NERW 11/4 and 11/11: WCVB-DT Meets Tropo; We Rant About IBOC

[fybush@gwind.pair.com]

------------------------------E-MAIL EDITION-----------------------------
--------------------------NorthEast Radio Watch--------------------------
                          November 4 & 11, 2002

IN THIS ISSUE:

*MASSACHUSETTS: WCVB, NJ Police Meet Tropospheric Ducting
*MASSACHUSETTS: Liu Buys WSRO
*We Rant About IBOC Digital

-----------------------------by Scott Fybush-----------------------------
-------------------------<http://www.fybush.com>-------------------------

*The atmosphere can be a tricky thing sometimes, especially near the
coast and especially during the summer. Just ask Boston's WCVB-DT
(Channel 20) and the Camden County, N.J., public safety department,
which have been sharing the 506-512 MHz chunk of the UHF spectrum for
the last few years.

It was never a problem when WCVB-DT was operating a few hours a day,
but earlier this year, when the tower work on the Needham tower WCVB
shares with WBZ-TV/DT and WGBH/WGBX was completed and WCVB-DT was able
to go full-time at full power, officers down in South Jersey started
to notice interference to their two-way radio system, which they
tracked down to the new DTV signal more than 250 miles to the
northeast.

Last week the dispute hit the media, with Ocean County (even closer to
the coast than Camden County) joining in a complaint to the FCC about
interference to their radio systems, which operate in the "T-Band,"
first allocated a couple of decades ago on what were then largely
unused channels 14-20 in the UHF-TV spectrum. (How unused? So much so
that several low UHF TV allocations, such as 14 in Worcester, 16 in
Providence and 18 in New Brunswick, N.J., were deleted and reassigned
for public safety use.)

DTV, of course, changed all that, with every scrap of the UHF TV
spectrum being pressed into use during the lengthy transition from
analog to digital. In Boston, it's not just 20; channel 19 is in use
by WGBH-DT and channel 18 is allocated for WMFP-DT, while other DTVs
in the Northeast are allocated for channels 19 (WABI-DT Bangor,
WSYT-DT Syracuse), 18 (WMBC-DT Newton NJ), 17 (WCBB-DT Lewiston ME,
WIXT-DT Syracuse), 16 (WAGM-DT Presque Isle ME, WVNY-DT Burlington
VT), 15 (WMED-DT Calais ME, WPSX-DT Clearfield PA) and 14 (WVII-DT
Bangor, WUTV-DT Buffalo, WPTZ-DT Plattsburgh NY). 

In other words, the spectrum that T-band users have had pretty much to
themselves is about to get full, and it doesn't appear that the FCC
did its homework when making the allocations there, or in other parts
of the DTV spectrum. (Just ask WHRO-DT Norfolk VA and WBOC-TV
Salisbury MD, which are battling over channel 16, or WOOD-TV Grand
Rapids MI and WMVS-DT Milwaukee, which are fighting over channel 8.)

The culprit appears to be the FCC's modeling mechanism, which does not
fully account for the effects of unusual propagation, especially over
water. (Notice a common thread in all these DTV disputes?)

Any DXer knows that there's nothing completely predictable about
propagation at almost any frequency below 800 MHz (as we type this,
we're watching an E-skip pileup on channel 3 that's bringing in
stations from Memphis, Springfield MO, Harrisburg IL and Eufaula OK,
perfectly normal behavior in mid-July but quite unusual in early
November), and every reason to think that a 500 MHz signal with a
megawatt of power from Boston will often ride the tropospheric ducts
down to New Jersey in the summertime. But those are the sort of
questions that should have been asked before a license was issued, not
after millions of dollars were spent to put up a licensed signal on
channel 20 in Boston.

How will this all get resolved now that the damage has been done? The
good news is that there's no reason to expect WCVB-DT to remain on
channel 20 forever; when the DTV transition is complete, the digital
signal will likely replace WCVB's analog on channel 5. You can read
more thoughts on digital transitioning down at the bottom of this
week's column. In the meantime, we'll be following this closely to see
how the FCC gets itself out of the hole it's dug.

*Elsewhere in MASSACHUSETTS, Arthur Liu is adding to his Multicultural
Broadcasting holdings with a $1.8 million purchase of WSRO (1470
Marlborough) from Alexander Langer. WSRO isn't much of a signal at the
moment, operating under a long-running Special Temporary Authority
since the city of Marlborough took its old transmitter site, but Liu
isn't buying WSRO for its current signal. The purchase price includes
$150,000 to build out WSRO's construction permit to change city of
license to Watertown and transmitter site to the Lexington facility of
WAMG (1150), which you can see on the October page of the 2002 Tower
Site Calendar. When it's moved and the purchase has closed, WSRO will
join WLYN (1360 Lynn) in Liu's Boston cluster.

