• 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

WBZT- 1230 The Zone

S

strangelove

Frequent Participant
The only interesting aspect of yet another sports talk station launching in South Florida (bringing the total in Miami and West Palm to 6, and 8 if you include ESPN Deportes) is this particular one has an 800 watt synchronous amplifier in Pompano Beach. Are there many stations with this sort of setup? Also, since this operates under and experimental license is there anything working its way through the FCC to make synchronous amps permanent?
 
If anyone is interested, the WBZT synchronous transmitter is licensed under the main call sign, but the file number is BLEX-19940913AB. You can see the transmitter locations for both stations here:
https://fccdata.org/?pn=72096&facid=20439

Personally, they should have just simulcast all of 940 from Miami and been done with it. (Although I'm sure part of the reason they can't is that they didn't have the rights to all the shows 940 carries in West Palm because of 640AM and 106.3FM)
 
strangelove said:
The only interesting aspect of yet another sports talk station launching in South Florida (bringing the total in Miami and West Palm to 6, and 8 if you include ESPN Deportes) is this particular one has an 800 watt synchronous amplifier in Pompano Beach. Are there many stations with this sort of setup? Also, since this operates under and experimental license is there anything working its way through the FCC to make synchronous amps permanent?
Click to expand...

3 in each. QAM, AXY and INZ for Miami, MEN, UUB and now BZT for WPB.

Had to make that clear since I don't get any of the WPB sports stations on my radio (besides the fringes of WMEN).
 
strangelove said:
The only interesting aspect of yet another sports talk station launching in South Florida...is this particular one has an 800-watt synchronous amplifier in Pompano Beach.
Are there many stations with this sort of setup? Also, since this operates under an experimental license is there anything working its way through the FCC to make synchronous amps permanent?
Click to expand...

They have been doing this since the 1980's, so the arrangement seems fairly permanent.
They also have a 150W synch-amp near the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Park west of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.

The only other AM synch-amp that I know of disappeared a very long time ago.
That was a two or three tower directional array between Cherryville and Shelby, both North Carolina.
It was used only at night to fill a deep but broad null of its parent station on 1110 KHz and also had a deep and broad null toward KFAB in Omaha, NE
 
Oh, and the WBT one near Charlotte was 1KW-DA.
 
Another Sports station in South Florida? Why? 1230 has a good Signal into Broward. Miami has one too many 940.How small can you slice the pie?
 
ai4i said:
They have been doing this since the 1980's, so the arrangement seems fairly permanent.
They also have a 150W synch-amp near the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Park west of Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.

The only other AM synch-amp that I know of disappeared a very long time ago.
That was a two or three tower directional array between Cherryville and Shelby, both North Carolina.
It was used only at night to fill a deep but broad null of its parent station on 1110 KHz and also had a deep and broad null toward KFAB in Omaha, NE
Click to expand...

The synchronous station on 1110 was WBTA, licensed as a full radio station to Shelby. This is like the old WBZA, licensed to Springfield and on the same 1030 frequency.

Those stations counted against the owner's ownership limit of 7 AM stations "back then". They were eventually shut off to be able to expand the owner company.

Well known synchronous operation of KKOB-770 in Albuquerque fills in the null at night that the 50 kw main station has towards the northeast.

Less known are the synchs for WISO 1260 in Ponce, PR and for WAPA 680 in San Juan. These were recently told to shut down because the FCC considered the "experimental" period to have been "long enough".

There is another set of synchronized "separate" stations in MA: WLLH 1400 in Lowell with its synchronous but separate co-channel station just a few miles away in Lawrence.
 
benale said:
1230 has a good Signal into Broward.
Click to expand...

Not really. The main signal barely covers 60% of the population of the WPB market with a 5 mV/m signal, and the lower powered Pompano synchronous repeater only covers about 20% of the population of Broward with a really useful signal.

WBZT has not shown up in the last 12 Miami MSA books, so the signal in Pompano is really not helping them.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Less known are the synchs for WISO 1260 in Ponce, PR and for WAPA 680 in San Juan.
These were recently told to shut down because the FCC considered the "experimental" period to have been "long enough".
Click to expand...
What criteria did th commission use to determine that the experiment was a failure?
 
ai4i said:
What criteria did th commission use to determine that the experiment was a failure?
Click to expand...

They did not say it had failed. They said that the "experimental" nature of the PR synchs never guaranteed permanent status and would not renew the permits. It's being appealed.

Considering that something like 75% of radio stations in PR are losing money today, that seems like a dumb move by the FCC.
 
I don't know about now but back when I was in Coral Springs in the mid '90's the 1290 sync worked really well. As for the WBT sync in Charlotte I don't believe it was WBTA. That call sign has been in Batavia, NY for many years. I was told back when I worked at WBT that the sync didn't work very well in fact it went off the air and no one noticed so they just decided to scrap it. Not sure how true that is. Today WBT uses a Mono FM at 99.3 licensed to Chester, SC to fill in the null.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom