I doubt very much that Red Apple will program to black or Hispanic audiences.
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Will WABC's Owner Purchase Another Local Station?
- Thread starter Barry
- Start date
I doubt very much that Red Apple will program to black or Hispanic audiences.
They made a handsome return on the 1560 transmitter site and are running the replacement transmitter on land they’ve owned since the 1960s without much added expense. It’ll never be a major signal again but that’s not even the point.
Right. But I don't think they can run it like this in perpetuity. At some point they'll either need to build a suitable facility, change the parameters of their license, or sell it to a buyer who is willing to invest in it.
You're thinking too much like a for-profit company. These people can just sit operate like this as long as they don't break any laws.
Right now they have an STA to operate under conditions that don't conform with normal engineering practices. It is running like a rural Peruvian station in the 50's. At some point, they have to either rebuild as a directional 50kw station or apply for a changed facility with a different power and antenna system.
Imagine if WOWO were still running 50 kw!
Well, there'd likely be plenty of Dionne Warwick, Fifth Dimension and early Motown on the playlist -- and "Feliz Navidad" in December.
I imagine it would have very few listeners.
That was the 2nd station i ever "Dx'd" from Connecticut. KDKA was the first. to a 12 or so year old in 6th grade, it was a big deal. It was Dxing and how signals worked that got me interested in working in radio and here i am 26 years after that first "DX", after nearly 20 years in radio.
Well, yes, but I was referring to its impact on WLIB's coverage area around sunrise and sunset.
WOWO still runs 50,000 watts daytime
Does WABC 's Lodi site have enough room for another tower? Vis-a-vis 1560 : Seems to me that two towers can make for nice protective nulls at night as well as big signals. WBZ, WWL, WDRC, WTIC, WWKBW, etc.
Or Mr. C would well serve his portfolio and his Manhattan-to-Montaik train set commute by picking up WHLI. His music is already there, plus he gets a translator thrown in.
Or Mr. C would well serve his portfolio and his Manhattan-to-Montaik train set commute by picking up WHLI. His music is already there, plus he gets a translator thrown in.
I've always been curious why WQXR-WFME-WQEW has had to be directional in the DAY, Nick. But indeed they've had to steer their 50,000 daytime watts away from *something* for decades.
At night, though, you're right. Bakersfield gets first dibs.
Being a dangerous 30 miles closer to Bakersfield can be dismissed by lowering the theoretical 50,000 watts to, what? 48,442 watts ?
At night, though, you're right. Bakersfield gets first dibs.
Being a dangerous 30 miles closer to Bakersfield can be dismissed by lowering the theoretical 50,000 watts to, what? 48,442 watts ?
I've seen moves of a mile make a difference
Or as little as half a watt make a difference
There's a station in Montana that got 49.5 watts at night.. yes.. 49.5! Why?
49 didnt cause prohibitive overlap with the station they had to protect but 50 did... and they wanted to squeeze out every last ounce of power they could
Generally, when a protection is not quite obvious, look at adjacent channels.
Yessir, David..
Sometime back I had gone through some station history sites and found out that WBUX Doylestown PA had signed on 1570 before 'WQXR' raised their power to 50,000 watts around the clock.
I'd dismissed the 1560 from LaPlata MD (formerly WSMD, now WKIK) because WSMD signed on in 1965, long after 'WQXR' already had gone to 50,000.
Existing 1550 adjacents seemed to've been of little or no consequence.
My lapse in not including that past 'research'
in my post.
Basically, I was speculating what sort of elbow room Mr. Cats would achieve if a two-tower setup at the Lodi site were possible, vis-a-vis 1560's nighttime signal. Obviously, they'd still need to be directional in the day to protect 1570 Doyelstown. And to ask if a reduction to less nighttime power in Bakersfield's direction would suffice.
Sometime back I had gone through some station history sites and found out that WBUX Doylestown PA had signed on 1570 before 'WQXR' raised their power to 50,000 watts around the clock.
I'd dismissed the 1560 from LaPlata MD (formerly WSMD, now WKIK) because WSMD signed on in 1965, long after 'WQXR' already had gone to 50,000.
Existing 1550 adjacents seemed to've been of little or no consequence.
My lapse in not including that past 'research'
in my post.Basically, I was speculating what sort of elbow room Mr. Cats would achieve if a two-tower setup at the Lodi site were possible, vis-a-vis 1560's nighttime signal. Obviously, they'd still need to be directional in the day to protect 1570 Doyelstown. And to ask if a reduction to less nighttime power in Bakersfield's direction would suffice.
I have long been amused at the FCC obsession for 1560 in NYC having to protect the co-channel in Bakersfield, which is 2,450 miles away (for the moment I will ignore any nearby first adjacents.)
Tune through any of the AM frequencies at night, and every last one of them is a pileup of multiple co-channel stations clobbering each other. And these are stations that are much closer to each other than Bakersfield is to NYC. In short, the AM band is a complete, incoherent, cluttered mess, and has been that way for the past 40 years.
If the NYC 1560 was to run 50kw non-directional, I doubt that anyone west of the Mississippi River would notice or care.
Keeping to the rules of the NARBA treaty, which is from 81 years ago is stupid. The days of "clear channels" and regional channels useful (and needed) over a large part of the country are long gone. Nobody, outside of the hard-core AMDX community, listens to distant AM stations.
It is long past time to scrap NARBA, let stations ramp up the nighttime power and antenna parameters, and let them adequately cover their home markets with a solid signal. Anything beyond the home market is irrelevant.
It's not the 1930s any more. Or has the FCC not noticed that?
Daytime I doubt Bakersfield would be affected by 50 KW or 500KW on 1560 daytime. Night time is another story
Without going down the engineering path, AM skip is a result of the ozone layer acting like a giant mirror reflecting AM signals. Temperature affects height of the ozone layer which can be as low as 9- or 10-miles winter night and 20+ miles in the summer days. Usually during daylight hours, the Ozone layer is too high to reflect commercial AM signals during the day so what you hear is the “ground wave” during the day. There is a wavelength formula that will predict the optimum angle based on the height of the Ozone level, but generally at night the ozone layer is low enough to reflect AM signals. Another limiting issue is by nature AM receivers will pick up almost anything on the tuned frequency. As a result, you could hear another on channel station’s “skip” mixed in with local signal depending on the strength of the local signal. So it everybody ramped up nighttime signals all the AM channels would sound like a class C channel (1230, 1240, 1340, 1400 1450 and 1490). where the interference at night is so bad 1KW might go 10 miles without other signals mixing in.
1510 WLAC in Nashville has a really good nighttime signal despite some on channel stations which has it running directional at night. If you are in a signal lobe you might get WLAC as well or better than 650 WSM some nights both are 50KW. Daytime WSM really has a signal advantage over WLAC. Several years ago, when 1550 in Smyrna GA. transmitter control system missed the time change, they got complaints from a station in Vinton VA. The one kilowatt 780 WPTN Cookeville TN control system missed the time chance and really messed with WBBM’s skywave in GA, TN, KY and AL on my car radio last fall for a couple of nights.
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