Re: ghosts of am's past

["Dan Strassberg" <Dan.Strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

If you live in a community where a Class A FM and/or Class C AM provide the
only locally oriented programming (a few still do), you might miss the local
stations. You can find good examples in New Rochelle NY. WVOX (the AM) is
not a Class C; it's a Class D on 1460 with 500W-D/50W-N ND-U. Those
facilities are even worse than those of Class C AMs, most of which operate
with 1 kW-U ND-U. The FM, WRTN 93.5, is, as far as I know, one of those
hemmed in Class As (NOT an 80-90 drop-in) that cannot increase to 6 kW at
100m. New Rochelle is a not-especially-affluent community in very affluent
Westchester County (suburban New York City), where, between AM and FM,
nearly 100 signals must be audible. A couple of years ago, WVOX/WRTN built
palatial new studios (you can take an e-tour somewhere on the Web). Stations
that weren't doing well could never have afforded such facilities, but these
stations, which don't have a slick sound, do well by providing a real
community service despite the plethora of other signals that reach the COL.

BTW, this weekend on WMEX, I was listening to a program about reinstituting
direct airline service between Boston and Rome. The guest was a state rep
from Rowley MA on the north shore. He had previously made a guest appearance
on a brokered-time Italian-language program on WJIB. He said that he had
made what his wife considered a terrible mistake when he was on the WJIB
program; he gave out his home phone number on the air. Over the three days
following the show, more than two hundred people called his home asking if
there was anything they could do to support his campaign! Now, I don't
imagine that all, or even most, of these calls came from people who live in
the representative's district, whre WJIB doesn't come in especially well,
but regardless of the fact that WJIB is an AM and has the Boston maket's
lowest powered AM signal, the little station brought big results to somebody
who had something important to say on a program directed at the right
audience. Radio and radio listening may be changing, but don't undersell
what local radio can accomplish!

--

Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
Phone: 1-617-558-4205, eFax: 1-707-215-6367

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Beckwith <beckwith@ime.net>
To: bri@bostonradio.org <bri@bostonradio.org>
Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2000 4:48 AM
Subject: Re: ghosts of am's past


>I'm looking forward to the day if/when some of these marginal Class A FMs
>are "taken dark."  Would anyone really miss them except for DXers?
>
>Take care,
>Chris
>
>