WXYT---How bad is the signal?

[sp113]

Being an out-of-towner, I am not familiar with the WXYT signal first hand.

I have seen maps and the FCC filings...but not what it is in 'real life".

WXYT has a storied history....and appears to have served Detroit from back in the day when most of the market liked in/near the city.

Now that the populous has expanded to the suburbs....how well does the signal cover?

Did the upgrade to 50KW pay off?

Someone told me that the signal now is worse that the previous 5KW arrangement.

On payper, the day signal looks alright...night signal doesn't look so good.

How does this play out in "real life"?

 

[jnuznoff]

Just an observation...when I was in Detroit last year, I drove south on Middlebelt between Plymouth and Cherry Hill and could not hear WXYT over the tremendous QRM of the overhead high-voltage lines.

Jim

 

[FredRichards]

I'm not sure if the entire blame can be placed on the signal, as much as the fact that all over the U.S. the increase in noise is simply awful.

I live in a small Ohio town, and there are now signals of clear channel (not the company) stations that I can't hear anymore. Stations such as WJR-760, WTVN-610, WLW-700, and CKLW-800.

Add to that the IBOC hash that comes over from adjacent channels, and it completely ruins the delivery to the listener.

I can't speak for the section of town you are referring to, but the signal was strong all the way up to Bay City, and we even had it nights in the U.P. over the 1270 in Charlevoix.

 

[MarkW]

Did the upgrade to 50KW pay off?

On the whole, I would say no. After the move was made, ratings didn't budge in the least.

Word from the street is the only reason this move was made was to please the Illitch organization (owner of the Tigers & Red Wings), although I have a feeling it was also made to fool advertisers.

Building penetration is nowhere near what it used to be Oakland & Macomb counties, where much of the Metro Detroit region lives & works.

The nighttime signal in many cases is far worse than before. Where I live, WXYT used to come in clear as a bell 24/7. It was every bit as strong if not stronger than WJR in my location. Now, I have severe fading issues a night due to skywave canceling out the groundwave signal.

During the day, the signal succumbs to electrical interference far more easily.

Across northern Wayne County, including downtown Detroit, Dearborn, Livonia, etc., I'll call it a lateral move.

Across the downriver area, the move resulted in a tremendous improvement, but this area is by far the least desirable from an advertising standpoint.

Along the US-23 corridor, the daytime signal is the same to slightly better than before. The nighttime signal could never be heard from Flint to Ann Arbor from the old site. These days, it's definitely audible, but there are fading issues.

I hear at night WXYT's often BOOMS in across parts of NE Michigan and central Ontario due to skywave.

When major sports teams' contracts came up for renewal, they apparently expressed their disappointment in WXYT's signal. (Even before the Lions were renewed, the games were being simulcast on WWJ because of XYT's deficiencies).

To keep 'em in the CBS stable, CBS was forced to throw in WKRK's much more reliable Class B FM signal. I know WJR was very interested in reacquiring rights to the Wings and Tigers.

When the Wolverines were looking for a new home, most people did not even conisder WXYT to be a viable contender. They were right. The Wolves ended up on sister station Oldies 104.3 WOMC with its 190,000 watt signal. I hear CBS at first offered up WKRK, but U-M didn't want to be associated with its occasionally lewd Hot Talk format.

 

[gr8oldies]

Are the Wolverines still on CKLW as well this year?

 

[JohnnyElectron]

WXYT is worse into the Toledo-area, and when they were the only source for Tigers games, people down here ended-up buying XM radios for the games.
WXYT won't even tune-in analog, yet alone HD digital at night - horrible signal to the South.

During the day I have to get up to Monroe to get the HD to lock-in - not good for a "50KW" station. (WFDF is even worse - won't lock into HD even IN the City of Detroit in the daytime)!

 

[jnuznoff]

just curious...does anybody have a printout of the pattern when (WXYT's precessor) WXYZ broadcast from the Maccabee's Building on Woodward Ave in the 1930's? I wonder what the nighttime pattern was..............
Jim

 

[cyberdad]

Based on my experiences in traveling through the area on business trips, I'd have to guess that the main beneficiaries (if any) of the "upgrade" would be the station's salespeople whenever they have to call on inexperienced media buyers.

 

[Time Traveler]

This would probably amaze most of you, but I remember picking up 5000 watt WXYZ (in those days) frequently in central Massachusetts, at night, forty years ago. The local AM rocker in that area was 1280-WEIM, so I tended to notice the adjacent stations...

 

[jnuznoff]

That's amazing that you could pick up WXYZ in the east at night. Their pattern was basically a figure 8 north and south (they had 2 sticks). There was NO signal to the west, a not much more to the east.

Regarding the earlier post about 'booming into NE Michigan', that sounds similar to the nighttime signal of (now) WLQV 1500. Not sure what the pattern is today, but back in the old days of WJBK, then WDEE, they had a 'laser beam' pointing NNE from their 12 stick farm in the southern suburbs of Detroit. You couldn't hear it very good anywhere else except along that path, plus or minus 25 degrees.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

WXYT has a very low Nighttime Interference Free contour, between 3 and 4 mV/m. Before it was 5000 watts night DA, it was 1000 watts nondirectional at night. It was one of a handful of stations on 1240 and then 1270 after 1941. Newer stations were required to protect it, whereas they didn't have to protect the new stations until they went to 50 kW and had to reduce 10% to the stations they interfered with most. Actually, while the old pattern maxima were to the NNE and SSE, radiation to the east was quite substantial. The only real null was toward WHBF/WKBF Rock Island. That's why you could hear it out east. It was just two towers, a longer spaced, lesser phase cardioid pattern that results in higher maxima off the line of towers.

