Re: WTOP null / FM simulcast

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Steve Ordinetz wrote:
>Isn't there some sort of law that the heaviest population growth always
>occurs in your nulls?

        There sort of is, IMO, especially for the larger market, higher
power AMs, which mostly set up their current transmitting facilities back
in the 1930s, or even the '20s. If they were engineered to put the signal
where the people were then, and had to be directional, they located the
transmitter so the required nulls were in the rural areas. Since WWII, and
even more in the '80s and '90s, the rural areas within the major metros are
where the fastest population growth is, on top of the general spreading out
of the population. Boston, for example, had no really significant
population very much beyond what now is the Route 128 ring, except
Lowell-Lawrence-Haverhill, before WWII. Meanwhile, the same markets are
loaded with non-directional FMs that all get out farther than any AM except
the 50 kWers or the occasional low-band 5 kW regional-channel AM, and
farther than some of those, especially at night.

------------------------------