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WTAM
- Thread starter Vidtech
- Start date
Not according to Radio Locator. 50,000 watts. SDR south of Atlanta has them S9+ another one in the Dallas metro area is noisy but copyable. Barely.
Depending on your location it might be the nighttime "skywave" or reflected signal coming back down and "phasing" with the ground wave. WSB 750 has this problem north of Ellijay GA at times. Even with the crappy soil conductivity a decent car radio can get them daytime but after sunset it can be touch and go at night until you get 100 or 150 miles north then it is mainly nighttime only.
I bet they don't care about nighttime coverage outside of the local market. I bet there less than a dozen AM stations that make more money with their night signal than the daytime signal.
They definitely don't reduce power to the best of my knowledge, but they have been unlistenable during critical hours and at times well after dark down here in the Columbus area on and off the past few months.
We are within in their cancellation zone so it is not unusual for them to have considerable peaks and valleys when it comes to signal strength, but what is unusual is the absolute jumble on 1100 during critical hours to the point that WTAM is unintelligible. I wouldn't even notice if my wife wasn't a Guardians fan, leading us to stop on 1100 here and there while out of the house to catch their games.
On our past few visits to Conneaut to see the in-laws, their phasing issues have seemed worse than they used to. I don't know how far into the cancellation zone they are, but that and being within the null of Ashtabula's affiliate makes hearing the Guardians much more difficult than you might expect for that part of the state.
We are within in their cancellation zone so it is not unusual for them to have considerable peaks and valleys when it comes to signal strength, but what is unusual is the absolute jumble on 1100 during critical hours to the point that WTAM is unintelligible. I wouldn't even notice if my wife wasn't a Guardians fan, leading us to stop on 1100 here and there while out of the house to catch their games.
On our past few visits to Conneaut to see the in-laws, their phasing issues have seemed worse than they used to. I don't know how far into the cancellation zone they are, but that and being within the null of Ashtabula's affiliate makes hearing the Guardians much more difficult than you might expect for that part of the state.
Where are you located? If you're more than 70 miles from Cleveland, that might explain the issue.
You bring up a couple of sidebar subjects:
- Which stations still make money based on skywave listening?
- Which stations bill more locally at night than in the daylight hours?
I've noticed it in Ashland County as well. Hence the reason I was excited in the other post I made about Guardians games being carried here locally on WNCO AM 1340. WTAM seems to tail off after about 7pm and WMMS has some holes in coverage here in our area, so it made less than ideal listening to games.
In the early 80s, I used to be able to pick up WWWE [now WTAM] in the Pinellas county area nightly despite that fact there was an adjacent channel in Tampa on 1110 AM.
Eastern Lorain County. Should be plenty of signal.
Great question. Not sure that any big signal AMs today have significant skywave listening with the awful state of background noise on that dial.
The first thing that I think of for nighttime billing from when AM was usable: time brokered religious programs. Has been a revenue play for decades.
For more traditional advertising, I recall DXing KAAY Little Rock in the 1970s when they were blasting out Top40 to the middle of the country. They really played up their nighttime coverage . Would often hear ads with regional reach, like movies that would mention showings in places like Emporia Kansas (which google maps shows as a 456 mile drive from Little Rock, but not in a straight line, so it’s 250+ miles I think).
WLAC Nashville did some of this too. Of course it was famous for late night R&B programming in the late 50s into the 70s, sponsored by a wide range of mail order products.
I think both stations had some time brokered religious programs late at night. (KAAY went 24/7 in the 80s. according to Wikipedia the nighttime power is now 80 watts so I doubt the skywave waves much).
Maybe some of the truckers shows made some $ in the 70s/80s (I think WWL, WLW, WMAQ, any others?) but is any broadcast radio doing that now? I guess this moved to Sirius XM?
The stations I recall here definitely reflect being a teen in the late 70s in the upper Midwest.
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The expression “WTAM covers 38 states & half of Canada” was based in reality that at one time or another, a listener, or listeners (radio DXer hobbyist, most likely) heard, even if very briefly, the Cleveland 1100AM in one of the 38 states. That expression does not mean the signal is there every day or even most times, 24/7/365.
How do I know? I was a weekend announcer at the old 3WE in the late 1970’s, and was told so by other staff members.
How do I know? I was a weekend announcer at the old 3WE in the late 1970’s, and was told so by other staff members.
I used to DX AM radio a lot when I was a kid, but over the years between the increase in interference from computers and all kinds of other stuff out there as well as the FCC cutting down the nighttime protection of the big 50,000 watt clears to only 750 miles (there are now lots of 1100s on at night), reception is nowhere near what it used to be on these big AMs.
The big 50 kWs might also reduce their power
Wow, it ought to peel paint where you are.
I'll be in Akron in about 10 days for work ... will have to remember to check their night signal there. Usually it's huge at my hotel right off 77. I'll report what I hear.
"38 states and seven Canadian provinces" is what WABC claimed.
I counted 27 states, Washington DC, and two Canadian provinces in WTAM's 0.5 mV/m nighttime skywave contour (including tiny parts of Arkansas and Rhode Island):
I have noticed that the WTAM daytime signal is nowhere near what a 50K non-directional on 1100 should do. Driving to Toledo, it starts to get really weak about at Sandusky. That's only 60 miles out. Meantime, I can drive to Buffalo and hear WJR Detroit on 760 clear as a bell almost the whole way. Possibly the WTAM ground system (critical to an AM station's daytime coverage) has not been attended to for a while.