650 WSRO (MA) Gone Dark (?) WSM Good Instead

[NQC]

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

[BoomboxDX]

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.

[NQC]

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