ABC CITADEL AM STATIONS SUSPEND NIGHTTIME IBOC

[Savage]

BREAKING NEWS!

An e-mail from ABC-Citadel corporate engineering has issued the order effective this Morning, Tuesday, October 2:

SUSPEND AM IBOC OPERATION EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

The communication came from Citadel's Martin Stabbard, according to sources.

[RememberWHEN]

Wow! That is a rather large bomb dropped!! How many AM Citadel stations (besides WLS) does this effect?

[Cal Stymes]

Savage announced:

BREAKING NEWS!

An e-mail from ABC-Citadel corporate engineering has issued the order effective this Morning, Tuesday, October 2:

SUSPEND AM IBOC OPERATION EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.

The communication came from Citadel's Martin Stabbard, according to sources.

Well now that's something to write home about!  I wonder why.  If this isn't just an internet rumor, then maybe somebody, somewhere is getting a clue?

[Peter Q. George (K1XRB)]

If this is the case, WABC/New York and WJR/Detroit would be affected as they are first adjacent to each other.  I noticed the strong hash between WABC and WJR on skywave.  Both stations are very strong here at night in Massachusetts. It was a real mess just trying to trying listen to either one of them.  I live in the Boston area and with both stations fighting it out with their own IBOC's, I simply changed the station.   I can't listen to that  white noise for long.  I was using a Kenwood TS-50 (a rather decent HAM radio transceiver) with a longwire antenna.

[Savage]

According to the internal source, who, in true IBOC-intrigue fashion, "spoke upon condition of anonymity" but is a highly-placed engineering executive:

The order is for ALL Citadel AMs running IBOC at night and is effective immediately.  No reason was specified for the order, but obviously the interference issues are the most likely factor.  Whether it was mutual interference among co-owned stations or fear of FCC complaints or litigation from outside Citadel is not clear, nor would it be likely that the company would comment to that effect.

[mimo]

This is fantastic, now the question is ¿who's next?  I'm hoping this is permanent.

[raccoonradio]

I work at night in the Boston area and am trying to pick up some distant ESPN affiliates (Hartford 1410,
NYC 1050 for example) for some baseball playoff coverage (non Red Sox) as Boston's ESPN stations
(890/1400) are  very weak at night. This could be welcome news for me...

[The Dude]

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!!!!!!

NOW IF WGY WOULD DROP THIER GARBAGE WE WOULD START RE-CLAIMING OUR AIRWAVES!!!!!

[Uncle Elbie]

I heard from someone inside Citadel that there was major interference to WSB in Atlanta and that was a big factor in turning off.

[BRNout]

Excellent news!  Maybe they're figuring out what a mess this could be.  I noticed that CBS' KYW 1060 hasn't been transmitting in HD at night lately either - which has been very good for reception of WTIC.  I had been battling a high-pitched hash in the background.  And, the WABC, WJW issue has been awful.  In PA, they were managing to blot each other out almost every night with high-pitched hiss.  For the first time in about 2 weeks, WABC came in clearly last night.

Oddly enough, last night WBZ was coming in so well in PA that their IBOC hash was audible on 1020 and 1040.  I was getting a bit of hash from WTIC sneaking onto 1090 too. 

It's good to see that the pros are waking up to the fact that it's hard to control the hash and that nighttime IBOC only works very close to the actual tx site - to the detriment of everyone outside of that small radius.