KLO off air today

[Terry]

At 10:03 this morning an actual live local voice came on KLO and said something like "We will be leaving the air now to make some technical adjustments. I think you'll be very pleased with the changes we are making. We should be back on the air around 3 p.m. this afternoon."

It'd be nice if they could increase their signal strength. I often listen to Laura Ingraham right after 7 a.m. and I can actually hear a station in "Aurora-Denver" in the background all through the broadcast. Annoying.

[dxstuboy]

You can hear KEZW behind KLO? I've never been able to do that unless I'm outside of town by just a few miles (especially eastward). KLO always booms in at night at my location. I can get it to null slightly but its always too powerful to hear anything else.

[Terry]

I'm on the east side of Murray (used to be called Cottonwood) and KLO's signal around here has always been weak, especially their night-time signal. They're pretty weak in the daytime too.

They're back on the air now sounding horrible. I have a signal strength meter on one of my radios and it shows that their signal is dropping out completely once every few seconds. Maybe they're playing with the transmitter. And there's a big (maybe 60 cycle) hum also.

The signal strength meter on my Sangean runs from 0 to 7.
These stations show a 7: 700, 860, 910, 1010, 1160, 1370
These stations show a 6: 570, 630, 820, 1060, 1120, 1230, 1280, 1320, 1510, 1550, 1640
These stations show a 5: 730, 1430
This station shows a 3: 1600
This station shows a 2: 960
Nothing else shows up on the meter during daytime.

Listen to Laura in the morning between 7 and 7:30, before they increase power. You should be able to hear the Denver station.

[dxstuboy]

That's cool. I live right in the valley, 3900 and 7th area, and KLO is strong. The weakest stations are like you said... 1660, 960, and all of Provo's other stations. Most of the locals come in strong. I turned on the radio at 3 to hear KLO come back on and it sounds bad from here too, very choppy. Hmm.

[CAwasinNJ]

I noticed that KLO was off air this morning too. To answer Terry's question, they have permission to increase power. They got a construction permit to increase from 10KW to 25KW days and let out the pattern a bit to the west. Nights stay at 5KW, though that pattern seems pulled in a bit more to the west for some reason.

Now here's an interesting note. The KLO website doesn't seem to have anything about any of this (either the downtime or the construction.) That's exactly the kind of thing a website SHOULD be talking about.Pump your station! Connect with the listeners! They do a reasonably good job with references to advertisers (I'm a big fan of that), but they should go further.

[kenglish]

From their website:
"1430 KLO is currently installing a new 25,000 watt transmitter, which will increase our signal significantly. Signal strength for the next two weeks will be reduced at times. Thanks for your patience. Click on "listen live" above to hear 1430 KLO.
KLO management"

[Terry]

That's great news!!

[dxstuboy]

Yay for KLO! Nice to see at least one of the AMs in the valley still cares about being an AM!

[seattlefollower]

I doubt it will do much for their 0.1 6+ rating... with the exception of KSL (and I believe at this point most of their listeners *are* on FM) no AM station in SLC-Ogden-Provo has any rating to sneeze at. Then again, as proven at this post (and great chart) at Oregon Media Central:
oregonmediacentral.com/2010/02/medford-radio-ratings-fall-2009-p25-54
12 (or 6+) numbers rarely mean anything for the top-tier stations. Bottom ones seem to stay the same.

[CAwasinNJ]

I think "significantly" might be a bit of wishful thinking. We'll have to see. If you look at the predicted contours, it doesn't move as much as you might think with increasing the power by 150%. There's little difference north/south. It's west where you get to the big changes. If you're a KLO fan in Wendover you'll like this.

As for KLO caring, I suppose they deserve credit for making an effort. Then again, the company owns two stations. Now 97.9 is improving but can't carry an AM. Capitol really doesn't have a choice.