HFU HF Underground
Loggings => MW Loggings => Topic started by: NQC on June 23, 2024, 0257 UTC
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Hey All,
Local WSRO over the last year or so had been on air normally , then off for a while, then digital, then off again ,then digital for maybe 4 months recently, now QRT ( for good ?). Tonight 650 was WSM , with a fairly good signal. Many times SM is either MIA or poor here.
SRO has thrashed for 5 or 10 years around trying to "find itself" (and an audience). The station was Brazilian, then a kind of odd music mix, tried digital, then went QRT for a while . Then the owner passed away not long ago and someone put it back on ( digital), which apparently didn't work out.
I know that SRO certainly had the license right to operate ( even if the DID forget to turn down the power at night) and that SM is NOT protected this far away (Boston).
But they blocked one of my favorite DX targets (SM) , no nulling possible, both were in the same direction.
But to me it was kind of "whatever"- when they were running ANALOG. But when they went digital (TWICE) , they kind of went into a "jammer" status, blocking SM with programming that almost NO ONE was listening to.
I really don't like to see any station fail, but I really won't miss this "digital incarnation" either.
Other prop odd tonight, again SM pretty good, yet a number of NYC's either poor or not there.
1570 had a tin can from somewhere- two NY state stations listed as 442 and 500 watts- no big night time high power listed on frq for anybody. It could have been a further away flea as well. But no id.
Local WMEX (100 W, 9 mi , omni ant) .It has a HUGE hill very close to me in the way. Usually fair or better though. Tonight nada. Weird.
Generally odd prop tonight, some pretty long Dx was good, others MIA. Same deal on the shorter stuff (less than 200 or 300 mi).
Fun session though.
de NQC
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If one is a MW fan or MW DXer, it's sad when any AM station goes dark, even the ones that tried HD AM. The fact that a station tried HD AM indicated that they at least were attempting to stay relevant, to draw listeners to whatever programming -- at the higher fidelity HD AM gives.
That said, the four local stations in my market that had HD on the AM switched it off by 2017.
And in my corner of the US, the four AM stations that went dark within the last 1.5 years all had streams, and one of them had an FM translator and FM sister station as well. But still, they failed, due to Pandemic-era advertising revenue drops and infrastructure costs. It's tough times for small budget radio stations. Even large budget operations are scaling back. The business model has changed.
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Hey BoomboxDx,
I agree with you that when a station goes dark ( especially an analog station) it ISN’T a great thing.
As you mentioned,the media market IS changing. Frankly I am AMAZED how many lower powered stations have managed to stay on the air for this long.
Some are “ hobby “ stations run by wealthy folks ( at a loss ), at least one around here is listener supported( contributions NOT tax deductible) and the rest run nearly all satellite programs and/ or a blizzard of local ads.
When a station makes less money, they usually run more ads, which can turn folks away, which forces them to run more ads. This can put a station into a real downward spiral.
Also formally “ captive “ audiences ( ie the Greek language programming on one of our locals )may not be as completely dependent on radio as they used to be .
The number of “non” computer folks is shrinking.
Even the local big rock n roll FM’ers (!!) here run WAY more ads than I care to listen to. I rarely listen to FM anymore.
This situation is even worse on AM.
Here maybe 10% of the ( BIG) AM’ers probably make 90% of the money anyways .
The small fry are probably mostly just covering their overhead and making little profit.
Again, in the case of SRO, even though they were “trying “, I pretty much felt ahead of time that the (second) move to digital was probably not going to save them .
They apparently didn’t have much of a market share to begin with and going over to fully digital ( which represented a VERY tiny amount of their already small audience) just didn’t work out.
There are only two music local AM’ers here that ( at NIGHT) are worth listening to.
Most of my AM dx here is now just propagation checks , I don’t stay with anyone very long due to type of programming content or the amount of ads or both.
Prop checks are still a lot of fun to me, but the dial usually spins around a lot if I am on dx.
de NQC