WPAD 1450, WKYX 570 & WDXR 1560

[A#1]

Back in about 67', remember this station as an MOR leaning Top 40 station. I think they had an announcer that went by the name of Jesse James? Around the same time, I remember WKYX as a blocked format station. Seems they played Country from 6am-3pm, Top 40 from 3-10pm and from 10-12 midnight....believe it or not, I remember a Standards type or beautiful vocal segment. They had jocks like Pepper Lipsynk? and Hal Ball? Whatever, it was very interesting and it was the only station I could pick up at night over in the Lake Land area. From about 68-71, 570 sticks out in my mind as the Country K-57 Ranch or whatever they called it. Mark Clark is a name I remember associated with KYX at that time. I think he even worked in Evansville at some period. Of course, bigger and better things were ahead for 570. On an FM note, before the switch to WKYQ, didn't 93.3 play oldies for a very short period leading to the format switch to Country? Lastly, WDXR. Wow, what a nighttime signal. Could hear 1560 way up in Minnesota while visiting relatives. About the only name I can remember from back in those days....67' or so, was a guy named Steven Earl? In the early 70's after an evening meal at Sue & Charlie's, the wife and I took a ride over to Paducah to check out the nice studios of WDXR. This was summer 1973 and the evening jock took us for a little tour of those beautiful studios. Can't remember his name. Nice guy though. If I recall, there was a TV station in the building, too. Ahhhh....those were the days my friends. Just wanted to reminisce a little.

 

[NoWayNoCC]

The 1990 edition of the M Street Radio Directory still listed WDXR as top 40!

That's right, folks. An AM top 40 station in America lasted into 1990! At least it did according to M Street.

Paducah was a Birch-rated market, and suffice it to say, WDXR's ratings were tiny by then. They're listed in the directory, but I don't know if there's an Allowed Cloud here against saying exactly what its ratings were.

 

[redneckriviera]

Yeah, I listened to 1560 a good bit growing up in the farmland around Champaign in central Illinois--they used to boom in up there at night. I'm guessing that with the breakdown of clears that rarely happens anymore.

But, no, I don't think there's any prohibition against posting decades-old ratings on here. Used to be that they wouldn't let you post current Arbitron numbers, but now that they do that themselves (12+) they seem to have relaxed.

As far as 1990 Birch ratings are concerned, who would give a sh*t aside from us radio junkies (and, yeah, we would find it interesting)!

BTW, when did they shuffle the call-letters around in Paducah?

 

[NoWayNoCC]

Well then, WDXR only had a 0.7 in the 1990 directory.

 

[redneckriviera]

WDXR missed the boat 60 years ago when they probably could have gotten 50-kw unlimited with a 4-tower or 6-tower array shooting at the Yukon. Would have owned the Carbondale market, for sure, and probably would have made them a player even in today's radio world.

 

[vacuum tube]

Around 1979 1560 WDXR was sold to Pollack Broadcasting, but part of the deal included a frequency swap with 1450 WPAD. The WDXR studios were located at the Ritz Hotel. WDXR leased the transmitter site that was used for 1450 WPAD, located behind the studios of WPAD and WDDJ on 8th street. The WDDJ 10 bay antenna was on the 400 foot tower shared by 1450 WDXR. The 1560 WPAD transmitter site was located on the south side of Paducah. It was a three tower dogleg array. They were 10000 watts day with two towers generating a north- south pattern (present day time pattern). At night they used all three sticks at 1KW with the main lobe shooting north-northwest. When WPAD took over 1560 the transmitter was a Gates BC-10P. 1450 WDXR had a Gates BC 1H1, that was severely damaged by lightning in 1980. It was replaced by a McMartin BA 1K. For a couple of weeks until the McMartin was received and installed the 1450 siganl was being generated by an old Western Electric 451A 250 watt transmitter (very cool looking rig!). 1560 WPAD replaced the 10P with a Harris MW 10 in the early eighties. The Gates BC 1H1 that was damaged by lightning at the 1450 WDXR site was repaired and put into back up service at 1560 WPAD. Around 1984 WPAD increaced the night time power to 5KW with the addition of another tower. This is one of the unusual operations as they operate at 10 KW sunrise to sunset, then the 1KW original night pattern until suset at Bakersfield, CA then go to 5KW with a pattern shooting to the southeast until sunrise.

