I did this right after the repack with a single Radio Shack Bowtie antenna placed in a window. Simpler the indoor antenna the better.
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Chicago Radio Ratings Released 12-27-22
- Thread starter Dr Wayne
- Start date
I did this right after the repack with a single Radio Shack Bowtie antenna placed in a window. Simpler the indoor antenna the better.
Mine is an 1160. It is LARGE.
I was an antenna installer for about 5 years (1973-78). We used mostly Channel Master and Winegard, then added Jerrold and RCA (the RCAs worked really well, but fell apart with repeated ice loading). Rotors were all Channel Master. Kenosha area specials (no rotor needed) were mostly Finco. I am quite amazed how many antennas/tripods/towers I installed in the 70s are still up, though who knows how many are still being used. Broken feedlines are kind of a dead giveaway on that.
96.9 is wildly popular in Kenosha. More than 95.1, which is less middle-of-the-road. Although 95.1 seems to sponsor a lot of events in the Kenosha/Lake County area. Their audience is more targeted.
I have strong memories of 103.7 doing remotes in Kenosha. They DJ'd an event at my school while I was growing up! Remember those KissFM bumper stickers? I was more a fan of 100.7 myself.
B96 signal struggled in Kenosha. I assume that was due to interference from 96.9. All of the other Chicago stations came in fine. It has certainly gotten worse in recent years.
Honorable mention to 91.1. My parents were public radio parents, so that's mostly what we listened to in the car. Looking back, it was pretty rare to have a public radio station target such a small market with locally produced content.
96.9's popularity right now is actually annoying other radio stations in Chicago per an article I read. Basically they are saying WDRV has an unfair advantage because the 96.9 signal is one of the strongest, and therefore most listened to in Kenosha County.
WGTD has HD now. That interferes with nearby frequencies. I had a show on their HD3 channel for several years.
Gone but not forgotten, Sunny 104.7 WZXA (Which ran Westwood One Bright AC) They had a tower in Franksville. They ended up at the same studio facility with 95.1 and flipped to Country. For a long time they were really popular in Kenosha with the Country format, WEXT. Brian Sherman (Part of WDRV's morning show) was a part time employee for them. He was one of the first people to put me on the radio at one of their remotes. I was 10 years old. I had never been on the air before that moment.
They found the ability to put the tower closer to Milwaukee, so they did that in 2004 and sold it.
A lot of B96's problems were 1, it has a somewhat weaker signal from the rest of the Chicago FMs. 2, 95.1's transmitter spur problems that have since been fixed and 3, 96.5 and 96.9. HD from 96.5 is probably it's biggest problem now. 96.9's HD is weak enough that I can actually hear 97.1 sometimes where if it was at a bigger HD power level, I wouldn't be able to.
And yes, I do remember 103.7 DJing school events. WRKR (100.7) did this a lot in the 70s and 80s when it was Top-40 and focusing on Racine and Kenosha (RKR stood for Racine-Kenosha Radio). They even had fan clubs in many of the local schools.
WGTD has HD now. That interferes with nearby frequencies. I had a show on their HD3 channel for several years.
Gone but not forgotten, Sunny 104.7 WZXA (Which ran Westwood One Bright AC) They had a tower in Franksville. They ended up at the same studio facility with 95.1 and flipped to Country. For a long time they were really popular in Kenosha with the Country format, WEXT. Brian Sherman (Part of WDRV's morning show) was a part time employee for them. He was one of the first people to put me on the radio at one of their remotes. I was 10 years old. I had never been on the air before that moment.
They found the ability to put the tower closer to Milwaukee, so they did that in 2004 and sold it.
A lot of B96's problems were 1, it has a somewhat weaker signal from the rest of the Chicago FMs. 2, 95.1's transmitter spur problems that have since been fixed and 3, 96.5 and 96.9. HD from 96.5 is probably it's biggest problem now. 96.9's HD is weak enough that I can actually hear 97.1 sometimes where if it was at a bigger HD power level, I wouldn't be able to.
