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One is AM is missing but two might upgrade

Ai4i

Ai4i

According to R-L,
1430 in Homestead is missing, gone, not listed
990 will increase their day power slightly from 5KW to 7½KW
1040 will move to the 990 array, go 50KW/5KW, and change their CoL from Boynton Beach to Miami
I do not know what will become of 1020
What will Actualidad do with 990 and 1040 both covering the same area?
 
Sad, the old WQDI is gone. I worked there in the late 70s. Bill Coppage was the CE then. It was 500 watts day only back then.

When did 990 come back on? When I was down there in the late 70s it was still listed as WFAB, but I had its license yanked and was dark.
 
HGR1290 said:
When did 990 come back on?
When I was down there in the late 70s it was still listed as WFAB, but I had its license yanked and was dark.
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WQDI, or whatever their more recent call letters are or were, has been programming in the Spanish language for a many years.
They were or are directional at night and maybe in the day to protect the second adjacent channel, WOCN.

WFAB/WMYM on 990 came back on a few years ago as Radio Disney, still six towers directional to the east.
When Disney left the industry, it was acquired by Actualidad, which also owns WURN-FM,
107.1, WURN(AM), 1020 (both in South Dade county), and WLVJ, 1040, Boynton Beach.
 
1040 will move to the 990 array, go 50KW/5KW, and change their CoL from Boynton Beach to Miami.

Moves like this astound and confuse me. A station is licensed to serve a community and then jumps 2 counties south?

I know I need to stop thinking about "serving". It's all about the "$$" now more than ever.

AM radio is about relevant as CB Radio.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
AM radio is about relevant as CB Radio
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What would you do if you were handed an expensive-to-run (50KW directional) AM that covers all or most of Dade County right now?
I would consider reverting to non-com status and cutting a deal with WLRN to move some of their less critical NPR talk shows to the AM and putting more music on their FM. I believe WNYC and WIPR might be doing something as such in their markets.
 
ai4i said:
What would you do if you were handed an expensive-to-run (50KW directional) AM that covers all or most of Dade County right now?
I would consider reverting to non-com status and cutting a deal with WLRN to move some of their less critical NPR talk shows to the AM and putting more music on their FM. I believe WNYC and WIPR might be doing something as such in their markets.
Click to expand...

WIPR is not going to spend any extra money. It is part of the crippled PR government which is looking to cut back anywhere it can. And WIPR-FM has an AM sister station, but it only has partial market coverage. If anything, I can see the AM turning in its license.
 
ai4i said:
WQDI, or whatever their more recent call letters are or were, has been programming in the Spanish language for a many years
Click to expand...

They are now WOIR and have a Spanish religious format.

WFAB/WMYM on 990 came back on a few years ago as Radio Disney, still six towers directional to the east.
Click to expand...

It came back around 1994 as Radio Aeropuerto under the management of Pepín Navarro and an instrumental format featuring things like "Los Violines de Pego" and Paul Mauriat. It went to Disney in mid-1996
 
TheBigA said:
Here's a question: What happens when the "community" you were licensed to serve 50 years ago basically disappears?
Click to expand...

Take that one step further: what happens when at least one generation of Americans considers their "community" to be based on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter?

"Virtual" is replacing "physical" at many levels.
 
DavidEduardo said:
"Virtual" is replacing "physical" at many levels.
Click to expand...

Granted. But my point is that Boynton Beach was a town that recently lost its public radio station because the community (however you define it) could no longer support it.

There was once a station there called WXEL that became WPBI, owned by Classical South Florida. This was one of the stations that was sold to K-Love last year because it was losing money. If the community won't support a community station, there's very little chance for an advertiser-based station to serve anyone.

The other thing to know is that all facilities changes, like the one in the OP, get approved by the FCC. It's not going to be approved if the change doesn't somehow serve the public interest.
 
TheBigA said:
Granted. But my point is that Boynton Beach was a town that recently lost its public radio station because the community (however you define it) could no longer support it.
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On a tangent, I wonder how many stations there are that are still licensed to cities that have ceased to exist.

I know of one: WFID (FM) in Río Piedras, PR. The Municipality of Río Piedras was annexed by San Juan in the 50's.

Another station licensed there got its city of license changed in a simple petition back in 1971.

There have to be more places that were annexed or absorbed by others that still have the old location on the license.
 
I think I solved the question... While 1040 is moving from Boynton Beach to Miami (boosting daytime power to 50 kW and night power to 5 kW), 1020 is moving from Kendall (a Miami suburb) to Boynton Beach (4.5 kW Days/ 1.5 kW Nights). That's according to Radio-Locator. So Boynton Beach keeps its radio service and Actualidad, the owner, gets a 50,000 watt station in Miami (at least in the daytime).

As for stations whose city of license disappeared, count the FM station with the second highest power in North America, French Top 40 CKOI-FM. It had been licensed to the City of Verdun in Quebec. But that municipality was absorbed by Montreal, so that's now the city of license. (CKOI runs 307,000 watts, second only to WBCT Grand Rapids, at 320,000 watts.)

As for 1430 WOIR Homestead, Radio-Locator says it's currently off the air but it has a working website that seems to be up-to-date...

http://www.radiozoe1430.com/

There's even live streaming on the website for Radio Zoe, a Spanish-language Christian station (Radio Cristiana). So are they streaming a radio station that isn't broadcasting?
 
