WPAY 1400Kc QRT

[WA3VJB]

Portsmouth, Ohio has lost a longtime AM station as 800 watt WPAY 1400Kc concluded its final broadcast day, June 11.

From Broadcasters Desktop Resource:
First licensed in February 1925 as WHBD, a 20-Watt station for the Chamber of Commerce in Bellefontaine, OH, WPAY moved twice over the years, ending up in Portsmouth, OH, after passing through a series of owners, including a church and a newspaper, among others.


And from the Portsmouth Daily Times:

http://www.portsmouth-dailytimes.com/view/full_story/13516417/article-WPAY-AM-to-shut-down-broadcast-Friday?instance=secondary_news_left_column

Another website had the basis for the call sign:

The radio station started in 1933 as a country yodeling and country music station hence its name Pay Any Yodeler. The station became notable when it stayed on air during the floods in Portsmouth in 1937, giving up-to-the-minute news and announcements to those separated and weary from the floods.

And there are stories about a tower failure in 2003 with photos.

A Google/satellite photo search shows the transmitter site is actually in Kentucky, right along a river, great location to cover a flood.

[K5UJ]

Someone over there in Ohio (Budley?) should get on the horn to them and find out if they have any rigs, and other RF goodies they want to get rid of.

It hasn't been easy hanging on as a small AM since the 1960s in a lot of places, especially as a daytimer.   

There was a time when a small AM did okay--the 1950s.  The media consisted of AM radio, newspapers, letters, telephone, vinyl records, movies and TV.  Folks lived a slower lifestyle, keyed more towards daylight hours and if a station shutdown at sunset, it was okay.  TV stations went off the air too, all two of them, and people read books.  It was okay.  Doesn't it sound wonderful?  Radio stations made money and a few people could actually make a living at it.  Things were tougher near the major markets, but still not too bad--there were loyal listeners, high school football and parade remote coverage, and small businesses wanting to buy spots, unable to afford the rates of the big stations, and not really needing to advertise to people 100 miles away.   The Klindschmidt model 15 wire service printers chugged away clanking out news in their accoustic tiled room and everyone had their 1st Class Phone tickets in frames on the wall.  (We'll conveniently forget about all the cigarette smoke and ash trays all over the place.)

Things started to change in the 70s and 80s, with costs going up, listeners moving to FM, small newspapers being a more economical ad buy, the AM listener demographic aging and passing away,  and taxes on the transmitter site getting pretty stiff. 

Still, many hung on, deferring maintenance, going solid state, buying canned programming from voice tracked services except for the money programming like "Trading Post,"  but sadly, the World Wide Web has been the stake in the heart of AM broadcasting and I believe we're going to see more stations go dark over the next 10 years.   If you are an owner and loosing money and you have no buyers and a developer comes along and offers you millions for your tx site land that now has houses all around it--well, what are you going to do if you want your kids to inherit something?
This is the kind of reality a lot of AMs are facing today with small towns 100s of miles from major markets in places with good ground conductivity being the possible exception. 

Rob
 

[k4kyv]

The FCC should go ahead with  the proposal to reallocate VHF TV channels 5 & 6 to expand the FM band. Maybe part of the spectrum could be opened to 100% digital service instead of that Hybrid stuff, or otherwise just expand the existing band as-is, as they did the AM band.

Give the small AMers, particularly the daytimers the opportunity to move to the expanded FM band, and maybe simulcast for several years to transition the move.  As the small AM stations QSY to the expanded band where they would get better coverage, leave the existing AM band open for clear channels and maybe some of the higher power regionals. With the clear channels really clear once again, nationwide coverage should again be possible.  Maybe it would even leave enough room in the old band to try out a real digital AM service (DRM mabye?) or just the digital side of the present IBOC mode minus the hybrid analogue part.  Digital AM might actually work if they weren't trying to drive a  square peg into a round hole.

It would be a win-win situation. Most of the VHF TV has moved to UHF following the conversion to digital, and there is enough empty VHF space on the remaining channels to accommodate the few that remain on 5 & 6. The smaller AMers would benefit from their improved coverage, stereo capability and better audio quality, 100% digital AM and FM could be given a try, and the larger AMs would regain their lost night-time coverage.

In addition, hams would benefit from the <1KW AM broadcast transmitters that would be retired from service, both solid state and the remaining hollow state ones still on location.

[WA3VJB]

Rob's take on the business environment seems very close to reality for the AM stations I've followed around here.

It's not that those AMs need a different place to set up shop, as Don envisions with a move to discontinued television spectrum.

The problem is that the listening audience has moved away from the 250-1000 watt  AM stations because of a combination of lackluster programming, degraded reception quality, and other means of getting community coverage.  Those listening habits cannot be re-claimed for those station owners by simply providing a new outlet elsewhere, regardless of any potentially superior reception.

The owner of a group of stations around here, Bill Parris, WA3VCH, tried to use a beach motif for music programming extending from his stations around Ocean City to Annapolis.  The 1970s-1980s pop music plays okay, but there's no local personality to it and not much local news.  It could be delivered by satellite somewhere, as far as any casual listener could surmise.

