AM Nighttime Only

[Dan Strassberg]

Aah--there were lots of specified-hours AM licenses--and one or more may
still exist; Scott Fybush is likely to be able to answer that one. But the
specified hours did not vary month-by-month as a nighttime-only license
would require. I can imagine the courts having to settle the issue about
whether a "specified-hours" station that specified only nighttime hours
would conform to FCC rules and precedents. I doubt whether the courts would
resolve that issue in my lifetime or in the lifetime of AM as a viable
broadcast service. And I can't possibly imagine that the current licensee of
WVBF has the financial resources to pursue the issue in court for the
inevitable decades.

Maybe if the native-American tribe (actually, I think "American Indian"
recently returned to the politically correct lexicon) that wants to build a
casino in Middleborough were to buy WVBF and plow all of the casino profits
into the legal fight, they might pull it off. But then, the Indians are
probably not interested in serving Taunton. If the casino is built, there is
likely to be more than enough business in Middlebrough to support the
station.

That could put WVBF in the position of applying for a split-frequency
operation (1530 days with 2.2 kW-D/1 kW-CH and 1570 nights with 227W or
thereabouts) a la WNZK Dearborn Heights MI, the only split-frequency AM in
the US. The FCC has repeatedly asserted that split-frequency operation makes
the very well engineered WNZK substandard from a technical point of view and
that position has survived several attempts by broadcasters to use it as a
precedent for split-frequency operation of other stations. Moreover, WNZK's
day and night operations are on first-adjacent channels--not fourth
adjacents!

Canada once had a split-frequency operation on 710 days and 1290 nights in
Gravelbourg SK, a Francophone enclave in the western prairie, but Canada
considered each of its two split-frequency AMs (the other was in Leamington
ON) to constitute two stations. Both operations have been dark for many
years. Each used different calls day and night; Gravelbourg was CFGR/CFRG;
Leamington was CHIR/CHYR. However, since Canadian stations need mention
their calls only once a day, call letters were almost a non-issue.

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Russ Butler" <songbook2@comcast.net>
To: <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>;
<dan.strassberg@att.net>; "Russ Butler" <songbook2@comcast.net>
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 5:38 PM
Subject: AM Nighttime Only


> Reading Dan Strassberg's b-r-i post about AM nighttime-only stations
> reminds me of KPPC 1240AM in Los Angeles..... "the little radio station
> that could and did!"
>
> Beginning on Christmas Day, December 25, 1924 as a 50watt station of the
> Pasadena Presbyterian Church by church volunteers, as a non-profit
> station with studios in the church's basement (unofficially people later
> called an "underground station") with it's transmitter on top of the
> church on Colorado Boulevard.  (The church is still there today.)  It
> went on the air after the first Christmas Day services.only for Sunday
> church services 11am to Noon, then shut down 6 days.
>
> It had a "specified hours" FCC license to broadcast in 1938, Sundays 9am
> to 1 pm and 6:45pm to 9pm and on Wednesdays 7pm to 9pm again only for
> church services.
>
> In the 1970's and 80's it went up to 22 hours a week,  after 1985 with
> 250 watts it was broadcasting only at night weekdays and all day
> Sunday.  (Guess this would be sort of a nighttime-only station?)  Again
> in 1996, KPPC 1240AM only went on the air Sundays for the church service
> 11am to Noon, then shut down for 6 days.
>
> KPPC originally shared 1210AM in it's long history with a station in San
> Bernardino, there were also LA-area AM stations at 1220 Pomona, at 1230
> and 1260 in Los Angeles causing major interference with the 1240
> signal.  The church also started an FM station (KPPC 106.7FM in 1962
> selling it in 1968, now KROQ).
>
> The license still allowed for the transmitter to be turned on each
> Sunday morning for one hour, then turned off when the church service
> ended. KPPC had come full circle during its last year on the air in
> 1996!! It went off the air forever in September, 1996 after 71 years and
> 9 months.
>
> Its sole purpose from the beginning once again was to broadcast the
> Sunday church services of its founder from the site where the station
> first went on the air Christmas Day of 1924. The station remaining
> silent the other 6 days of the week.
>
> When I was looking for the KPPC studios in 1998, no one in the church
> office I met remembered the station or it's history.  I asked around the
> neighborhood and found that they had left the church basement for a
> Colorado Boulevard (that's where the Rose Parade is held every year)
> storefront. "KPPC 1240AM" was in small letters on the front door and a
> type-written note saying that the studios were being used to broadcast
> nighttime, Latino religious programming on the Pomona station.  It was
> dark, but peering inside the window, there were mics and Latino signage
> everywhere, so, in a way, KPPC founded by the Presbyterian church did
> have a religious life thereafter!
>
> (Thanks to Jim Hilliker for some KPPC background history)
> KPPC-FM is now in Pocatello, Idaho. There is no AM call.
>
> =Russ Butler songbook2@comcast.net