Ohio Coverage Champs and Wimps

[Ohio radio man]

Champs
WHBCFM Canton. You can get that thing from Louisville to Lancaster to Merrysville and beyond.
K105 Youngstown Cleveland to Cambridge. Fly 92.9 you could actually get sometimes east of Zanesville. Of course, who could forget WPAY Portsmouth!?

Chumps
WBBG Youngstown. Awful. WDKF Dayton, even with their transmitter improvements, it's still bad. WAKZ. While I realize their col is actually Sharpsburgh PA, you can barely get it from East Liverpool South.

[mc_billy_bob]

Heh hem, that's Sharps-ville. lol And WAKZ absolutely sucks. (their signal that is.) Forget east liverpool, lol, I live in Greenville, PA (10 miles north of Sharpsville) and I have to fiddle with my stereo to pick them up. But I'm glad somebody else sees how awesome k-105's signal is, lol, they can probably pick up k-105 on mars. lol

[chrisalcorn]

I have to pick "Power 107" as the coverage wimp champ. Try to pick up WCKX coming from Cinci going up 71. You have to be in Franklin county to get a signal. I always laugh at their nickname "Power". Where's the power in "Power" 107. Coverage champ goes to WDHT 102.9 Dayton. I get it from Columbus, Oh all the way to Danville,KY when "swap and shop" WPBK gets out of the way.

[OhioMediaWatch]

Around here:

Yes, the mighty K-105 (WQXK/Salem).  Their signal dominance plays into markets even to the west, where Cumulus actively marketed them/sold them in Canton until fairly recently (when the company sold WRQK/106.9 Canton to CC, and they abandoned their Canton offices in the now-former WRQK studio complex on Martindale).  Their signal stops the scan on car radios over pretty much all of Northeast Ohio and beyond.

WKNR/850 Cleveland's dominant signal to the west - it's probably the strongest AM signal in Sandusky, except within a couple of miles of WLEC/1450's transmitter - is indeed a product of its directional 50 kW signal.  It's a strong signal choice on the I-75 run from Toledo to Detroit.  Of course, it's protecting stations like the 850 in Johnstown PA (part of the dual-station "Edge" talk/sports simulcast now).  It's also bathing a whole flotilla of fish in Lake Erie in signal.  Hope the fish like ESPN Radio and Tony Rizzo!

On the other side, Media-Com talk WJMP/1520 Kent "Talk Radio 1520" can barely be heard outside of Kent, Ravenna, and Streetsboro.  It's not even strong (high-band 1 kW signal) much past that, away from its required protection to on-channel gospel outlet WINW/1520 Canton.  WINW seems to do better in its coverage area than WJMP does in its coverage area.  WJMP is a syndicated talk (recently converted from sports) afterthought to local talk sister WNIR/100.1 "The Talk of Akron".  Historically, it's been off the air three to four days at a time with almost no one noticing.

'NIR doesn't do bad at all for 4.2 kW, though they're hemmed in to the west a little by oldies/classic hits WSWR/100.1 Shelby (part of CC's Ashland/Mansfield cluster).  WNIR squeezes out JUST ENOUGH signal to the west to still be decently listenable in the Montrose commercial area in western Summit County.  The mono signal for the talk format means no edge-of-signal-area stereo flutter.

[OhioMediaWatch]

Oh, and Clear Channel talk WHLO/640 Akron can be heard down I-77 nearly to Marietta, and hits much of west suburban Pittsburgh with a quasi-listenable signal.

Two reasons: the 5 kW daytime directional pattern barrels south - as WHLO has to protect stations like first-adjacent CFCO/630 Chatham, Ontario...itself a Southwestern Ontario signal champ.  And that nice low dial position...

WHLO loses the "champ" status at night, with a 500 watt signal that has trouble reaching parts of Akron itself without interference!

[gr8oldies]

I've heard WDHT (and predecessor WING-FM) on I-465 in Indianapolis. WKNR is very strong along Lake Erie. CKLW's day pattern blasts in, and so does their night pattern, even though it has been readjusted to miss most of the U.S. at night. I can get WHLO weakly in the Dayton area, and could when they were 1000 watts. Curious though, in WHLO's case, back in the day they were limited time and signed of at KFI's sunset, giving them about another 2-3 hours on the air. Is that still the case as far as power change?

[OhioMediaWatch]

As far as I know, WHLO has made the day/night change at Ohio sunset since it got its current night authorization.

[Buckeyes2001]

How about WMJI 105.7 in Cleveland? Their signal is solid as far west as Woodville, OH (before you run into WWWM 105.5 IBOC) far south as Mansfield and Marion, OH (until you run into WBWR 105.7 Hilliard) and as far east as the PA border (before you run into WXDX 105.9, Pittsburgh IBOC or 105.5 in Conneaut if you're on I-90 and you lose it around Ashtabula). I have also heard them as far south as Guernsey County on I-77.

[FRR]

My favorite has to be WDJO in Cincinnati. At night you can pick up the signal from 4 miles west of downtown to  almost a mile across the Ohio River into Ky. I've actually heard the signal as far a 5 miles north of the river almost to Kenwood, but not quite. Going east, the signal drops about 30 seconds after you get on Columbia Parkway. Thank God for internet radio.  Lol

[steve82655]

WVKS FM 92.5 I can pick up on I 75 near Sidney,Ohio.
At night sometime's 97.9 wnci will over ride 97.9 wjlb here in south Toledo some with 107.3 from Cleveland will take out 107.3 from Toledo.
Almost can pick up 96.5 KISS FM every night.