Re: WNMH, NorthEast Radio Watch 7/10: On and Off The Air

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Wed, 16 Jul 1997 11:18:21 +0000, Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net> said:

> Now THAT's DAMNED clever! If you divide 365.25 (the .25 is the leap-year

Actually, 365.2422.

> allowance), you get 91.3125. Since summer is 1/4 of a year, it really is
> very close to 91 and a half days long. Besides the fact that there are no

Well, 91 days, 7 hours, 27 minutes, 11.52 seconds...

> officially commercial stations in the US in the vicinity of 91.3, I doubt

Well, unless you count XETRA-FM (91.1), which is really a San Diego
station despite being licensed to Mexico.

This actually brings up something curious: will the coming silence of
CBF result in any changes to the use of that channel in other places?
690 is a Canada/Mexico ``clear'' channel, used primarily by CBF, CBU
(Vancouver), and XETRA (Tijuana).  940 in Montreal is similar, used by
CBM (moving to 88.5 with about 4 kW and a transmitter site about ten
feet away from CBMT, channel 6).  I can't off hand think of what the
other Canadians on 940 might be, but I know that there is a big
Mexican on that channel as well.

I thought the CRTC's logic was interesting in granting the move.
They are apparently by policy ill-disposed towards moving CBC AM
outlets to FM, but the argument the CBC made was as follows:
Montreal's economy is pretty depressed, and probably can't support
another commercial station (all the other applicants were commercial);
furthermore, nobody listens to AM any more, DAB is 10-20 years off as
a practical matter, and so we can't effectively fulfill our mandate
unless we are allowed to move to a band with listeners on it.

The move of CBM to 88.5 will be interesting, given the following
information from the FCC database:

Montreal, QU:  (rulemaking) 88.5  [B]
(G) Change of Community from Cornwall, ON.
(I) Proposed by Canada 970117-Specially negotiated, short-spaced allotment
(I) limited to 4.04kw ERP and 250m HAAT or the equivalent along the 183.6 degree
(I) azimuth toward channel 202A in Peru, NY and limited to 5.375kw ERP and 250m
(I) HAAT or the equivalent along the 163.2 degree azimuth toward channel 204A
(I) in Colchester, VT-Objected to by Commission 970424

(That's protection for WXLU and WWPV, two little micro-As in the
Champlain Valley.  WXLU is public radio on the WSLU network; WWPV is
at St. Michael's College.  It looks like Peru was originally
engineered to protect the original 88.5 allotment in Cornwall.)

- -GAWollman

- --
Garrett A. Wollman   | O Siem / We are all family / O Siem / We're all the same
wollman@lcs.mit.edu  | O Siem / The fires of freedom 
Opinions not those of| Dance in the burning flame
MIT, LCS, CRS, or NSA|                     - Susan Aglukark and Chad Irschick

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