AM Nighttime Only

[Doug Drown]

Are there still any stations around that share a frequency, or frequencies,
within a given area, as was not uncommon years ago?  WFAA and WBAP in
Dallas/Fort Worth come to mind.  I believe they shared 570 and 820 together.

-Doug


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>
To: "Russ Butler" <songbook2@comcast.net>;
<boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 10:07 PM
Subject: Re: AM Nighttime Only


> 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
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