1060 KDYL Flips Format . . . Again

[David]

The return of Radio China International programming to 1060 AM seems more than a little coincidental given the escalating trade war between the US and China. I was listening to KDYL earlier this morning, and the Radio Desi programming is gone. The Radio Desi USA Facebook page states that their programming officially ended on June 10th. What caught my ear as I was listening to 1060 this morning was an American movie clip which aired around 11:30 (possibly from Goodfellas) that was sprinkled with about a half dozen F bombs, and they didn't even attempt to bleep the expletives. Apparently no one told James Su that's a definite no-no on American broadcast stations, but maybe he's so rich that he doesn't care about paying FCC fines.

www.facebook.com/radiodesiusa/

[CAwasinNJ]

I didn't understand why the China Radio International feed was pulled in the first place. Running it was the whole reason those stations were purchased, wasn't it?

[David]

Perhaps Mr. Su needed some extra cash, so he agreed to LMA the station to Radio Desi for 6 months. Beyond that, I have no ideas.

[val]

One important part of a local management agreement, some might say the most important, is paying your lease.

[David]

Jun 17, 2018 11:48:42 GMT -6 val said:

One important part of a local management agreement, some might say the most important, is paying your lease.

Very true. However, if you pay $712 K for an AM station as James Su did 3 years ago with KDYL, you should also loosen up the purse strings enough to have someone monitor what's going out over the air so an engineer can be called in when necessary. I've listened to 1060 at least a half-dozen times since this Saturday, and every time I've tuned in the station has been airing nothing but "dead air theater" (to quote CA). At least whoever was running Radio Desi USA when it was on KDYL ran the operation like a real radio station, instead of putting it on autopilot and crossing their fingers hoping that nothing goes wrong. The same crap that was going on with the China Radio International programming prior to the LMA to Radio Desi is apparently happening again, and no one seems to care. If only a handful of people were listening to KDYL's CRI programming before the LMA, broadcasting dead air 24/7 is certainly going to drive away the few listeners they had. It's a huge waste of a 10 KW signal. Unfortunately, there's probably going to be more AM stations run like KDYL in the near future if the NAB proposal to do away with caps on AM station ownership passes muster with the FCC.

The biggest reason AM radio is dying is due more to the lack of interesting programming and variety on the band, and huge media companies with a "who cares, it's only AM" attitude. It's doing more to accelerate the demise of 540-1700 kHz than electrical interference and poor sound quality ever has.

[David]

1060 is still on the air with a dead carrier 7 hours later. Are all the US radio stations owned by G&E Studio managed this poorly?

[CAwasinNJ]

The fact that you heard problems with CRI but not with the Desi programming leads me to wonder if the problem is with getting the programming to the station. I wouldn't have any idea what the source is, but if the problem is only with that programming and not the other that leads me to believe it's not at the station.

Either way it probably doesn't matter a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if the high up executives in Beijing don't know or care about the dead air problem. They just know they have X number of stations in the US covering X number of people in X number of cities. This is about perception. I would be shocked if their ratings were anything above minuscule.

[David]

I wonder what the FCC's perception of airing unedited movie clips laced with F bombs during daytime hours, as well as the station being on air for hours on end without broadcasting a legal ID, would be? Probably a hefty fine. I think the violations and complaints to the FCC is one of the reasons Weber State sold the license for KWCR. Too bad KDYL probably doesn't have any listeners except for radio geeks like me.

G&E has had problems keeping the station on the air as well as automation malfunctions almost since James Su bought the station. There's been at least two or three instances in the past 2 years when the station has been off the air, i.e. silent, for more than 10 days without notifying the FCC; which is yet another rule violation. Who knows, maybe this is CRI's way of thumbing their noses at Trump and his administration. I wouldn't be surprised.

[CAwasinNJ]

As you pointed out David, authorized silent stations are not required to give ID's. (I disagree with that interpretation of the rules, but that was the ruling.) As long as the station doesn't exceed the time where they would need to file for silent authority, dead air doesn't need an ID. The profanity and excessive silent periods are something else completely, but somebody would need to complain. The FCC will not act unless there's a complaint.

[David]

Uncle Charlie might be hearing from me soon if KDYL continues violating the rules. Many years ago when Riley Hollingsworth was assigned the task of cleaning up amateur radio, I sent him a detailed email describing the antics of a group of hams on 40 meters. Much to my surprise, Riley responded to my email, and a few months later several of the renegade ops received warning letters from the FCC. Don't know if the FCC is as responsive now as they were when Hollingsworth was working there, but it's worth a shot.

[David]

Well, KDYL seems to have finally gotten their dead air problem fixed after "only" a week, but the station's audio is back to sounding like crap again. As in 2 tin cans and a string crappy. That was one of the best things about Radio Desi: the audio quality was much improved over the CRI programming, in addition to the lack of dead air. Too bad it didn't last. With 10 KW days, there's so much potential for KDYL to be something much better than it is. Too bad it's nothing more than a lo-fi, poorly run mouthpiece for China Radio International.