|
Post by seattlefollower on Oct 20, 2022 13:10:03 GMT -6
1600 AM is silent.
|
|
|
Post by David on Oct 20, 2022 15:36:59 GMT -6
KTUB has been off the air since at least Tuesday of this week. I just checked their FCC application file, and no STA to remain silent has been filed. I suspect it's just "technical difficulties", because this isn't the first time KTUB has been off the air recently.
|
|
|
Post by oldiesfunhouse on Oct 20, 2022 21:59:18 GMT -6
Aren't they the flagship for the Spanish play-by-play for the Jazz? The Jazz played last night and the NBA app did have a link for Jazz Spanish radio. I didn't choose it but I wondering if the Spanish announcers were available via stream only.
|
|
henry
Silver Level Member
Posts: 316
|
Post by henry on Oct 21, 2022 2:41:48 GMT -6
This situation gets me thinking.
In the 1980s, when FM gobbled up the music-- marginalized communities (ethnic and religious minorities) were a shoo-in for picking up the "discarded" AM signals. They tended to drive older cars with AM radios. And as CD players and SiriusXM took off, the marginalized communities tended to hang onto what they had.
Smartphones are a different game. Can't speak for Utah's Hispanic population. But here in CA, smartphone penetration seems to be darn near the same as all the other populations. 1600 may be a flagship station for the Jazz, but wouldn't audience erosion be similar to what English-language stations are seeing? And perhaps more noticeably, since the original cume figure is smaller?
|
|
|
Post by CAwasinNJ on Oct 21, 2022 4:45:48 GMT -6
I don't know if this is relevant here, but it did occur to me. I think sometimes we get spoiled by the uptime of the stations we mostly listen to. Those tend to be stations owned by large organizations with the funds to have backup plans for when things go wrong. Smaller outfits tend to not have the money or resources to be able to recover from problems.
I don't know about the difference in smartphone penetration levels in Spanish vs English speakers, but you can get a cheap smartphone for $20-30 these days. On a tangent to that, I don't know that KTUB has any ratings to speak of. I don't think the owner currently subscribes to Nielsen, but when they did (2015-2018) KTUB only showed up once and that might not have been with the current format. Just looking at it logically, sports talk isn't a big ratings winner in English. In Spanish, with its much lower potential listener base, the ratings are very likely to be tiny. That kinda ties back to the money and resources thing. Why would someone spend big bucks to get a station with negligible ratings up right now when they could spend much less and have it back up in a few days or a week and come out ahead? Again, I don't know that such a thing is what's happening, but it makes sense from a business perspective.
|
|
|
Post by David on Oct 21, 2022 10:31:31 GMT -6
KTUB is the only non-English radio station in Utah listed as a Jazz Radio Network affiliate, so I'm assuming that means they're the Spanish language flagship station. www.nba.com/jazz/broadcastI did hear a Spanish language station on 1600 after dark last night, but I verified that it wasn't KTUB by checking their web stream audio against the station I was hearing. I suspect what I heard was KGST in Fresno. During the time when there were five active Spanish language stations on AM (730, 1490, 1550, 1600 and 1660), I never understood how all of them managed to generate enough revenue to stay on the air. It was probably inevitable that some of them ended up going "dark".
|
|
|
Post by CAwasinNJ on Oct 22, 2022 4:16:28 GMT -6
I think we know how 1550 and 1660 did it.
730 is on a translator and also has a TV sister, though the TV is notorious for going down.
1600 has FM sisters.
I don't know of any other broadcast properties associated with 1490.
|
|
|
Post by kenglish on Oct 22, 2022 8:12:53 GMT -6
Last I heard, KSVN-730's TV station has a new translator, so I hope they are working better now. I always thought they could do well with some subchannels.
|
|
|
Post by CAwasinNJ on Oct 22, 2022 9:51:36 GMT -6
Ken, did you really mean translator or did you mean transmitter?
Also, they've had subchannels for at least 3 years now.
|
|
|
Post by kenglish on Oct 22, 2022 15:03:29 GMT -6
Yes, I meant transmitter. The old TV transmitter never made anywhere near full power, in my memory. Had to pat it on the fanny, and coax it up to whatever it could make.
|
|
|
Post by David on Oct 29, 2022 9:58:41 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by kenglish on Nov 5, 2022 14:05:42 GMT -6
|
|
|
Post by David on Nov 5, 2022 14:53:41 GMT -6
I'm not surprised. The DX'ers in Norway, Finland, and Sweden are well known for logging U.S. AM stations. One of my Facebook friends lives in Finland, and he sent me an audio clip he said was a recording of the Antelope Island TIS on 530 kHz. My ears aren't good enough to pick out anything from the audio clip except a few words, but I suppose almost anything is possible with the European DX'ers. Most of them have huge beverage antennas which require a large amount of land to erect. KTUB is still off the air as of this afternoon, and there's been no updates on its status on the "Juan 1600" Facebook page. Last time I checked the FCC database, no STA to remain silent had been filed, either. However, that seems to be somewhat common with AM stations these days. 1490 KOGN has been silent since last December, and there's still no silent STA in the station's FCC file. That seems kind of strange to me, since the current license holder was apparently aware that the property on Gibson Avenue had been sold & the KOGN tower would be demolished.
|
|
|
Post by CAwasinNJ on Nov 6, 2022 20:02:03 GMT -6
There was an STA filed Oct 28. Per the filing, "Station KTUB(AM), Centerville, UT, facility ID 69557, went silent October 17, 2022 due to the loss of site lease and dismantlement of the towers." It sounds like they won't be back for quite some time. Adding to the complexity is their highly directional nighttime pattern. There are several possibilities, but is it worth it to create a new site?
|
|
|
Post by kenglish on Nov 6, 2022 21:39:35 GMT -6
As a matter of fact, I think I'm hearing them on 1150 right now, using Synchronous AM Lower mode, with the loop antenna carefully nulled against KSL. BTW...they are streaming the Jazz in Spanish on Juan-1600's site.
|
|