Congratulations to Mistress Carrie of WAAF (107.3 Worcester), who adds
"music director" to her midday jock duties at the hard rocker.

And congratulations to WJUL (91.5 Lowell), which marked its 50th
anniversary (it started as carrier-current WLTI in January 1953 and
has been on FM since 1968) with a reunion this past Saturday. We'll
try to bring you some pictures and stories in our next issue...

We've been remiss in mentioning the latest addition to the schedule at
Sporting News Radio's WWZN (1510 Boston); Mike Adams has joined the
station to do mornings, which means that 1510 is now running local all
day long before joining Sporting News in the evenings (when there's
not a Celtics game, anyway.)

More TV news: WCEA-LP, displaced from channel 19 by WGBH-DT, has lost
its bid to move to channel 3, with the FCC dismissing its application
for that low frequency after receiving petitions to deny (we'd guess
from WBZ, WGBH and WFSB, perhaps?) WCEA-LP now has a new application
in to move to channel 58 with 5 kW visual, but that channel will also
have to change in a few years when the FCC removes channels 52-69 from
TV service.

Out west, W51AE (Channel 51) atop Mount Greylock has applied to move
to channel 38; the translator for Albany's WNYT is being displaced by
the new full-power CP for Pittsfield on channel 51.

And Springfield's WSPR (1270) has been granted a move to the site of
co-owned WACM (1490 West Springfield); it'll run 5 kW day, 1 kW night
from the existing WACM tower and a new second tower to be built
nearby.

*It could just as easily fall under the Bay State heading - but the
"new" station serving Fall River and New Bedford is still licensed to
RHODE ISLAND, as WKKB (100.3 Middletown). The Citadel rocker, formerly
Providence-based 80s outlet WZRI ("Z100") made its debut last Friday
(Nov. 1), with a schedule that includes Patriots football and
voicetracking (initally overnight and now middays) from "Brian the
Pharmacist," late of the FNX network.

Speaking of sports in Rhode Island, the Celtics are back on the
Providence dial, with WSKO (790) and WSKO-FM (99.7 Wakefield-Peace
Dale) picking them up after a season's absence down there.

*On the Rhode Island-CONNECTICUT line, WKCD (107.7 Pawcatuck) has
changed calls to WHJM to match its "Jammin 107.7" identity.

Down the coast, Scott Weimer will take over as PD of Cox classic
rocker WEFX (95.9 Norwalk) Nov.18; he comes to the market after stints
at the Worldspace and XM satellite radio services.

*Just one NEW HAMPSHIRE note: the FCC has approved the transfer of
WPXB (Channel 60) in Merrimack from Pax to NBC, which will use it as
its Telemundo outlet for the Boston market, thanks to the miracle of
cable must-carry.

*The FCC approved a minor change to one VERMONT TV station: WNNE
(Channel 31) in White River Junction gets to put up a new antenna at
684 meters above average terrain, with 1820 kW directional. (Their old
antenna, on the same Mount Ascutney tower, does 2240 kW at 677
meters...)

*NERW hears a few of the top brass at Clear Channel's MAINE clusters
received their walking papers last week; in Augusta, GM Tim Gatz and
GSM Brian Strack were dismissed, as was Bangor GM Keryn Smith. We hear
Clear Channel regional exec Jim Herron will be running things up there
for now...

*On to NEW YORK, then: there will be a new addition to the skyline
soon that should help the city's beleaguered TV broadcasters restore a
better signal to over-the-air viewers even in the event of problems at
their primary Empire State Building site.

Four Times Square, the "Conde Nast Building" on Broadway between 41st
and 42nd streets, is already home to auxiliary FM transmitters for New
York's Clear Channel and Spanish Broadcasting System clusters, as well
as public radio WNYC-FM (93.9).

Now the building's owner, The Durst Organization, plans to add another
200 or so feet to the mast atop 4 Times Square to provide auxiliary
transmitter space for New York's TV stations.

(By the way, Durst has hired one of the city's top broadcast engineers
to supervise its own broadcast-leasing operations: John Lyons, the
former chief engineer for Clear Channel's WAXQ in New York, now calls
Four Times Square home, which is only fitting, considering he had a
huge hand in designing the broadcast facility there!)

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan TV Alliance, the industry group formed in
the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to restore full TV service, is still
pressing ahead on its own plans for a 2000-foot tower somewhere on the
Jersey side of the Hudson for TV transmission; if both that plan and
the Durst plan at 4 Times Square work out, New York's TV stations will
have much more redundancy in their transmission systems than they've
ever had before, which is a good thing.

More New York aux news: the Emmis stations, WQHT (97.1), WRKS (98.7)
and WQCD (101.9), have been granted auxiliary facilities up on First
Mountain in West Orange, N.J., running 29.5 kW from one of the towers
at the WFME (94.7) site.