LA_Guy said:
I remember that little x-mitter on 560AM you brought to the house. Used to play old AT-40 shows on it. That was some serious fun.
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WJMF is on the air.
- Thread starter WarwickRadioFan
- Start date
I remember that little x-mitter on 560AM you brought to the house. Used to play old AT-40 shows on it. That was some serious fun.
WCRI doesn't reach into Providence well. As for "WJMF", well, NO. If WCRB were still great, they'd still be on 102.5 without the need to take up a college station. WCRB was great before Mario Mazza (I think that was his name, anyway he was also the last P.D. for classical WNCN) got his hands on it. WCRB can wither & die now for all I care. Let 99.5 become Spanish WNNW-FM or WLLH-FM. Keep the Boston stuff north of the border.Jimmy128 said:
What about WHRB? They air classical, amongst other things. WGBH aired a good deal of classical before they bought WCRB.Jimmy128 said:
Here in R.I., the best classical programming is on WRIU's Divertimento from 10-12:30, then followed by the WCRI stations. As for WJMF, it should go back to being student radio. Maybe they can take a cue from WRIU.
Boston stations still need to stop trying to infest our stations.
Bryant College administration did, sure. But if there was ONE student who wanted to be on regular, analog F.M. instead of this bastard HD2 crap, then yes, I'd say WJMF, the student radio station, was conquered. What's in its place? Classical Top 40 birdfeed. Whoop-de-doo. WJMF was at least listenable as a student station. The kids were getting an education on a station with potential for an audience. Now, HD2? Forget it. I'm one of the few listeners who owns an HD radio & I'm not tuned in. The web? If they get 100 listeners on their stream it'd be the envy of podcasters everywhere.Jimmy128 said:
Because the student station should be first & foremost. Most people (I am pretty confident in saying statistically-speaking, just about all) in the Providence market do not have HD radio. The student station could've been a great marketing & publicity tool for the college. They could air their sports as well as debates on the station. It doesn't have to all be block-time music. It could've been used to prove that not all radio has to be a jukebox. Instead, they are running a classical jukebox on their analog/HD1 signals. Funny: I never heard anyone around Providence complaining there was no classical music on the air. Instead, this is just another example of a pubcaster trying to become a regional octopus. WBUR-FM & WUMB are like that too. What's next? WUMB on WDOM? Where does it end?
Not quite true on either count. First, NPR doesn't own any stations at all. They are prohibited from doing so by their charter. (no such restriction on Public Radio International or American Public Media, however) WRVU was sold to the local NPR affiliate, WPLN. WPLN used it so they could have full-time signals dedicated to news (WPLN) and classical (WRVU, aka WFCL) instead of doing both on WPLN.
A bigger deal is that the STUDENTS of Vanderbilt sold the station. WRVU was not owned by Vanderbilt University, it was owned by an independent group (the VSC) that managed various student media outlets at Vanderbilt, and the board of directors was mostly students. I checked the ownership reports and it was the case. The stated reason was that student interest in WRVU had waned severely, whereas student interest in the campus newspaper was still reasonably high. The problem was that funding for the newspaper had dried up, so the sale of WRVU was to be used for an endowment to support the newspaper. A strategy that I personally found highly questionable, but I guess it made sense to them...and admittedly they know a heckuva lot more about their own finances than I do! :
Personally I don't believe that "college radio" must automatically be for the students. In the pre-internet age, when radio was all their was, there was a strong argument for such a thing. But today it's pretty damn hard to justify wasting a radio license on a club that inherently is serving the interests of its members before it serves the interests of its listeners/community. Not when you can effectively have a webcast-only "radio station" that effectively fulfills all the same functions of being a learning experience and training ground for students. Granted, a lot of webcast-only stations aren't given the funding/tools to actually DO that, but that's not a fault of the medium. And considering the high (compared to other student activities) cost of operating an FCC-licensed station, and the substantial regulatory liability, and the lack of any connection to a college's core mission...is it any surprise that colleges are selling off their licenses?
I mean, sure, they COULD spend the money to hire professional staff to put out a quality product and serve as a good local resource while doubling as a beneficial marketing outlet for the college. Sure they could do that. But where's the ROI? Most colleges aren't necessarily recruiting students from their local area. Quite often they're recruiting students from well outside it. And even if they are recruiting locally...there's a heckuva lot cheaper (and more effective) ways to go about it than to try and run a top-notch competitive radio outlet. Not to mention there's that whole "drowning in red ink" problem a lot of colleges are facing. Kinda hard to justify spending $150k/yr on the radio station when the entire chemistry department just got laid off. Unless the college has a broadcasting curriculum (or a related curriculum, like journalism) then the ROI usually just isn't there for most colleges.
What I find stunningly short-sighted is how many people are blaming the NPR stations for buying these licenses. The stations were going to sold no matter what, folks. Would you prefer yet another religious "satellator" with little, if any, local relevance at all? At least with most NPR outlets there is a semblance, if not a serious commitment, to serving the local community.
N1WVQ said:
WCRI dosen't reach Providence.
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WCRI&service=FM&status=L&hours=U
There are certainly a few higher-elevation areas around Providence where it's possible to hear WCRI-FM on a good radio on a good day, but that doesn't make it (or 1180) a "Providence signal."
The calculator at v-soft.com tells the tale: using zip code 02903 (downtown Providence), WCRI-FM doesn't even crack the 50 dBu minimum signal level needed to register. For comparison purposes, the Pru and Newton/Needham class B signals from Boston put about 53-54 dBu over downtown Providence (54 dBu is the "protected contour" for a class B signal), and even WCIB (50.3 dBu) puts in more signal than WCRI-FM.
As for the AM, it puts less signal over downtown Providence than, among others, WHYN, WGFP and WSRO.
They're fine stations, and they provide useful service to South County and parts of Connecticut and even the tip of Long Island...but for the average listener using an average radio inside 295, they don't do anything useful to meet whatever need may exist for a classical station.
The calculator at v-soft.com tells the tale: using zip code 02903 (downtown Providence), WCRI-FM doesn't even crack the 50 dBu minimum signal level needed to register. For comparison purposes, the Pru and Newton/Needham class B signals from Boston put about 53-54 dBu over downtown Providence (54 dBu is the "protected contour" for a class B signal), and even WCIB (50.3 dBu) puts in more signal than WCRI-FM.
As for the AM, it puts less signal over downtown Providence than, among others, WHYN, WGFP and WSRO.
They're fine stations, and they provide useful service to South County and parts of Connecticut and even the tip of Long Island...but for the average listener using an average radio inside 295, they don't do anything useful to meet whatever need may exist for a classical station.
From what I recall driving back-n-forth between my old home in Boston and my parents' home in Mystic, CT...WGBH 89.7 gets into Providence a lot better than WCRI 96.9 does. That said, WGBH doesn't get terribly well into Providence. But it's still better than WCRI.
This is not a judgment on any stations' operations or content, but I have to agree with Scott: signal-wise, WCRI is not providing a classical music service to folks inside 295.
This is not a judgment on any stations' operations or content, but I have to agree with Scott: signal-wise, WCRI is not providing a classical music service to folks inside 295.
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