And yes, I do remember 103.7 DJing school events. WRKR (100.7) did this a lot in the 70s and 80s when it was Top-40 and focusing on Racine and Kenosha (RKR stood for Racine-Kenosha Radio). They even had fan clubs in many of the local schools.
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The Chicago metro is 9.8 million, and Kenosha County is just over 175,000.... not even 2% of the total market. Listening in that county can't effect the ratings significantly as every county is weighted proportionally.
A lot of suburban stations had to look at which adjacent metro they wanted to serve. More money in the bigger one, less competition in the smaller one. But you also have to look at geography, as some MSAs are much bigger and rimshots or suburban stations can't serve them as well.
And look at all the tiny moves some of the lesser Chicago and Milwaukee stations have done just to add a few hundred thousand to the coverage area... while those moves were economically productive 20 years ago, with radio revenue off by over 60% in inflation-adjusted dollars since Y2K, there is little payback now.
In the case of 104.7, they just needed to upgrade the signal into Milwaukee so they could sell it for more money. Bustos Media bought it. 9-10Million. Good amount. A few years prior, they did the same with what is now WVIV. Bumped the signal up so and sold it to Univision.
After getting rid of 93.5 and 850, they purchased 103.9 and later 98.3 WCCQ.
Unfortunately they ended up at market cap. WIIL’s COL was changed to Union Grove (Technically within the Milwaukee market but little mention of it at all on the air) That helped for that station. Basically sneaking it out of the Chicago radio market while still programming to it.
WZSR and WFXF (103.9) went to another owner after NextMedia went under. In this case, Matrix owned them but Alpha did sales for the stations. They finally bought back WZSR and WFXF went to EMF.
100.7 WRXQ is now operated the way WZSR and WFXF were. Different owner, Alpha Media does sales.
After getting rid of 93.5 and 850, they purchased 103.9 and later 98.3 WCCQ.
Unfortunately they ended up at market cap. WIIL’s COL was changed to Union Grove (Technically within the Milwaukee market but little mention of it at all on the air) That helped for that station. Basically sneaking it out of the Chicago radio market while still programming to it.
WZSR and WFXF (103.9) went to another owner after NextMedia went under. In this case, Matrix owned them but Alpha did sales for the stations. They finally bought back WZSR and WFXF went to EMF.
100.7 WRXQ is now operated the way WZSR and WFXF were. Different owner, Alpha Media does sales.
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That's an interesting point about WDRV. Its signal is quite strong in Lake and McHenry counties in Illinois. I could see how it pulls higher ratings simply by having an additional full power station in the far north suburbs.
I always felt that the 104.7 tower placement was not the best decision. It's RIGHT on the Lake Michigan shoreline, so the ground elevation is relatively lower than the surrounding area. Signal doesn't go as far as it could in other locations. I struggled to pull the station in when I lived on the south side of Milwaukee. Didn't a TV station co-locate at that tower back in the day? WJJA?? I think it moved after the digital TV transition. WZTI has a translator in that location now, which is kind of fun.
It was sad to see 103.9 go to EMF. That part of the suburbs doesn't get the best reception in Chicago stations. Local radio is important over there.
I’ve seen to many 2-bay and $40 menards mini yagi antennas installed barely over the roofline in the area if they are pointed to Chicago there will have lots of problems. even pointed to Milwaukee I have to imagine there will be signal dropouts. I don’t think I would even want to combine two 8- bay bow ties, it’s unlikely you will ever get the Milwaukee LP stations that share RF channels with Chicago but they will create enough havoc to lose signal, those LP channels are recent sign ons in the last year or so. You’re also losing some signal combining antennas. I have to imagine most antennas setups in last 5-10 years are not professionally done setups.