Since the 1450 stick was nearly 5/8 wave and the 1560 sticks were a 1/4 wave there was not that much difference in DAYTIME coverage, especially east and west of Paducah. Nighttime 1450 got clobbered with skywave. 1560 had some fairly steep nulls to the northeast and southwest at night.

 

[amfmxm]

Thanks. The radio-locator.com listing for 1560 doesn't show the 4-tower 5-kw southeastern pattern for WPAD--just the orignal 1-kw 3-tower night signal. So the current night pattern actually covers Paducah with the backside of the signal, correct? And the primary lobe shoots down toward Murray? Did the station get hemmed-in somewhere to the north between 1950 and 1979? Or has the night signal always been limited to the NW by Canadian restrictions?

In fairness, there is probably no way to know the sometimes arcane workings of the FCC in the 1940s from this vantage point, but I wonder whether the original owners may have just figured that 10-kw/1-kw was plenty to cover Paducah/Metropolis and passed on a 50-kw rig to save a few bucks.

But (to fantasize a bit) even on 1560, 50-kw fulltime using that original night pattern for both day & night might have made that bad boy a St. Louis radio station... and for a few decades at least it could have been the dominant AM signal throughout southern Illinois.

Way too late now...

 

[vacuum tube]

If my memory is correct 1560 went on the air around 1956 or 1957 as a 1KW daytime station. The directional antenna, nighttime operation and day power increase came a couple years later. The steep null in the night pattern is protecting 1560 in New York. They also have to protect 1560 in Bakersfield CA as well. I doubt they could have ever got 50 KW at night. Not sure the exact time frame in the 60's when 1550 in Cape Giradeau, MO came on the air, but they have each other boxed in.

Check out the FCC site under AM Query for the WPAD 5KW nighttime. The "minor" off the back of the pattern is equal to about 3500 watts and provides city grade coverage of the Paducah city limits. The main lobe toward the southeast is equal to about 20KW.

In the 70's there was a WDXR TV channel 29. It was an indy that did not last but a few years. They did have a nice studio facility they shared with 1560 WDXR radio on Kentucky Ave in Downtown Paducah. In the 80's WKYX -WKYQ used the very same building primarily as a sales office. I know WKYQ studios were at the transmitter site south of town off Mayfield Road. The WKYX studios were there as well.

FYI in 1980 WKYQ was county (live), WKYX was HOT AC CHR (live), WDXR was lite AC(live), WPAD was country(live AM drive,satellite therest of the time), and WDDJ was CHR-ROCK(live AM drive automated the rest of the time).

73

 

[slick81]

The 1990 edition of the M Street Radio Directory still listed WDXR as top 40!

That's right, folks. An AM top 40 station in America lasted into 1990! At least it did according to M Street.

Paducah was a Birch-rated market, and suffice it to say, WDXR's ratings were tiny by then. They're listed in the directory, but I don't know if there's an Allowed Cloud here against saying exactly what its ratings were.

Down deep in a box somewhere I have an old Paducah Mediastat ratings book from around 89 or 90. We (WKYX) had ungodly shares in all the dayparts. If you didn't have a 40 share back then, you weren't squat.

 

[dcgreene]

In the early 70's after an evening meal at Sue & Charlie's, the wife and I took a ride over to Paducah to check out the nice studios of WDXR. This was summer 1973 and the evening jock took us for a little tour of those beautiful studios. Can't remember his name. Nice guy though.

Any chance that was Briggs Gordon who gave you the nickel tour?

 

[firepoint525]

In the early 70's after an evening meal at Sue & Charlie's, the wife and I took a ride over to Paducah to check out the nice studios of WDXR. This was summer 1973 and the evening jock took us for a little tour of those beautiful studios. Can't remember his name. Nice guy though.

Any chance that was Briggs Gordon who gave you the nickel tour?

Would that be "Uncle Briggs"? ;D I still remember his kids' show on WDXR-TV back in the '70s. Seems like Cheerios was his only sponsor!

