Fw: Herald: Air America on WKOX, WXKS (AM)

[Dan Strassberg]

Oops. I meant this for the list as well as for Eli.

 --
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@att.net>
To: Eli Polonsky <elipolo@earthlink.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 2:31 PM
Subject: Re: Herald: Air America on WKOX, WXKS (AM)


> I dunno how well WKOX comes in in Brighton at night. Portions of Newton
> (Newton Upper Falls, Newton Lower Falls, Auburndale) should do OK, though.
> Where I live (Arlington Heights--on the Lexington line) WKOX delivers
about
> 1 mV/m nighttime. The once clear 1200 is SO noisy in New England at night
> that 1 mV/m is useless on the majority of nights. WKOX's NIF (nighttime
> interference-free signal) must be in the neighborhood of 25 mV/m and might
> be even greater. WXKS (AM) is also useless here at night, though it is
> usually listenable in East Arlington.
>
> If CCU were willing to give up tilting at windmills, it might be able to
put
> WKOX on the air at night from the two existing WUNR towers in Oak Hill.
> Since no tower construction would be required, such operation should not
> require approval from the Newton aldermen. By my calculations, WKOX ought
to
> be able to run at least 3 kW nights from the existing WUNR towers (maybe
> closer to 5 kW) because the azimuth of the array is rotated 17 degrees
> clockwise with respect to that of WKOX's array in Framingham. The spacing
> between the towers in the two arrays is almost identical, so the pattern
> shape could also be almost identical. Thus, co-channel stations to the
west
> (CKGO, WTLA) would be deeper in the null of the Oak Hill pattern than they
> are in the null of the Mt Wayte pattern. OTOH, the Mt Wayte towers are
> taller, so it's possible that, with respect to high-angle skywave, some of
> the loss in field strength to the west would be cancelled out because
WUNR's
> electrically shorter towers (154 degrees at 1200 vs 214 degrees at 1200
for
> the Mt Wayte pair) might produce greater skywave radiation at elevation
> angles that are critical to stations approximately 300 miles away.
However,
> towers taller than 180 degrees (like those at Mt Wayte) produce a vertical
> radiation pattern with a high-angle lobe, so it is not a foregone
conclusion
> that this would be the case. Someone with the proper software would have
to
> make that determination. The other potential problem is that WKOX's 3-kW
(or
> so) night signal from Oak Hill might not be interference free over 80% of
> Newton, which is geographically quite large, so an FCC waiver of the COL
> coverage requirements could be required. I believe that area near Newton
> Corner would present the greatest problem.
>
> WKOX would have two choices for days: either move the daytime operation to
> Oak Hill, where 50 kW DA-D from WUNR's existing towers is a definite
> possibility--again with no permission required from the Newton aldermen.
Or
> increase to 50 kW DA-D from Mt Wayte, which should be sufficient to
deliver
> a 5 mV/m daytime signal to all of Newton. A couple of years ago, WKOX had
an
> application on file for such a modification to its daytime operation. The
> first of these options would give WKOX just about as good a signal in
> downtown Boston as it would have gotten from the five-tower array it had
> proposed to share with WUNR and WRCA. The night signal in Boston would
> clearly not be wonderful, but the combination of the relocated WKOX and
WXKS
> (AM) would cover the market reasonably well at night. This arrangement
would
> allow either the move of the brokered ethnic programming from WKOX to WXKS
> during the daytime or would permit WXKS to continue running adult
standards
> during the day.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Eli Polonsky <elipolo@earthlink.net>
> To: Brian Vita <brian_vita@cssinc.com>; <raccoonradio@myway.com>;
> <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 1:10 PM
> Subject: Re: Herald: Air America on WKOX, WXKS (AM)
>
>
> > >> http://theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNews/view.bg?articleid=43752
> > >>
> > >> The Herald reports that according to sources, Air America will
> > >> be running its programming soon on Framingham's WKOX (1200)
> > >> and Everett's WXKS (1430)
> > >>
> > > Well, there, two major powerhouses.  I hope that the folks at WRKO and
> WTKK
> > > are filling out their resumes.  When these two blowtorches, er,
> cigarette
> > > lighters kick on, both of their listeners will be glued.  Was 1150
> > > unavailable?
> >
> > Well, though neither of those have the "big" sound of a 50,000 watt
> > boomer, a simulcast would give them pretty good daytime coverage of
> > greater Boston.
> >
> > WXKS's daytime signal covers within all of 128 pretty well, and WKOX
> > daytime gets all the west suburbs and metro-west out to Worcester.
> >
> > Nighttime would be more spotty, WXKS would still get the immediate
> > metro-north Boston towns, downtown Boston, the immediate north
> > shore, and a bit of the tip of the coastal south shore, but doesn't
> > really go inland west or south of Cambridge worth anything at night.
> >
> > West of 495 would lose WKOX at night, but they'll still get Boston's
> > metro-west suburbs with a fair to middling signal, and they're weak
> > but still listenable in areas just west of Boston that get very
> > little of WXKS-AM at night , such as Brighton, Brookline, Newton...
> >
> > Eli
> >
>