Several members have described having a different frequency at night, and now I have discovered a full-power AM licensed station that switches frequencies for nighttime.
Several members have described having a different frequency at night, and now I have discovered a full-power AM licensed station that switches frequencies for nighttime.
The station is KNZK Detroit. See it here at radio-locator
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=wnzk&sr=Y&s=C
Frequency Switch During Darkness and 1240 kHz trivia
Hi Carl!
Yup! The Detroit station is one of them.
I know there were a few others. I believe
there is or was a Canadian that went from
710 kHz to 730 kHz for the nighttime.
I think we covered this before.
It reminds me of another weird AM broadcast
station arrangement.
I believe that for decades, three completely
different stations in Chicago shared 1240 kHz
from three different locations. All three would
go on and off at various arranged times during
the day, so that at any given time, only one
of them would be transmitting on 1240. I have
a good friend who lived in Chicago long ago and
he remembers this.
And it was my Part 15 station that switched to
1700 kHz in darkness and back to 1690 during
daylight. It was really really fun building that
thing.
Bruce
Goofy Experiment Headquarters
MICRO1690/1700
Let’s Return to Those Days
Ya, Bruce, “Weird Experiment Headquarters,” I thought it was you with the switch frequency. I take it you are still doing that. And I like your memory of shared frequencies, sort of like the old party line telephone lines.
In St. Louis 550kHz was shared between The St. Louis Post Dispatch and The Lutheran Church, the one sharing arrangement I recall.
In the 1970s some noncommercial FMs were given a deadline to expand their hours of operation or they’d be required to share their frequency. I think most stations in that situation scrambled to protect themselves.
I wish we could return to shared frequencies so more people could get into licensed broadcasting.
W.E.H.
Gee Carl, maybe I should change my
station ID to WEH-AM, for Weird Experiment
Headquarters!
Actually, I guess that’s not really a good
idea, as Part 15 W or K callsigns seem to
be frowned upon.
I had not heard about that 550 kHz sharing
arrangement in St. Louis. That’s a good one.
Thanks for the info!
Best Wishes
Bruce, MICRO1690/1700
Reflecting on Sharing of Resources
This subject brings some strange history to mind. I think in the early days it was more natural to have surplus unfilled air time and thus sharing air time wasn’t cutting into the program day. Stations would prepare their shows, air them, and then turn off.
For years playing records on the air was not a cheap alternative because of the musician’s union, who protected the rights of studio orchestras and musicians. Only when a contract was invented requiring turntable operator to be member of the musician’s union did the world of “disc jockeying” become a commercially viable program style.
The idea of 24-hour operation came very slowly but in the 1960s and 1970s it swept radio and then later television.
It was easy to keep track of broadcast history when there were only a few players, but now I think there are so many programmers and streamers and changing owners that I don’t see anybody writing down all the details because we’re reaching the point where everybody is a “broadcaster” in some sense, whether it be blogging, You Tubing, sharing audio files, etc., the audience is thinning out and many of us are motivated not because we’re needed as programmers, but because we believe in the concept of what we’re doing.
Hobbyists and giant corporations will be the last men standing.
Part 15 Broadcasting and Broadcast History
Carl, your comments have brought forth
so many things in my mind that I can’t
even say them all right now.
A very close friend of mine has a wonderful
website here in Connecticut called
HartfordRadioHistory.com. Actually it is
probably better just to look it up on Google,
because I may not have the spelling exactly
correct. (This would be for anybody in or
near Connecticut, or course, or anybody that
was here and is still interested.) I think there
are lots of broadcast history websites, and I
think there are still a lot of radio people keeping
track of what is going on. I know I am.
My brother is a serious broadcast historian here
and has been working on an audio documentary
for some time.
I see my Part 15 station as being a little bit like the
above because of my antique control board, and other
relics from the past, such as some nice old AM radios,
and the reel to reel deck that I just fixed up. It’s nice
to have this old gear alive. But my station has not
been just to run a signal through old radios – there
have been some listeners in the neighborhood, mostly
just friends of mine who are interested.
Your comments about turntable operators and 24 hour
operation are really interesting. In 1968, the local top 40 station,
WDRC on 1360 signed off at 1:AM.
WCCC on 106.9 signed on Sunday mornings at 11:AM!
I became an AM/FM and TV DXer when I was very young.
One morning probably in about 1968 I pointed my parents
TV antenna to the north with the rotor. Imagine my shock
when I saw WMUR, channel 9, in Manchester, NH running
a test pattern at 8:30 AM! They didn’t sign on until 9:AM!
There are tons and tons of wonderful websites about broadcast
history. Some of them are about many radio stations in one location
or city. And some of them just are dedicated to a particular
station that people enjoyed once upon a time – those people
were staffers and listeners.
Regardless of what happens in the industry, I will always be
running my Part 15 station in one form or another. And on
the 80 meter ham band, I use a one tube 3.5 watt 6AQ5
morse code transmitter. I have a fairly new receiver, an
ICOM R-70 from 1983, but a regenerative receiver is in
the works. That set-up makes me feel like I’m 16 again.
That’s probably enough for now.
Best Wishes,
Bruce, Steam Powered Broadcasting,
MICRO1690/1700
WJVS-fm plays nice with WAIF-fm
Here’s one of those “when i was younger stories” lol.
Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development is the name of the vocational system i spent the last two years of high school.
I studied Radio & Television Arts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJVS
WJVS-FM stands for W , Joint Vocational School and was operating with 175 watts on a 100 foot tower on the same grounds. (in mono)
The student run radio station operated from Monday through Friday, from 8:00 am to 2:20 P.M. At 2:20 p.m. WJVS-FM would sign-off to allow WAIF-FM an all-volunteer community radio station located in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. I even stayed after school sometimes to broadcast classic rock, the normal format was Adult Contemporary (i guess).
We also had a working television studio though it never went out on the airwaves it was still fun to learn directing, editing, sound, production, lighting and well, you get the idea.
To this day those stations still share the same frequency of 88.3 fm but i am pretty sure the studio’s at WJVS-FM have been updated since i was there in the late (ahem) eighties. lol
During the summer months i would volunteer at WOBO-FM which used to share a frequency with my High Schools fm station WCNE-FM. The call letters for WCNE stood for Clermont Northeastern high school while WOBO-FM i was told stood for Wood Over Brick Outhouse.
The studios for WOBO used to be the , yeah you guessed it the middle schools outhouse way back when and were located directly behind the middle school. The building was split up into two studios and a place for a restroom and transmitter, the size of the tiny studio puts me in mind of KVWJ 1670. KVWJ actually has more room.
http://www.radiobrandy.com/KVWJPhotos.html
Good times, good times.
One Thing Leads to Another
Well, Bruce MICRO1700, right after reading your inspiring defense of ongoing radio history, I happened to run across this history list at Radio Magazine.
http://radiomagonline.com/features/radio_today_radio_history/
WOBO – Oh Boy!
“Wood Over Brick Outhouse” gets The Funny Call Letter of the Year Award!
WOBO – That’s Great!
Well Barry and Carl! I have really enjoyed
your input on this. Here in Connecticut
we had a station that was in the back hall
of a laundramat, uh, laundrymat (spelling?).
I’ll have to figure out what station it was.
Barry, thanks for the WOBO info and the
FM frequency sharing history. Very interesting.
And Carl, I looked up that history list and it
is really cool.
Best Wishes,
Bruce
Coal Furnace Powered – MICRO1690/1700