 

[slick81]

If it was BG, the tour would have been worth at least $20...My first job was Sunday mornings at WDXR in early 75, and for some reason Briggs had worked sign-off the Saturday night before. As the sign-on cart ended, I put on my headphones to intro "Ray Bowman and Metro News" and the volume about blew my eyes out of socket. Of course, there was no visible headphone volume control because the headphone jack was on a rack panel under the carousels and was fed off a distribution amp that was hidden inside a rack somewhere so nobody could mess with it (except of course, Briggs...). I had to put toilet paper in my ears until I could get a TV engineer to come up to the radio studio to find the DA and turn it down.

That 1560 WDXR nighttime pattern was something else. You could hear WDXR better in Harrisburg, IL at night than you could on Lone Oak Road...

 

[oxford777]

Thanks. The radio-locator.com listing for 1560 doesn't show the 4-tower 5-kw southeastern pattern for WPAD--just the orignal 1-kw 3-tower night signal. So the current night pattern actually covers Paducah with the backside of the signal, correct? And the primary lobe shoots down toward Murray? Did the station get hemmed-in somewhere to the north between 1950 and 1979? Or has the night signal always been limited to the NW by Canadian restrictions?

In fairness, there is probably no way to know the sometimes arcane workings of the FCC in the 1940s from this vantage point, but I wonder whether the original owners may have just figured that 10-kw/1-kw was plenty to cover Paducah/Metropolis and passed on a 50-kw rig to save a few bucks.

But (to fantasize a bit) even on 1560, 50-kw fulltime using that original night pattern for both day & night might have made that bad boy a St. Louis radio station... and for a few decades at least it could have been the dominant AM signal throughout southern Illinois.

Way too late now...

http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Radio...-J-Paxton-and-Son-Edwin-Posters_i3784894_.htm

This is the WKYB studio home I remember from the 50's. Towers were where they are now. WPAD was on the 2nd or 3rd floor of some buidling at (thinking hard) 4th and Broadway? Single tower out near the river on the northwest edge of town. By the time WDXR arrived, my family had moved away so I don't remember their studios.

 

[redneckriviera]

In the "for what it's worth department," 1560 is what used to be called a "Mexican Clear Channel," meaning it was reserved by treaty for night use only in Mexico. And checking up in Canada, there is still nothing north of the border on 1560.

It still looks like Bristol could fire that thing up to 50-kw unlimited if they were so inclined--more or less in that same NW direction the old 3-tower 1-kw night pattern shot. While there is a 10-kw rig up in South Dakota with a 6-tower array shooting straight north... and a 3-tower 500-watt DA-N on first-adjacent 1570 in suburban Chicago... something aimed, say, up toward La Crosse--that is, north by northwest--would seem to work.

Or buy 1550/KAPE and take it off the air... and go west-northwest toward St. Louis, day & night.

Which begs the question... what would you do with a fulltimem 50-kw AM serving St. Louis in 2009-and-beyond?

 

[slick81]

I don't think there would be much value in it. There's already one here doing quite nicely. ;D

 

[vacuum tube]

I will have to disagree with the notion of being able to increse the daytime power of 1560 in Paducah to 50KW. As mentioned before 1550 in Cape is a problem, but another deal killer is 1570 in Alton, IL located just across the river from St Louis. Unless you get rid of this signal you could never get a listenable singal anywhere near St Louis, you can't overlap their .5mv/m with a .25mv/m signal from Paducah. Let's dismiss all this and assume you could get 50KW in the daytime at Paducah on 1560. Using their current daytime pattern at that power level would not even provide a .5mv/m signal over the St Louis metro area. You need at least 5mv/m of signal for decent daytime coverage on a average radio, especially in a large city like St Louis. I would guess on 1560 in order to have a listenable signal in the St Louis area in the daytime you would need a power and pattern combimation that would produce around 1,000,000 watts equvilant ERP. (50KW with many towers)

I think a nighttime signal that would provide a reliable listenable signal in St. Louis would be an engineering feat as well. As I recall the NIF contour for 1560 in Paducah was in excess of 10 mv/m, so you would need a signal level in excess of that for reliable reception. That would require even more towers at 50KW. Remeber you still have to protect New York and Bakersfield, CA as well as any other station on 1560 also there is skywave protection consideration for 1550 and 1570.

In short, even if this was technically possible, who in their right mind would build an expensive project like this with little or no return on the investment. Just think of the real estate, engineering and equipment expense to just to get this on the air, not to mention the on going day to day expense (electric bill etc). Remember this is an AM station in a over radioed market (Paducah) trying to serve another over radioed market 150 miles away. Now what kind of programming is going to pay for this white elephant?? If someone pitched this business proposition to me I would say "Run Forrest Run".

