Questions and Complaints

[Terry]

Questions:
1. Is KMGR 99.1 operating at class C1 power yet?
2. Why is the “pirate” on 95.7 allowed to continue broadcasting?
3. What would it cost Cumulus to put KKAT 860 on KBEE 98.7 HD2?
4. Why has iHeart dropped HD2’s on 94.1, 97.1, and 105.9?

Complaints:
1. KLO’s CBS news runs at very low volume and is noisy.
2. KALL’s 92.1 translator has a strong signal, horrible audio.
3. KJJC 1230 has distorted high frequency audio.

Comments?

[CAwasinNJ]

Answers:
1. Probably not. The C1 construction permit expired at the beginning of the year.
2. "Allowed" is a tricky word. The FCC is overworked and understaffed and apparently hasn't gotten around to it yet. I believe there may be some people trying to remedy that.
3. KBEE already runs digital, right? In that case probably not much if any. There might be an additional licensing fee.
4. Several possibilities spring to mind. They failed and nobody noticed/cared/both. It wasn't worth the effort to maintain streams nobody was listening to. They could be on backups that aren't equipped to run them. Something else?


Responses:
1. KLO is being sold. Other than fulfilling the letter of whatever contract they have I have to wonder how much they care anymore.
2. K221GK is only 99 watts. It doesn't come in well up in Davis County. Broadway doesn't even own it and have they even started IDing the 92.1 frequency on air? If a station falls in the forest..... It's up to the licensee to maintain a station (or not) as they see fit. *shrug*
3. See above about maintaining a station.

[David]

In regards to iHeart's HD2 channels, I believe iHeart dropped the HD2 channels on all of their stations nationwide several months ago. It was part of their cost cutting measures which resulted in hundreds of air staff and other employees being laid off this spring.

As for KLO and the CBS News, the station was having issues with the audio volume even before KLO was sold. I'd have to turn up the volume on my radio at the TOH to hear the news, then I'd nearly get blasted out of the room when they returned to their regular music programming. I'm surprised Capital still has someone recording a daily weather forecast for KLO Monday-Friday, because they stopped responding to my messages about the station's technical difficulties months ago. It took nearly a month before Capital finally fixed KLO's transmitter so the station didn't get knocked off the air when it reduced power to 5 kW after sunset. Now that the station has been sold, I doubt they're going to do more than the absolute minimum to keep KLO on the air until the FCC approves the deal.

[amanuensis]

I'm surprised that they didn't LMA the station to the purchasers pending the sale's approval.

[David]

Aug 17, 2020 13:10:32 GMT -6 amanuensis said:

I'm surprised that they didn't LMA the station to the purchasers pending the sale's approval.

I think if it had been possible for Capital Broadcasting to LMA KLO to El Sembrador, they would have done so. However, since 1430 is converting from commercial to non-commercial status, I believe the FCC has to approve the deal before the new owner can take over. If KLO had been sold to another commercial broadcaster, then an LMA might have been possible. El Sembrador also has to apply for new call letters for 1430, which probably slows down the approval process even further. A friend of mine who works in the broadcasting industry said it usually takes 60-90 days for the FCC to approve the sale of a radio station.

FWIW, this year is the 95th anniversary of KLO's sign on in 1925.

www.rbr.com/an-unforgettable-deal-for-a-slc-am/

[Terry]

For what it’s worth, iHeart’s 99.5 and 106.7 still broadcast HD2 sub channels (not that anyone is listening).

[christopherjohn]

HD2 on 98.7.. could be a number of reasons why they wouldn’t. Audio transport to the site. HD licensing fees etc. As for i-Heart, who knows what they are doing. The corporate people are so far disconnected on what the listeners really want. People keep saying radio is on it’s way out, I disagree. Radio has plenty of listeners, but radio stations need to give them a reason to listen, local radio FTW. The corporate stations are killing themselves by the one size fits all strategy. They need local people that are live and not recorded national jocks. HD radio does have listeners despite some of the comments I have read on here. How I know? Well my HD2 gets quite a bit of attention. 🙂

[drpepper]

speaking of 98.7, i was just scanning through real quick and on both analog and HD in the left audio channel theres this weird pulsating sound, it has this pattern similar to how a helicopter sounds.

[Terry]

Aug 17, 2020 23:30:29 GMT -6 drpepper said:

speaking of 98.7, i was just scanning through real quick and on both analog and HD in the left audio channel theres this weird pulsating sound, it has this pattern similar to how a helicopter sounds.

I listened closely for a few minutes and didn’t notice anything unusual.

I did notice that the digital signal sounds much better than the analog. The analog has a slight “white noise” hiss in the background (both left and right channels). The digital is totally clean.

[drpepper]

that's interesting how we perceive things differently. To my ears, 98.7 has this compressed brittle thin at times sound. I actually can't stand it tbh, though it's hardly the worst offender. Stations that have the cleanest best sound imo, KSOP analog, HD1 and hd2. The handoff from analog to HD seems to be tricky to get right. These days i can't think of a station in the market off the top of my head who has a rough transition from Analog to HD, KXRK kind of but not to bad really. But seems like KSOP has always been the most consistent in that regard. Then theres the SQ of each signal and KSOP on all 3 of these is the cleanest sounding and it isn't even close. That's not to say other signals in the market don't sound good, but KSOP tonally keeps things steady. the signals all come from the same tuning, where others E.g. KODJ sound completely different from analog to HD1.
A few others that sound good to me in order of frequency but not sound quality, KBYU analog and HD1. KUER analog, hd1 and HD3. KRCL analog and HD1. KODJ analog. KRSP analog. HD1 is on the fringe for me. KAAZ analog and KKLV. also, EMF has gotten K252DI to a better sound than i've ever heard out of it. i'm just speaking on best over all sound.

[drpepper]

I've gotta add KKUT to the list. i haven't heard their HD's yet, but the analog has always sounded steller ever since they signed on.

[CAwasinNJ]

christopherjohn, you know I respect and admire what you and KSOP are doing, but we have to be realistic about HD Radio listeners. The only HD stations that show up in the ratings at all are KJMY-HD2 (which is simulcast on a translator in the heart of the market) and KBYU-HD2 which is barely showing. Now I thought that KSOP(AM) was on one of the KSOP-FM subchannels, but the Nielsen station profile doesn't include it. If you are and encoding I would get that fixed like yesterday.

The sound quality from K252DI I would guess has probably more to do with not having to pick up a very distant signal off the air anymore. Something I noticed a long time ago was that when I tuned in K252DI from Salt Lake and it sounded particularly good, when I'd check 94.5 it was coming in particularly strongly at the time. There's a trick some receivers use for distant signals called "hi-blending." There's a description of it here ham-radio.com/k6sti/blend.htm If the propagation of 94.5 is better than average then less processing is needed to get a low noise signal to retransmit and the signal sounds better.

Speaking of K252DI, in the long winding discussion of why it's no longer retransmitting VFX I don't remember if we mentioned KZSK-LP. Apparently KZSK was licensed July 2019 but was listed as silent Aug 14 2019 to Aug 13 2020. It might have thrown enough power up toward Ensign Peak to block reception of VFX anyway once it was back on the air. Supposedly it's resumed operations now.

[drpepper]

Can't remember what thread it was, but yeah we did talk about KZSK. When they were testing earlier, it did block KVFX. Actually this may have been last summer. But i do remember i could hear their test programming at the time, not very clearly, but all the way to down town. As of right now, i get KVFX on 94.5. Next time i'm down in South Jordan i'll see what comes in there.
and good point about K252DI.