Gregg. said:
I think I solved the question...
While 1040 is moving from Boynton Beach to Miami (boosting daytime power to 50 kW and night power to 5 kW),
1020 is moving from Kendall (a Miami suburb) to Boynton Beach (4.5 kW Days/ 1.5 kW Nights).
That's according to Radio-Locator.
So Boynton Beach keeps its radio service and Actualidad, the owner, gets a 50,000 watt station in Miami (at least in the daytime).
Click to expand...
Thanks for doing this research which has spurred me on to follow it up.

It gets even weirder in this three-way game of musical towers:
1. _990 is moving to the old 1020 array.
2. 1020 is moving to the old 1040 array.
3. 1040 is moving to the old _990 array.

So, in effect, 1020 moves down to 990, 990 moves up to 1040, and 1040 moves slightly down to 1020.
Both Miami operations go up in power and coverage, Boynton loses some coverage day and night,
but Boynton's new day coverage on 1020 approximates their old night coverage on 1040.
All this happens probably without moving a single physical stick, just a lot of coils and capacitors.
Both arrays in Miami have six towers and the one in Boynton has four, and that will accommodate all three moves.

When one thinks about it, this is really a formidable amount of electrical engineering:
Three new stations with six new directional patterns into arrays that are already in place for totally different operations.
Fortunately, all three are within 5% of each other's carrier frequencies.
 
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(no, I am not a robot)
 
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DavidEduardo said:
On a tangent, I wonder how many stations there are that are still licensed to cities that have ceased to exist.
Click to expand...
I do not know, to steal from Carl Sagan,
whether "there is, or ever was, or ever will" be an incorporated entity of Cypress Gardens, FL,
but WFLF, Pine Hills used to ID as WGTO, Cypress Gardens.
 
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What I don't understand in this day and age is how the COL really means anything. Most stations are broadcasting from specific studios not even in their COL and the Antenna farms are pretty much located (with a few exceptions) on the county line of Broward-Miami Dade. Why shouldn't the FCC update their regulations to allow a certain number of stations in each market at a specific separation along the band so as not to interfere with other stations in that market and then have an adjacent market set on a specific bands in the middle of the separations?

IE in Miami Dade/Broward (SFLA) stations set apart at .8 on the FM dial (91.3, 92.1, 92.9, etc.) and 40 on the am dial (560, 600, 640,etc.), the WPB/Pt. St. Lucie set at the middle (91.7, 92.5, 93.3), (580, 620, 660) with LP stations available in between for municipalities to use if necessary.

I am not in the radio industry, but I would see this as a way to limit the number of stations available, There would be less "interference" of signals. Also this would be able to bring the values of these stations closer, as well as the ability of these stations to operate on a more level playing field with an equal power grid. Then formats would be how the stations differentiate themselves for the advertisers.
 
TC99 said:
Why shouldn't the FCC update their regulations to allow a certain number of stations in each market at a specific separation along the band so as not to interfere with other stations in that market and then have an adjacent market set on a specific bands in the middle of the separations?
Click to expand...

Updating regulations isn't an easy thing to do. Every time the Commission attempts to do something, they get shot down by Congress.
 
TC99 said:
IE in Miami Dade/Broward (SFLA) stations set apart at .8 on the FM dial (91.3, 92.1, 92.9, etc.) and 40 on the am dial (560, 600, 640,etc.), the WPB/Pt. St. Lucie set at the middle (91.7, 92.5, 93.3), (580, 620, 660) with LP stations available in between for municipalities to use if necessary.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the current AM assignments go back to the late 20's when the Federal Radio Commission tried to organize the use of AM frequencies nationally by establishing classes of service and putting order into the tangle of amateur and more professional stations on the band. By the time the FCC was created in the early 30's, the dominant usage of all AM channels had been fairly well established with the better allocations going to the cities that, in that era, had the most population.

In this situation, cities and states that had low populations in the 20's did not get the best overall allocations, Miami only got three decent regional channels, 560, 610 and 1360 and no clear channels. Ft Lauderdale got neither. All the later stations have very directional signals, designed to fit in with the older allocations elsewhere in the US. 940 protects Puerto Rico, Georgia and even Canada. 1140 protects Richmond and San Juan. 710 protects New York. And so on.

Because AM propagates so far at night, a more recent (post-30's) facility has to protect many other stations. Moving some Miami stations around for day operation would affect stations as far off as northern Florida, and at night as far as Mexico, Canada and the rest of the US.

FM was given a "Table of Allocations" in the post-W.W. II years, with more stations in the larger cities and suburbs and fewer in underpopulated areas. Because FM does not have the distant propagation characteristics of AM, adjustments as markets grew happened in Florida. But any change today would trigger what would, by chain reaction, be a reallocation of nearly every station in the US. That's because some moves in Miami would affect stations as far off as Orlando and central Florida due to protection requirements not only on their channel but on the adjacent ones, too.

The major problem with reallocating the FM band is the huge cost of changing antennas, re-tuning transmitter, redesigning logs and promotional material and marketing the change and then making it all happen on the same exact day.

For AM, it would change directional patterns and even the locations of transmitter sites, costs that could run over $1 million or more for some stations.
 
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Logically, it would make a lot of sense to review allocations, especially considering the major population shift that's been going on in the last 30 years. Just looking at the changes in Nielsen markets, as the rust belt shrinks, while the south and southwest has grown, says a lot. But unfortunately getting the government to adjust to these changes is a long and difficult road to ride. I don't think anyone at the FCC is even thinking about this. Quite often, it's left to the licensees to make these kinds of deals.
 
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