FM translator ID's

[Kevin Vahey]

Bob Bittner will do everything by the book.

The average listener in either Boston or Maine really does not need to be
subjected to hearing the calls of every transmitter tied in.

I am assuming that today WJTO is the 'master control' of the Bob Bittner
network and very little if any programming originates in Cambridge like it
did years ago with the VHS tapes.

By comparison look at 'NBC Boston' on TV. Viewers at home never see any
legal ID if watching on cable as Comcast sends the master control input
from Denver by fiber to the cable company's head end before it is sent to
the transmitter. If you watch OTA around Boston you do see a legal ID for
WBTS and WMFP and viewers in NH see WNEU.

I can report that Bob's 103,1 is now coming in clear around Fenway Park.
Big City's owners are savvy enough to know that once Bob went on the air it
was a fight they could not win. They will keep looking for a landing spot
but their options are limited. Big City was popular with many cab drivers
in Cambridge/Somerville and a couple of them became angry when I said the
station was illegal.

I think most of us will agree that commercial radio has ignored vast
portions of Boston for decades. WILD-AM 1090 for years did a yeoman's job
in trying but as a daytime only station it was limited. The station could
have gotten very low power authorization to transmit 24 hours but the
signal would never make it to their core listening area. They did wind up
buying a Brockton FM station and moved the transmitter to Milton but that
in turn made the station more valuable to the suburban market and Entercom
bought 97,7 and it became a simulcast of WAAF.

I envy at times how Canada's CRTC has a major say in what a station can
program but I also know that would never be workable in the US.

I think the FCC dropped the ball decades ago with FM rimshotters that would
then lay claim to the larger adjacent market. The FCC could have allowed
low power stations in Boston on signals such as 93.7, 99.5, 105.7 and 107.3
but didn't. The one exception was 104,9 where WRBB was created to destroy a
major payday to Simon Geller who owned WVCA in Gloucester..

There is no easy answer to this.







On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 12:58 AM, A Joseph Ross <joe@attorneyross.com>
wrote:

> But Sean Smith just mentioned listening to a WJTO translator.  So why
> wouldn't you have a liner for its FM frequency?
>
>
>