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Will Salem and Radio Luz part ways in Boston?

D

DanStrassberg

Radio Luz has been LMAing Salem's AM 1150 (what are the calls this week--WWDJ?) and running SS religion on the signal for (my guess) a bit more than two years now. Meanwhile, in other markets (Seattle-Tacoma, San-Francisco Bay), Salem has been developing financial talk, apparently with success, on signal-challenged AMs (Class D AM 1220 KDOW Palo Alto and AM 1300 KKOL Seattle--but it's really Tacoma). In Boston, could WWDJ's future be in financial talk? (It wouldn't be the first time for the 1150 signal; it ran financial talk close to two decades ago under--I believe--the ownership of Greater Media.) Salem has just announced that, in Dallas-Fort Worth, it is breaking up with Radio Luz, which has been LMAing Salem's AM 770 (KAAM?) and is flipping the Texas station to financial talk built around the same programming that airs on KDOW and KKOL (Dave Ramsey, Ray Lucia, Bloomberg). Currently, that programming is heard (not very well--and that's the problem) in Boston on Barry Armstrong's AM 1120 WBNW Concord. Might Salem LMA 1150 to Armstrong, who would move the financial talk three notches up the dial? Might Armstrong LMA 1120 to Radio Luz, which would move the SS religion three notches down? 1120 has a decent daytime signal (better, I think, than 1150's) in Framingham, which has a sizeable Hispanic population.
 
When I lived in the Pacific NW, AM 1300 was KOL right in the center of Seattle, next to KJR. I see by radio-locator.com, that the newly yclept KKOL has a directional array IN Tacoma, but aimed at Seattle. I wonder if the folks in the Tacoma area get the backfire of the pattern while parts of Seattle get the full 50K/47K.
 
Laurence Glavin said:
When I lived in the Pacific NW, AM 1300 was KOL right in the center of Seattle, next to KJR. I see by radio-locator.com, that the newly yclept KKOL has a directional array IN Tacoma, but aimed at Seattle. I wonder if the folks in the Tacoma area get the backfire of the pattern while parts of Seattle get the full 50K/47K.
Click to expand...

KKOL (it might still have been KOL at the time) lost the lease on its site in the Port of Seattle. I believe the station was ND-U from that site. It clearly is a very old station, since it once had a three-letter call sign. Anyhow, the temporary replacement for the lost site was a rusty old decomissioned ship anchored at a pier in the Port. On a large metal plate atop one of the holds was a 74' Valcom Fibreglass whip antenna. Thanks to the great ground system (all of Puget Sound and arguably, the entire Pacific Ocean) KKOL got out quite nicely even though the FCC would allow it to run only 1500W or so. However, a permanent site was required and after several years of searching and negotiating, Salem came up with the current site in the Port of Tacoma. As you point out, the DA-2 signal, which was supposed to be 50 kW-D/47 kW-N, is aimed mostly north toward Seattle. This is a sad story, however. KKOL got to run its CP day pattern and power for only a few weeks before it was forced to modify the day pattern and reduce its day power. A nearby facility, where fuel tankers unloaded highly volatile petrochemicals, was experiencing problems with arcs from the intense RF field and feared that there could easily be a major explosion and/or fire. It is not widely known outside of the Pacific Northwest but, once you get even a short distance away from the water, the soil conductivity out there is Northern New England-style horrendous and KKOL could not deliver the requisite 5 mV/m by day to its CoL (Seattle). Salem's Engineering department went into high gear and put a synchronous transmitter on the air in Seattle in the hope of delivering an adequate signal to the east side of Seattle. The results were less than spectacular and the synch amp got the deep six. KKOL has since been limping along at less than its CP power with an inadequate signal in Seattle and no real hope of fixing it.
 
Are you saying that radio-locator.com may NOT be the last word on AM stations' coverage?
 
Laurence Glavin said:
Are you saying that radio-locator.com may NOT be the last word on AM stations' coverage?
Click to expand...

Yes--especially in this case, because KKOL is using neither the day pattern nor the day power described in its CP. Since STA patterns are not readily available (and maybe are just not available to the public period), R-L may never be able to show anything like KKOL's real coverage. Moreover, the official M-3 soil-conductivity maps, which R-L uses for all of its AM coverage calculations, routinely overstate the soil conductivity and thus the coverage of many AMs.

And R-L has never shown accurate night coverage for AMs. Doing so would require obtaining the NIF value for each station. AFAIK, NIFs are not tabulated anywhere in CDBS. AFAIK, the only place where they are available is in applications to add or change night service. Since only a small fraction of AMs have modified or applied to modify their night service since the FCC started keeping copies of the applications in electronic form, the location of the information is quite a mystery. I think the FCC must have the official figures for all or nearly all AMs that operate at night--even Class Ds--but I do not believe the figures are available to the public.
 
A certain other radio information site suggests that, from domain registrations, the financial talk "Money Radio" format is headed to WROL instead.
 
encarta95 said:
A certain other radio information site suggests that, from domain registrations, the financial talk "Money Radio" format is headed to WROL instead.
Click to expand...

What a shame. IMO, Salem would do better shuffling the Spanish religion to 950 and putting the financial talk on 1150, which has an inferior daytime signal but a far superior nighttime signal. And making a deal with Armstrong to put the Spanish religion on 1120 would probably be a cool move as well. 950 would then be unaffected.
 
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