But the stations using it are struggling along, apparently making enough to pay staff and expenses.  Bill has dumped the older tube transmitters in favor of MOSFET based units, saving a lot on his power bill.  We rescued two of the transmitters, a Collins 300-G and a Gates BC1-H that have gone to good homes over the years.

Anyway, in my opinion, to preserve what's left of the listenership of the "Standard Broadcast" band probably needs to include the kind of weeding-out we are seeing with the smaller stations, sad as that seems.  This may help establish a basis for higher power authorizations for the remaining stations, to overcome artificial electrical noise and boost signals to coverage levels that can compete with other services.

[KL7OF]

When I am hunting in the spring in Eastern Montana...I listen to the local AM stations...Most of them have canned commodities reports, canned national cattle and agricultural reports, a local news and weather report that is reported every half hour and updates 4 times a day,Local advertisers are in there too.. and the music programming...I also hear a few stations out of southern canada that have similar programming...Most of the AM stations announce that they are simulcast on FM...Sounds like most of them are run as a one man show...I haven't as yet looked up any of these stations to get any info.. these are just my observations....AM radio has certainly changed hasn't it?

[flintstone mop]

The FCC should go ahead with  the proposal to reallocate VHF TV channels 5 & 6 to expand the FM band. Maybe part of the spectrum could be opened to 100% digital service instead of that Hybrid stuff, or otherwise just expand the existing band as-is, as they did the AM band.

Give the small AMers, particularly the daytimers the opportunity to move to the expanded FM band, and maybe simulcast for several years to transition the move.  As the small AM stations QSY to the expanded band where they would get better coverage, leave the existing AM band open for clear channels and maybe some of the higher power regionals. With the clear channels really clear once again, nationwide coverage should again be possible.  Maybe it would even leave enough room in the old band to try out a real digital AM service (DRM mabye?) or just the digital side of the present IBOC mode minus the hybrid analogue part.  Digital AM might actually work if they weren't trying to drive a  square peg into a round hole.

It would be a win-win situation. Most of the VHF TV has moved to UHF following the conversion to digital, and there is enough empty VHF space on the remaining channels to accommodate the few that remain on 5 & 6. The smaller AMers would benefit from their improved coverage, stereo capability and better audio quality, 100% digital AM and FM could be given a try, and the larger AMs would regain their lost night-time coverage.

In addition, hams would benefit from the <1KW AM broadcast transmitters that would be retired from service, both solid state and the remaining hollow state ones still on location.

How 'bout this Don?? after the Am stations move to the expanded FM band WE get the 'old AM broadcast band' for amateur use.

Fred

[k4kyv]

Or at least a "320m" band, 875-1025 kc/s.

But we haven't even got back 1750-1800 and 2000-2050 on 160m yet. The space just above and below the band is a vast unused wasteland now that the radiolocation beacons have disappeared, supplanted by the GPS system.

[W4AAB]

I am waiting to get 56-60 back for the 5 meter ham band. I have a factory coil for that band :-). Can double to 5 from 10.

[K2PG]

It's sad to see any longtime station go dark. The AM broadcasters are their own worst enemy, as lousy programming is killing that medium. I don't know what WPAY was programming. But in New York City, all you can hear on AM radio is news, sports talk, right-wing talk radio, business news <YAWN>, paid religious programming, and brokered foreign-language programming, along with a generous helping of paid infomercials for questionable real estate deals, investment advice, and quack dietary supplements that are claimed to enlarge certain male and female body parts...and most programming is canned or comes in via satellite. In Philadelphia, the AM band is no better and, there, you even have the opportunity to hear propaganda from Communist China! WNWR, a 50 kW daytimer, has begun to lease blocks of time to China Radio International. So you can hear the extreme left on WNWR and the extreme right on WNTP, a station that, in its glory days in the 1960s, was the famed WIBG (no relation to present-day WIBG-AM/FM in Ocean City, NJ).

In the Philly 'burbs, there is one small AM station that is a diamond in a reeking cesspool: WBCB, 1490 kHz in the Bucks County town of Levittown. That station features mostly local programming, including news, Bucks County talk and features, and music appealing to the older listeners who are ignored by the mainstream FM stations. (Ad agencies don't like older demographics. The media buyers think that, once someone passes the age of 50, that he or she eats cat food for dinner, doesn't buy anything, and puts stuff in his or her (usually her) hair to turn it blue, like a Brillo pad.)

Of course, noise from lamp dimmers, computers, certain CFLs, power lines, and other things that trash the MW spectrum doesn't help the AM stations, either. But AM's biggest problem is that there's nothing on that's worth listening to.

[k4kyv]

Here's one little AM station that is doing it right.

http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/mini.cgi?membername=krsn&site=pro&tm=7577http://www.live365.com/cgi-bin/mini.cgi?membername=krsn&site=pro&tm=7577

I am waiting to get 56-60 back for the 5 meter ham band. I have a factory coil for that band :-). Can double to 5 from 10.

