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WXLO Off The Air

M

mdamico23

Hi Folks,

For the second time in as many months, 104.5 WXLO was off the air for several hours on Sunday 9/22. With WXLO off, I was wondering if anyone had a chance to DX anything unusual on 104.5? I believe there is a 104.5 near Albany, NY and one licensed to Conway, NH? Don't think WRFF from Philadelphia would make it this far north unless there was a strong tropo from the south.

Speaking of WXLO, they've gone from one of the best FM signals in New England to middle of the pack. It seems like that ice storm a few years ago really affected them. Before the ice storm, I use to be able to pull them in north of Brattleboro, VT, north of Concord, NH and south towards the northern suburbs of Hartford. Now, they seem to have the coverage of any other "Class B" station. I wonder if their antenna or transmitter plant in Leominster, MA was damaged and never fully repaired?

-Mike
 
You need a little help from the atmosphere to get extraordinary reception from distant FM stations. One time, when WCRB-FM 99.5 was knocked off the air by a storm, I could pick up NHPR's station in Jackson, NH WEVJ-FM, which doesn't have a killer facility and would seem to be blocked by the mountainous terrain. It wasn't "loud and clear" but it was receivable in Mass north of Boston. I also caught WXRV-FM 92.5 off-the-air, and I picked up the 92.5 transmitting from West Peak in Meriden, CT but that wasn't an unusual pickup. A few years ago, it wasn't unusual to pick up WNYE-FM 91.5 when the station that was then WJUL-FM in Lowell would shut down over the December 25th holiday and WNYE transmitted from Brooklyn. It was faint but I caught station IDs, and this was at the cusp of winter with the longest nights of the year. WUML (WJUL's current calls) experienced transmitter problems earlier this year but I never got WNYE again from its transmitter site in mid-Manhattan.
 
It's interesting how you mentioned the signal, and not the station itself. It seems like over the past couple years, WXLO has not been doing very well, even in the Worcester area. I will say that today, I heard WXLO on in a convenience store in Framingham, and I was quite impressed. WSRS and WXLO never get played around here anymore. This did not used to be the case, as I recently said in a WSRS thread. But also, it seems like WXLO is kind of outdated, since I think it is one of the few Hot AC stations that still plays 80s music, at least in this part of the country. I think WSRS plays enough 80s music as they are, especially now since they have "iHeart the 80s," "Lovin' Life Livin' the 80s," and now the old reruns of AT40 from the 80s. Maybe this would be a good time for WXLO to drop all 80s music.

But I wanna say that I think if anything ever happens to WXLO, it will probably flip to country. I think that's what Worcester needs, a country station. I don't know why they flipped Q100 years ago, maybe because country wasn't nearly as big then as it is now. But I think that in the Worcester market, WKLB is getting much higher ratings than WXLO.
 
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