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Wlbh am

Very sad situation. Both the AM and FM have been in a slow death spiral. I was in Mattoon last week, and the AM transmitter was on, but with a dead carrier. I am sure it has not been at full power for some time. When it was running, only one channel of their satellite format was getting on air, and at only about 20% modulation. Local liners were too hot and over modulated.

The FM has been off for several months. Before is went off, there had been a very bad AC buzz on the signal for some time. The roof on the building has places where it has failed and is now open to mother nature.

The condition of these stations is a real tragedy. A 5KW AM and 50 KW FM. The elder Mr. Livesay would have never allowed this to happen.
 
I hate to hear such things. I recall the Clinton stations, WHOW AM & FM when passing through the area years ago. I was so curious about the stations I called the Chamber of Commerce to get their impression. The station, it seems had no local billing, never sought it and did nothing to connect with the community. The building was supposedly in bad shape and I was told equipment that broke beyond a parts required repair never was replaced. In listening to the then co-owned combo, they were tracking scratchy album sides and it seems an agency buy for McDonalds was the only spot in about 3 hours of listening although I heard one of those PR styled 'fill in the blanks' spots one of the Chicago companies sells by phone for stations. It seems there had been several offers but the son would never sell. One has to wonder where WLBH will bottom out before someone else brings it back at significant expense. I heard at some point it wasn't unusual for the station to have very respectable billing.
 
I was in Mattoon again yesterday, and tuned in WLBH, and found that their signal had greatly improved. The transmitter is still in need of some attention, but it was reasonably well modulated, and I carried the station east past Terre Haute. I listened for two hours, and heard zero local content, not even the required once an hour legal ID. Also, the transmitter was still on at 12PM, and they have no night authority at all. It was great to see the signal had improved, but they are leaving themselves open for some large forfeitures. The FM 96.9 signal was heard close to the tower site, but with no audio other than the bad AC buzz that has been present for nearly a year now.
 
I am glad to hear of the improvement but with the station operating at night, that is not good news. I have heard stories and can only speculate what the issues might be. It might be fair to say, if the son of Mr. Livesay still holds the license, that he is not a carbon copy of his father as far as running radio stations. Perhaps in time the FM shall return as well. Perhaps at some point the ownership will pass the stations to a group that will revive the stations.
 
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