Voicetrack of Reason
Frequent Participant
What's the latest on 1550? Still playing commercial free Classic Rock?
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Wazx 1550
- Thread starter Voicetrack of Reason
- Start date
K
kf4rca
Guest
Bet he owes a big electric bill. Even when he was broadcasting Vietnamese, there weren't very many spots. To keep a 50KW on the air you've got to have cash flow.
Is he required to operate at full licensed power? If so, could a reduction in power been part of the STA?
RoddyFreeman
Walk of Fame Participant
Where are you seeing that about 1310? I'm not seeing it in the FCC database.
I hear things.....
K
kf4rca
Guest
1310
Got an email from Humberto Izquiredo and he informs me that 1310 has been sold and he is unsure of what the new owners plan to do with it.
Got an email from Humberto Izquiredo and he informs me that 1310 has been sold and he is unsure of what the new owners plan to do with it.
Any idea what he got for it? And does it include the MARTA lot tower? The tower was still there about a month ago. Of course, the new owners won't need the tower if they plan on moving to Cheshire Bridge.
K
kf4rca
Guest
$300K. He indicated the attorneys are working on it right now.
How did the Marta parking lot get around the tower in the first place? My guess is the tower was there first. Sometime later Marta needed a parking lot and leased from the station, then later bought the land. And now, wants to boot the tower off the land.
Station was built in the 60's by Cecil Chafin. I later worked with Cecil at an Atlanta TV station in the early 80's.
How did the Marta parking lot get around the tower in the first place? My guess is the tower was there first. Sometime later Marta needed a parking lot and leased from the station, then later bought the land. And now, wants to boot the tower off the land.
Station was built in the 60's by Cecil Chafin. I later worked with Cecil at an Atlanta TV station in the early 80's.
Voicetrack of Reason
Frequent Participant
Getting back to WAZX, while I understand the physical plant is fairly new, why in the world would anyone pay 1.55 Million? Did he know that there are only 40,000 Vietnamese in the metro? Even at 50kw, the signal still sucks. At least it had 500 watts at night from the old shopping center site!
secondchoice
Star Participant
IIRC 1550 is a Canadian channel at night. Why they went NW missing a huge part of the market I find curious. IMHO a smart RF engineer could make a 25+ KW 24 hour directional pattern going mostly east and keep the Canadians happy. Most likely the COL would have to change but with 94.1 (1550’s former FM) having the same COL there was an opportunity the put a station just about anywhere in the Atlanta because you are not tied to a City of license. I can name at least incorporated cites that are not "severed" in the market. They had spend big bucks to relocate anyways.
They have 4 towers to play with and a 50kW transmitter, so technically they have what they need. The question is who they have to protect 24 hours a day, not just the Canadian station.
The day pattern is very strong to the NE, lesser so to the SW, with a big null due south. What stations exist to the south? Must be somebody for that big daytime null.
According to Radio-Locator there are three stations on 1550 in Florida. Two are also Class Ds, one is a Class B in Miami that sends most of its signal into the Atlantic (towards the Bahamas and Cuba) at night. NC also has a couple of Class Ds, as does Georgia in Augusta and Vienna.
But, yes, given the daytime pattern's strengths and limitations they probably could send a night signal due east and cover a decent chunk of the north metro. I'm assuming that these various Class Ds can't say anything about WAZX upgrading to a Class B and putting out a night signal.
The Canadian station is CBEF, in South Detroit (Windsor).
They protect Dooley (Macon metro), Richmond (Augusta metro) and Huntsville in the daytime, and the Canadian border at night. They also have to protect, to some extent, all the other 1550's that have low power at night. And there may be adjacent channel issues limiting increases.
All this for a station on a frequency where 50 kw covers less than 5 kw on 610 in one of the worst ground conductivity areas of the nation.
As mentioned in my prior post, 50 kw on 1550 in an area with terrible ground conductivity is just not enough, even non-directional, to cover the market. And the protection requirements to the two primary users of 1550, Mexico and Canada, make night operation even more problematic. Once AM started its decline in listening, it was likely not worth the money to try to get a major improvement on this facility.
One of the few successful AMs at 1500 or above eventually had to move to FM or die: WTOP in Washington, DC. 50 kw fulltime on 1500, but it could not cover the whole market. The only remaining really successful high-dial station I can think of in a larger metro is KFBK in Sacramento, but it is 50 kw fulltime with a less restricted pattern, a Franklin antenna system and great ground conductivity. The Atlanta station has none of those positive factors.
In fact, of 520 US AM stations between 1500 and 1600, only 10 bill over $100,000 a month and of those, 3 are paid religion and one is Asian ethnic in format. The indications are that, unless you have a very very good facility (DC, Cincinnati, NYC, Minneapolis, Bakersfield, Sacramento) with decent conductivity, pouring money into a station high on the dial is useless.
secondchoice
Star Participant
I still feel they could have found a better and cheaper site further northwest. The taxpayers owned "raw" land in Northwest Cobb County thanks to a couple of banks.
They're not going to build an array on raw land they would have to buy. They'll either use what they have or split the bill with someone else. The "angle" I saw was the 50kW hardware in house and the 4 existing towers that they could use to set up a night pattern. Now you're just paying for an engineering consultant and someone to push paper to the FCC. If they were on a single stick with a 5000W transmitter, I would say fuhgeddaboutit.
- Status