• 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

Expanding the FM band

Plus with repacking what was formerly thought to be the useless lower VHF-TV band is springing back to life. WQED here in Pittsburgh is voluntarily making a move there in exchange for a cash auction payout. As the appetite for wireless broadband continues to grow look for more of this. TV channel 6 isn't going anyplace anytime soon.
 
Last edited:
FreddyE1977 said:
Plus with repacking what was formerly thought to be the useless lower VHF-TV band is springing back to life. WQED here in Pittsburgh is voluntarily making a move there in exchange for a cash auction payout. As the appetite for wireless broadband continues to grow look for more of this. TV channel 6 isn't going anyplace anytime soon.
Click to expand...
Just wait until the viewers find out what's going to happen.
 
semoochie said:
Portland has one running IHeart 60s. It's shown up for the last four ratings with the infamous 0.1. There's no translator.
Click to expand...

Doesn't Salem have a few X-Banders that are commercially viable? I was under the impression that the other poster wasn't referring to X-banders being high in ratings, but being for the most part just as commercially viable as AM stations lower in the band.
 
boombox4 said:
Doesn't Salem have a few X-Banders that are commercially viable? I was under the impression that the other poster wasn't referring to X-banders being high in ratings, but being for the most part just as commercially viable as AM stations lower in the band.
Click to expand...

There are a few that are viable, but in a very limited fashion. 1 kw at night above 1600 just won't cover a full Top 100 market, and daytime they are the equivalent of perhaps 100 watts at 550.

Of 52 X-banders only 3 bill over a million, the ones in Omaha (sports), NYC Metro (Korean) and Chicago (Talk). The four ownned by Salem do between $250 thousand and $400 thousand, which means they can, likely, only be minimally profitable.

The only thing worse than an X-band station is a daytimer... out of 1713 commercial daytimers, only 7 are estimated to bill over $1 million, and all seven of those are in Spanish (4), Christian (2) or Polish (1).
 
DavidEduardo said:


There are a few that are viable, but in a very limited fashion. 1 kw at night above 1600 just won't cover a full Top 100 market, and daytime they are the equivalent of perhaps 100 watts at 550.

Of 52 X-banders only 3 bill over a million, the ones in Omaha (sports), NYC Metro (Korean) and Chicago (Talk). The four ownned by Salem do between $250 thousand and $400 thousand, which means they can, likely, only be minimally profitable.

The only thing worse than an X-band station is a daytimer... out of 1713 commercial daytimers, only 7 are estimated to bill over $1 million, and all seven of those are in Spanish (4), Christian (2) or Polish (1).
Click to expand...

Thanks David...great stats! Where is the source for these numbers?
 
Wimmmex said:
Thanks David...great stats! Where is the source for these numbers?
Click to expand...

There are several publications available that show up in some libraries and the like, such as BIA. Of course, in larger markets, stations that report to Miller Kaplan or similar are part of market data, but that is generally supposed to be "confidential" and not all stations participate.

As a "sidebar" comment, even stations that reveal billing are subject to analysis: often cluster members have combo sales numbers allocated across the cluster, while actually one or two stations may drive sales and the others tag along for the ride. I know of many cases where, as an example, a top biller and a low biller are reported as having equal billing... the owner is afraid to show off the high billing for fear it may make them a target!

Industry analysts will talk with local managers, and see the ratings in sales demos and try to rationalize those billing figures. So any time you hear billing numbers... including from me (insert grin icon here)... know that only the CFO at the owner knows for sure!
 
DavidEduardo said:

There are a few that are viable, but in a very limited fashion. 1 kw at night above 1600 just won't cover a full Top 100 market, and daytime they are the equivalent of perhaps 100 watts at 550.
Click to expand...

Wow. I didn't realize the field strength was that different as you change frequency. So 10KW at 1640 = 100 watts at 550?

And yes - I didn't mean to imply that x-band stations are necessarily doing well. Just not doing worse than a station in the same market in the high end of the old band with similar power. Think KIID vs. KSMH in Sacramento for example.

Dave B.
 
DaveBayArea said:
Wow. I didn't realize the field strength was that different as you change frequency. So 10KW at 1640 = 100 watts at 550?

And yes - I didn't mean to imply that x-band stations are necessarily doing well. Just not doing worse than a station in the same market in the high end of the old band with similar power. Think KIID vs. KSMH in Sacramento for example.