It's a regularly heard "pest" in Scandinavia.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

A 9 tower directional DAY and NIGHT (separate patterns)????

That's nuts! Give me 2 towers and 5KW any day over that.

50KW= bragging rights for dummies.

 

[cyberdad]

Based on my experiences in traveling through the area on business trips, I'd have to guess that the main beneficiaries (if any) of the "upgrade" would be the station's salespeople whenever they have to call on inexperienced media buyers.

.....like I was saying. 

Also, I used to work at WHBF...which also moved up from 1240 in 1941.  In their 5kw days during the 70s, WXYZ was never a problem for us.

 

[Savage]

50kw, umpteen towers = bragging rights for dummies. Right - and a much higher electric bill.

Generally, in my experience, very complex directional arrays and high power don't produce greatly improved coverage. The problem is with mobile receivers, and that's where most AM listening takes place: in the car.

As a listener drives around the pattern he frequently encounters several nulls interspersed with lobes. In the minima, "pattern bandwidth" becomes critical. Unless the array is very carefully designed and maintained, listeners can run across spots where the carrier is suppressed compared with the amplitude of the sidebands, producing an annoying single-sideband kind of audio. Or your detector gets constantly varying relative amplitudes causing high frequencies to peak and drop, causing alternating screechy or muffled audio. Combine the frequent minima effects with today's high interference levels, from local electrical devices and distant or adjacent IBOC, and any advantage of 50kw is offset by the other issues.

Is 50kw on regional frequencies possible with extremely complex arrays? Sure. Is it a good idea? Only if 50 gallons on the letterhead and website means hundreds of thousands more in revenue annually, IMO.

 

[Rusty Muck]

A 9 tower directional DAY and NIGHT (separate patterns)????

That's nuts! Give me 2 towers and 5KW any day over that.

50KW= bragging rights for dummies.

Doesn't 1190/Dallas - the erstwhile KLIF - hold the record for most towers on a 50kW directional signal with 12 towers? (True, the 12 towers carry 1190's 5kW night signal, but it still results in an insane signal pattern.)

WXYT basically went with the ultra-directional 50kW signal to keep the Tigers and Red Wings happy after both teams bolted off of WJR.

 

[davideduardo]

The problem is with mobile receivers, and that's where most AM listening takes place: in the car.

"Most" would seem to mean "over 50%" or "a majority."

And that's not true. AM may get a bit higher percentage of its listening in the car than FM, but it is not 50% and it is not over 50%.

The biggest AM challenge is that it is hard to listen to AM in homes and offices and workplaces due to noise.

So as in-home and at-work decreases due to man made interference... computers, CFLs, etc., in-car will seem to rise, but the number is deceptive. The number of persons does not rise... it's just that there is less and less home and work listening.

 

[rfry]

So as in-home and at-work decreases due to man made interference... computers, CFLs, etc., in-car will seem to rise, but the number is deceptive.

Does this prognosis allow for the increasingly "deaf" and narrow-band analog AM receivers/antennas being supplied as original equipment in many new cars?

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Part of what Savage said:

As a listener drives around the pattern he frequently encounters several nulls interspersed with lobes. your detector gets constantly varying relative amplitudes causing high frequencies to peak and drop, causing alternating screechy or muffled audio.

I've heard this first hand and always figured it had something to do with the many nulls and lobes in the directional pattern. It was 10 KW WSRF 1580 Fort Lauderdale. In sight of the towers going north on what was then the Davie Rd ext. you could hear an annoying swishing back and forth in the audio. IIRC WSRF had the unenviable position of being on a Mexican clear frequency and they had to pull in the pattern toward the FCC monitoring station in Fort Lauderdale. In those days they had I think 6 towers, now they are down to 3 or 4 towers at a shared site with WAVS.

 

[Savage]

The 1969 KLIF array was night-pattern only, 12 towers, 5kw, in a 2 x 6 configuration. You can see it in the Tower Site Of The Week archive at www.fybush.com. The 50kw was/is 4 towers at a separate site. KLIF engineer Dave Hultsman related how, when the new DA-N site was being built at Rockwall, TX, he was maintaining the existing 4 DA-D and 5 DA-N towers, plus the under-construction 12-tower DA-N site - 21 towers for a single station!

Detroit's WJBK/WDEE at 1500 kHz was also 12 towers DA-N for a time, but IIRC the night system was never licensed due to ongoing mutual negotiations with WTOP and KSTP. The station operated on STAs for years, and finally settled with a 9-tower system for DA-N which now operates as WLQV.

Another legendary monster was the former 1320 50kw DA-3 in Richmond Mills, Ontario, which I believe had 13 towers of varying heights at one point in the 1970s. I've never found out whether all the towers were ever used at once. There are currently other monster arrays like this in Detroit as well.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

There are currently other monster arrays like this in Detroit as well.

Might you be thinking of 1130AM WDFN with it's 9 towers?