Plus 1750-1800 and 2000-2050 kc/s on 160m. We had those frequencies before Pearl Harbor, but they have never been returned to amateurs.  The present occupants, the radiolocation service, no longer uses them since GPS pushed MW radiolocation aside.

[W2PFY]

There was a station when I lived in MA that I thought was very good. It was a local station that talked mostly about things political in Boston but it had a fair share of local stuff. They run 1 KW by day and 156 watts at night. That station was WBET 1.460 on the dial.
They had a great sound and you would have thought they were a 50 KW station in the area! I lived over there from 1994 to 2001 when I escaped to NYS.

The FCC says WBET is Sturgis, MI but another non FCC web page has them in Brockton, MA. Did they go under? Kinda looks that way to me    Guess I'm answering my own question. The station is now WXBR and the format seems pretty much the same.  Seems strange that a station in Michigan would want their call sign?

[Pete, WA2CWA]

WMTR-AM, 1250 KHz, out of Morristown, NJ isn't a bad local station.

[K5UJ]

It's true that a station can hang in there with programming that draws listeners; the problem is there is not much non-music programming that does.   All news is one but that is an extremely expensive format and a small station usually cannot handle it.   Yes, the RFI problem does not help either. 

I have some idea there is a service licensed to use the segment between 1710 and 1800 but off hand I can't remember what it is. 

I was talking about this with some guys at a hamfest yesterday and someone said maybe if enough stations go dark there can be some rearrangement of channel assignments allowing the remaining small stations a power increase and night-time operation.    If a 500 or 1 KW station could go to 2500 or 5KW and at least 1 KW at night, that would help provided they carry programming that people will want to tune in for, even if it is only 15 minutes for news and wx. 

There is a lot stacked against the AM part of the industry however.   The canned satellite fed programming is often the result of corporate ownership.  But if these corporations sell off properties, who will buy them and put in the 7 day / week 12+ hour days to make them work.  The people who know how to own and operate a radio station are aging just like the audience.   Running a radio station ain't no joy ride; it's a way of life.   

[k4kyv]

I have some idea there is a service licensed to use the segment between 1710 and 1800 but off hand I can't remember what it is.  

It's called Radiolocation. Unlike Radionavigation, which is what LORAN was, radiolocation transmits from a fixed location to serve as a beacon for locating a specific point, like a Gulf oil rig, or a clandestine drug or weapons drop. Sort of like an RF lighthouse.  OTOH, radionavigation is used to real-time monitor the location of a mobile craft as a navigation aid. It was first developed during WWII for bomber aircraft navigation, and widely used after the war for ocean craft. Fishing boats in the Gulf made widespread use of it, employing military surplus equipment. GPS has since made both radiolocation and radionavigation pretty much obsolete.

With the expansion of the AM band, the old radiolocation allocation, 1600-1800, was divided into two sections, and the 1600-1700 portion moved to 1900-2000, which amateurs kept on a secondary basis, and it remains so to this day, even though there are no significant radiolocation stations operating in this segment at present, other than a few ultra piss-weak CW beacons.

In the early to mid 80s, the band below 1800 was crammed full of radiolocation beacons.

[KM1H]

WXEX 1540 in Exeter NH is completely locally owned and programmed, including the 60-80's music and is also on the Internet. It appears to be doing quite well at least during the day before it goes to fleapower and I lose it.

Another local is WCAP 980 in Lowell MA that is also strictly local except for news and some canned vintage R&R. Its about 5 miles away but when they change to the night pattern it dives into the noise.

[K5UJ]

I noticed today that in Chicago's May market share three of the top ten stations, in 1, 3 and 7 respectively were all AMs:  WBBM, WGN and WLS.  AM broadcasting ain't dead yet.

[Jeff W9GY]

Now that Wally Phillips, Uncle Bobby, and Spike O'Dell are gone from their airwaves, I'm afraid WGN is just another "talk radio" station in the Windy City.  Time changes everything.

[K5UJ]

Yeah, I heard that Collins brought in a heck of a lot of billing for WGN when he was doing mornings so popular talent does bring in the gravy but so does getting sports coverage like Bears games (but that's seasonal obviously).  I used to listen to WGN a lot but gradually lost interest in it; not sure why--they dropped IBOC so they are a lot more pleasing to listen to now.   One good thing about the all-news format is that it may not always be a market leader, but it is reliable and pretty consistent.  It costs a lot but you are not tied so much to the volatility of a big name morning guy at contract renewal time.   One thing I always admired about O'Dell was that after he went to mornings and more money, he didn't change his lifestyle.  They stayed in the same house (which burned down BTW) and I guess he stashed away cash like crazy and after around 8 years he called it quits.     

[Bill, KD0HG]

The real estate many old timey AM stations (especially directionals) use and need is often worth a fortune on today's real estate market. Millions of bucks in a growing suburban area..