This is the antenna and rotator I was using from 1969 until about 1985. The main difference in the newer designs of the V-Log type is the added UHF Corner Reflector. CKLW-TV/CBET 9 used to sign off early, leaving WWTV 9 as the strongest signal. They used to sign off around 1:00 or 2:00 AM. Then quite often I could receive WGN-TV 9 very faintly with fading in and out, in Genesee County, about 216 miles away. WGN-TV operated 24 hours a day, unusual at the time. The FM gain, good in the 88-92 MHz range, dipped below 0 dBd at around 102 MHz. With the V-Log vs. straight elements with VHF High directors, which usually took a precipitous plunge way below 0 dBd around 104 MHz, like a quarter wave band reject stub of twin line, it was decent throughout the FM band. I could get WIOT 104.7 Toledo and WXAX 104.7 Elkhart fairly regularly, and also WVPE 88.1 Elkhart, "The Voice Of Public Education".
When WLS-TV 7 and WTTW 11 were 316 kW before moving to Hancock and Sears, I once received them very strongly during a tropospheric ducting event. 2, 5, and 9 were already at lower ERP, and were seen but much weaker. Once I got WMVS 10 quite strong. When I got an Antennacraft FM-10, before the 80-90 and NCE-FM drop ins close in, I could get WFMR 96.5, WLPX 97.3, WIXX 101.1, and WMBI-FM 90.1 quite regularly on a Technics ST-G5 Tuner. WYEN 106.7, WYCA 92.3, and WGCI 107.5 were quite frequent when they were higher ERP than Sears and Hancock, and before all the drop ins. The other FMs from there came in sometimes on a Sony Portable.
I called WKQX 101.1 once and told them I was listening, but I don't think they believed me, and I once got into an argument with a WMAQ 670 engineer about why WAIT 820 with 5000 watts came in better at my Michigan location than WMAQ 670 with 10000 watts on Auxiliary. I said it should be stronger, and thought the AUX was just 5000 watts. I called when I thought 670 shouldn't change to WSCR because WMAQ was a legend, and got into a similar disagreement.
When WLS-TV 7 and WTTW 11 were 316 kW before moving to Hancock and Sears, I once received them very strongly during a tropospheric ducting event. 2, 5, and 9 were already at lower ERP, and were seen but much weaker. Once I got WMVS 10 quite strong. When I got an Antennacraft FM-10, before the 80-90 and NCE-FM drop ins close in, I could get WFMR 96.5, WLPX 97.3, WIXX 101.1, and WMBI-FM 90.1 quite regularly on a Technics ST-G5 Tuner. WYEN 106.7, WYCA 92.3, and WGCI 107.5 were quite frequent when they were higher ERP than Sears and Hancock, and before all the drop ins. The other FMs from there came in sometimes on a Sony Portable.
I called WKQX 101.1 once and told them I was listening, but I don't think they believed me, and I once got into an argument with a WMAQ 670 engineer about why WAIT 820 with 5000 watts came in better at my Michigan location than WMAQ 670 with 10000 watts on Auxiliary. I said it should be stronger, and thought the AUX was just 5000 watts. I called when I thought 670 shouldn't change to WSCR because WMAQ was a legend, and got into a similar disagreement.
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I had a summer cabin in the U.P. Near Iron River. For the longest time all I had was a VHF antenna with a rotator on a 35’ tower, I could get 13 from marquette mi good wluc was ok and WJMN a little poorer than WLUC. I had better line of sight to the south, WJFW came in great whatever direction you pointed to and Wausau 7 and 9 came in ok to good at more than 95 Miles away. Most of the time the antenna was pointed to Wausau. Green Bay was regular in tropo and WEAU came in a lot and if 13 from marquette was off air WEAU was booming. I didn’t put up a UHF antenna up until WYOW signed on in the mid 90’s.
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103.9 basically fills the coverage gap left by 94.3 when it went to the current tower site. I remember when 94.3 was in Elgin. In the later years the owner leased the station out to whoever wanted to be on the air. EMF took over the whole signal after One On One Sports (Who was leasing much of their airtime) went to 820. They bought it in 2007
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