Dave B.
Click to expand...

You are right about comparable high band facilities... but again, there are not many of those that are doing well, either.

The rule of thumb is that 1 kw on 550 is equal to 50 kw on 1500, if all other factors are identical (same location, same ground conductivity, same electrical height of the antenna, etc). Going up above 1600, the ratio of 5:1 falls even more. Thus my approximation of the coverage of an X-Band station being so limited.
 
boombox4 said:
Doesn't Salem have a few X-Banders that are commercially viable? I was under the impression that the other poster wasn't referring to X-banders being high in ratings, but being for the most part just as commercially viable as AM stations lower in the band.
Click to expand...

I was actually referring to an HD2 but our lone X-band station did show up last time.
 
Those with new "HDTV" (Hi VHF and UHF) antennæ will be confused when they start getting pixelised signals after the stations degrade :( themselves.

David, there is no clean line between daytimers and full timers because some stations barely cover their parking lots with ridiculously reduced nighttime power levels...4 watts was proposed by a Sarasota FL station on 1220, but at least directional into their city, plus they will not be doing that. Actually, 99.44% (from an Ivory soap campaign and then a country song) of their listeners use their two translators for this music intensive station.
 
Last edited:
DavidEduardo said:


There are a few that are viable, but in a very limited fashion. 1 kw at night above 1600 just won't cover a full Top 100 market, and daytime they are the equivalent of perhaps 100 watts at 550.
Click to expand...
I'm in North Carolina. I picked up one of those expanded AM band stations from Iowa at night.
 
This has been discussed numerous times over the years, and a large expansion of the FM band simply isn't going to happen.

The one thing that actually is feasible is to open up the use of 87.7 and 87.9 MHz to more than just analog Channel 6 TV stations pretending to be FM radio stations.
 
brettbutlerisok said:
Many of the X-band stations are effectively clear-channels so at night they can do very well via skywave at night. Was it KCJJ?
Click to expand...

The X-band is near-shortwave in nature, and stations on those channels skip nicely. Before the US opened up the band segment, I used to get a couple of 1 kw Argentine X-band stations quite easily, both in Miami and Puerto Rico.

The problem is that night radio listening is low, few people want to hear a distant local AM station, and propagation is not consistent. Of course, there is no sales value in DX reception.
 
DavidEduardo said:


The X-band is near-shortwave in nature, and stations on those channels skip nicely.
Click to expand...

Where the X-band ends, the 160-meter amateur band begins, and trans-Atlantic communication (and reception on a standard communications receiver with a decent antenna -- even a portable with a whip if the noise floor is low enough) with 1 kilowatt (the legal maximum) or less is quite common at night.
 
kevtronics said:
This has been discussed numerous times over the years, and a large expansion of the FM band simply isn't going to happen.

The one thing that actually is feasible is to open up the use of 87.7 and 87.9 MHz to more than just analog Channel 6 TV stations pretending to be FM radio stations.
Click to expand...

If the FCC closes the Franken-FM loophole by eliminating analog TV on Channel 6, who gets the old analog Channel 6 frequencies?
 
CTListener said:
If the FCC closes the Franken-FM loophole by eliminating analog TV on Channel 6, who gets the old analog Channel 6 frequencies?
Click to expand...

Digital television stations assigned to RF Channel 6. And nobody else.
 
DaveBayArea said:
Wow. I didn't realize the field strength was that different as you change frequency. So 10KW at 1640 = 100 watts at 550?
Click to expand...

I'm a bit late to the thread, but there's a very simple equation to calculate the change in field strength (in dB) at a given location for two frequencies, assuming ideal TX conditions and ignoring annoyances like noise floors and skywave:

delta = 20 * log( f2 / f1 )

The difference between 1700 and 550 calculated from that equation is just under 10dB, which is roughly 10x power, i.e. 10kW at 1700 will get the same coverage as 1kW at 550.

David's rule of thumb is probably based on real-world observations - mine just comes from the early chapters of an RF textbook I halfway read years ago
 
Last edited:
DaveBayArea said:
Wow.
I didn't realize the field strength was that different as you change frequency.
So 10KW at 1640 = 100 watts at 550?
Dave B.
Click to expand...
It does across attenuating surfaces including land and fresh water.
Surfaces such as seawater with several thousand millimohs
(are these the right measurement units?)
of conductivity treat the full band almost equally.
 
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