals in the northeast. Even so, it gets nibbled around the edges, too - there's a 95.5 in High Point, for instance, that makes WXRC hard to heard in the Triad (and would kill it completely if it ever added HD, which is unlikely.) That's not even a new situation - the High Point station has been there since the early 1960s, I believe.