94.7 WFME sold to ESPN

[badjef]

I have been able to pickup WFME weak but listenable as far south as Exit 58 on the GSP (Tuckerton Exit).....None of the other NYC FM's have a listenable signal that far south

Atlantic county starts coming into play with the New Yorkers the further south you go. That was not always the case. In years past, before the FCC found their shoehorn for Atlantic and Cape May Counties, the Baltimore and Washington stations would interfere.

You can only go so far south and then it won't make any difference what they do in New York to try to improve the southern reception, you are still going to be dealing with co-channel.

The best you can do is try to improve the building penetration, nearby.

Now, if the Philly, Washinton, Baltimore, and Atlantic City area were to lose power, your reception would be much further than Tuckerton.

I was able to pickup 104.3 in Atlantic City, years ago. Now, that would be very difficult due to front end overload.

The power from all of these signals is there, it is just overrun by an over zealous FCC allocations office.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

I still can get many NYC stations in AC, but it takes slight tropo or I'd have to be in a north-facing room on the upper floors of a hotel.

I was able to pick up the old WQXR on 96.3 in an airplane over the Chesapeake Bay. In a plane, you have the vector from all kinds of stations that you would not be able to hit from closer to the ground.

Even the TV stations use to have signals in Pennsylvania. I know someone who used an old mattress spring for WNBC-TV in the Scranton area.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

[DavidEduardo]

WFME transmits with 37-kw from half the height above Mean Sea Level of the Empire State Building transmitters, which use much less power, usually down around 6-kw.  Its signal in most of North and Central Jersey is better than ESB signals.  There is no reason it should need booster's in New Jersey.

The only figure of significance for an FM is height above average terrain, not AMSL.

WFME is a B adjusted for about 600 feet while the ESB stations are B's adjusted for 1200 feet of elevation over average terrain.

Anecdotally, I had an FM that was at about 9800 feet AMSL. The only problem was that such elevation indicated that I had an antenna 40 feet above the roof of a two-story building, and it covered very little. When I moved to about 13,000 feet, then I had coverage. Again, HAAT is important, height above sea level is not.

[Scott Fybush]

HAAT can be deceptive, too, though. What's more important for the Mount Wilson stations - that they're a few thousand feet lower than the San Gabriel peaks around them, resulting in HAAT figures of ~3000 feet, or that they're 5700 feet above the LA basin where all the population is?

In the case of NYC-area stations, of course, HAAT and AMSL figures tend to be nearly identical, which is what you get when you start from sea level...

[DavidEduardo]

HAAT can be deceptive, too, though. What's more important for the Mount Wilson stations - that they're a few thousand feet lower than the San Gabriel peaks around them, resulting in HAAT figures of ~3000 feet, or that they're 5700 feet above the LA basin where all the population is?

The classic one is LA's KSSE, which operates as a fairly conventional Class A from about 3000 feet over the basin. Because the HAAT is, as the second "A" indicates, an average, the negative heights over about a 150 degree arc allow that A, without power reduction, to be three kilofeet above the LA market and, effectively, almost as good a signal as 100.3 or, gasp, KIIS FM.

Yet KSSE appears, as a facility, to be 6 kw at -43 feet HAAT. Yet from the site, you can occasionally just see the tip of Catalina on the horizon. And you can see nearly all that matters in the LA population center.

It makes me wonder if the original concept of HAAT just did not contemplate places in the US where terrain variations of 5,000 feet or more could occur in just a couple of miles.

Taking that thought one step further, if Maj. Armstong had tested FM from Mt Wilson or Zandia Peak or in Denver instead of the gentle rolling hills of Alpine, might he have determined that vertical polarization was better for multipath than horizontal?

Of course, the classic sea level markets are in Florida, where much of the state has nothing higher than a curbstone.

[TimeIsTight]

The only figure of significance for an FM is height above average terrain, not AMSL.

While that is true, in the NYC area east of the mountain, 800 feet above sea level, on which the WFME transmitter is located, height above average terrain, and height above Mean Sea Level are pretty close to the same thing.  It's not absolutely as flat as Miami, but it's close enough.

If you stand near the cluster of transmitters on that mountain on a clear day, you can directly see almost the entire NYC radio market that lies to the east.  To the right you can see all the way over Staten Island to the Jersey Shore, and you can see most of Brooklyn across the big bridge.  Straight ahead you can see the Manhattan skyline, and it's very easy to see the jets in the landing patterns for both JFK and Laguardia out in Queens on the other side of Manhattan. And to the left you can see all the way up into the Bronx and Westchester past the George Washington Bridge.

And with a good set of binoculars you can pick out very recognizable local landmarks all over the NYC radio market.  If you can see it from there, the WFME 37-kw signal should be receivable in those spots, and in many places it is stronger than the 6-kw ESB signals.