Bottom line: Not possible in the real world!

 

[amfmxm]

Couple of thoughts.

One, it wouldn't seem likely that Withers would want to do Bristol any favors--like selling them KAPE so they could blow it up. But, odder things have happened. Money talks. Hell, Withers could reverse the deal and buy 1560 to take that one off the air--or move it to CG & upgrade KAPE. U-Haul the xmtr from Paducah to Cape and switch 'em out.

But we're really not being as creative as the commission allows, nowadays. Major market AMs are worth a hell of a lot more today than small-town AMs, and either Bristol or Withers could probably make a bundle by moving the SOB to St. Louis. So, yeah--buy out the little Alton daytimer. And move the COL on 1560 up to some crossroads southeast of Belleville, slap up six towers in a cornfield and blast it out toward Boise.

Sorry, but there are still people who will pay millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars for fulltime big-signal AM signals in major markets. And no one (as in, no one) who will pay more than $10 for big AMs in tiny markets like Paducah or Cape Girardeau.

 

[oxford777]

But we're really not being as creative as the commission allows, nowadays. Major market AMs are worth a hell of a lot more today than small-town AMs, and either Bristol or Withers could probably make a bundle by moving the SOB to St. Louis. So, yeah--buy out the little Alton daytimer. And move the COL on 1560 up to some crossroads southeast of Belleville, slap up six towers in a cornfield and blast it out toward Boise.

Isn't that precisely what KXEN did, except they located their towers at Granite City and throw their wattage southwest?

 

[amfmxm]

But we're really not being as creative as the commission allows, nowadays. Major market AMs are worth a hell of a lot more today than small-town AMs, and either Bristol or Withers could probably make a bundle by moving the SOB to St. Louis. So, yeah--buy out the little Alton daytimer. And move the COL on 1560 up to some crossroads southeast of Belleville, slap up six towers in a cornfield and blast it out toward Boise.

Isn't that precisely what KXEN did, except they located their towers at Granite City and throw their wattage southwest?

Same basic premise, sure. But one would have hoped that someone involved with the KXEN project might have recognized that the resulting 500-watt night signal was not going to be listenable in much of the SL metro area. If there is any value at all to my musings on 1560, it would rest in the notion that--with very little to protect to the north & west--there could be legitimate potential for a full upgrade. Like 50-kw, unlimited.

There have actually been quite a few of these done in the past few years--including several in-and-around Detroit involving the wide open spaces of AM frequencies in Canada. This isn't as far-fetched as y'all might think.

But more than anything else, these kinds of projects do require engineering minds willing to think creatively. Too often what we get is "Can't be done!"

 

[radiorob2.0]

But we're really not being as creative as the commission allows, nowadays. Major market AMs are worth a hell of a lot more today than small-town AMs, and either Bristol or Withers could probably make a bundle by moving the SOB to St. Louis. So, yeah--buy out the little Alton daytimer. And move the COL on 1560 up to some crossroads southeast of Belleville, slap up six towers in a cornfield and blast it out toward Boise.

Isn't that precisely what KXEN did, except they located their towers at Granite City and throw their wattage southwest?

Same basic premise, sure. But one would have hoped that someone involved with the KXEN project might have recognized that the resulting 500-watt night signal was not going to be listenable in much of the SL metro area. If there is any value at all to my musings on 1560, it would rest in the notion that--with very little to protect to the north & west--there could be legitimate potential for a full upgrade. Like 50-kw, unlimited.

There have actually been quite a few of these done in the past few years--including several in-and-around Detroit involving the wide open spaces of AM frequencies in Canada. This isn't as far-fetched as y'all might think.

But more than anything else, these kinds of projects do require engineering minds willing to think creatively. Too often what we get is "Can't be done!"

It isn't as much "can't be done" but more along the line "is it worth the effort"? This is 2009 and getting listeners under 40 on the AM band is hard enough. But building an array to throw enough signal over the the St Louis metro would cost a pretty penny and the ROI would be a long shot, especially a high dial position. Then there is compelling programming and promotions that all goes to waste if the AM radio is located next to a part 15 demon.