The WFME signal to the west, north and south within the NY Radio Market in New Jersey is stronger than any ESB signal even though there are mountains to the west that are higher.  WDHA's transmitter is on a mountain, 15-miles West of WFME, is 1,100 feet above MSL.

The bottom line is, that WFME has a strong 37-kw signal from 800-feet above MSL, with nothing in the way in most of the NYC area, while comparable ESB FM signals are 6-kw from 1,400-feet.  In much of the NYC radio market, that extra signal power can actually be an advantage.

[Scott Fybush]

It makes me wonder if the original concept of HAAT just did not contemplate places in the US where terrain variations of 5,000 feet or more could occur in just a couple of miles.

It once did - sort of. Remember the "Denver waiver" that some of the Cs on Outlook once routinely received, allowing them to ignore the unpopulated Rocky Mountain peaks to the west in order to continue to claim HAATs that were high enough to retain full C status?

[JustPastBuffalo]

The Jets are likely to remain the only NFL team whose flagship radio station is a directional AM!  Even Tim Tebow can't change that!  

The Buffalo Bills (market 54) will also be on a directional, albeit a DA-N, next season. The team just moved from a Cumulus heritage Classic Rock FM to Entercom's Sports Talk WGR (where Craig Carton began his commercial radio career.) WGR on 550 has a huge 5 kW daytime omni that reaches Cleveland, Toronto and Rochester. Unfortunately, the DA-N pulls cuts the signal to the southwest and east. At night, the station comes in better in Toronto (pop 6 million+, zero US diaries) than the eastern suburbs, where the diaries are placed.

[DavidEduardo]

WGR on 550 has a huge 5 kW daytime omni that reaches Cleveland, Toronto and Rochester.

The usable daytime signal in metro areas for in home and at work listening is somewhere in the vicinity of 10 mv/m; beyond that, while you can "hear" a station, listeners will not use it save rare exceptions.

WGR's 10 mV/m covers all the home county, much of Niagara County, and tidbits of Chautauqua, Cattaragus, Wyoming and Genesee counties. It sure does not put a good enough signal into Erie or Cleveland to even be considered as an option. Toronto gets a bit over a 2 mV/m at the lakeshore, and about a 1.5 in the northern parts of the metro. Definitely not enough to generate listening.

[DavidEduardo]

If you stand near the cluster of transmitters on that mountain on a clear day, you can directly see almost the entire NYC radio market that lies to the east.  To the right you can see all the way over Staten Island to the Jersey Shore, and you can see most of Brooklyn across the big bridge.  Straight ahead you can see the Manhattan skyline, and it's very easy to see the jets in the landing patterns for both JFK and Laguardia out in Queens on the other side of Manhattan.

But you can't see street level at La Guardia... and most listening happens close to street level. One thing is to see the skyline, another is to be able to get inside buildings the first thirty feet or so above ground.

The high density of apartments with lots of rebar, steel beams, pipes, wiring, foil-wrapped insulation and solid exterior walls means it takes a pretty good signal to penetrate.

While there indeed is a case of diminishing returns when height is traded for power, the advantages of being at the tallest point (at least for the next few weeks) in the metro "looking down" at the listeners vs. way to the western side of the metro beaming across to them should be obvious.

[TimeIsTight]

But you can't see street level at La Guardia... and most listening happens close to street level.

The only reason you can't see down to street level is the tall Manhattan buildings in the middle, and at that distance, either way, the tall buildings don't have the blocking impact on a VHF radio signal that they have on visible light.

The WFME transmitter site is just under 15-miles west of the ESB, and La Guardia is about seven-miles east of ESB.

The Queens,NY zip code farthest east, at the Nassau County border, is in the Glen Oaks neighborhood.  It is 15-miles from the ESB, and 29-miles from WFME's transmitter.  The reported signal strength (dBuV/m) for ESB Class-B FMs in that Zip is 76.4, and WFME's is a still good 65.1.

I am not disputing that in that direction farther out on Long Island the WFME signal drops off 10-or-15-miles sooner than the ESB signals.  That is its main flaw in comparison to ESB signals.  But the point I have been trying to make, is that it hardly makes the station completely "undesirable" as a NY market radio signal.  No doubt, it is worth less than an ESB signal, and in some areas to the east, it also lacks the same punch to get through buildings as an ESB signal at a higher angle.   

Still, it is the only NY Market FM currently "for sale" and it may be a while before then next one comes on the market.  The question is: How many potential buyers will be willing to overlook its Long Island weakness in order to have a NY market signal now, and how many will be willing to wait, possibly years, for the next "perfect signal" opportunity to come along?  Somebody is going to buy it.  I'm expecting a major player, who sees the glass as 90% full rather than 10% empty.

(For those without access to the Arbitron database:

FM Signals by Zip:  http://www.v-soft.com/ZipSignal/

http://www.fmfool.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29

)