Wetaskiwin loses it's Cat Country

[jon]

"Give" is the key word here. I can have all the confidence and competence in the world, but no one is going to lend me the $2 million it would take to get started on my own. If I had a quarter of that myself, I could retire now, so what would be the point?

Doing it through Corporate channels at one of the majors creates two problems (1) they wouldn't pay enough to "retire in a year"; and (2) there is too great a risk that they would resist some of the necessary changes, dooming the project. And, as you say, I don't have the track record to get hired by the majors.

But the real point here is that how "hot" I am or am not is irrelevant. I could name so many people that you and I would both agree are "hot", but are "underemployed", to put it mildly, that it seems crystal clear that "working in the business right now" doesn't prove you're hot or not.

This whole discussion started about the potential value of an AM station. The current ratings prove that an AM station can be worth more than any FM station in a market.

[jon]

OK, let me translate it into your terms, "Almost any idiot could make money with a 50KW AM stick with some of radiofan's creative ideas". I never said I could do it myself. I never said I was some boy radio genius.

[pave]

The same could be said of any number of talented and experienced people.

However, this is no longer a business that pays and experienced people stopped buying the "down the road" scam a long time ago.

Further, managements don't want to hear about it!

Besides - and this may be just a tad harsh: most of the creative input would amount to re-treads of that which wasn't working all that well anyway.... even back in the day.

Still, whether it's AM, FM, Sat, Internet, on-hold messaging, in-store announcements or a couple of dixie cups connected by waxed string - it's all in the Programming and the Presentation.

[jon]

I'm sure that I'll get a lot agreement on this line: "it pays to shut up for a while and do some research".

I was amazed to find that CKJR-1440's transmitter is significantly closer to Edmonton than CFCW's Camrose transmitter (CFCW comes in like a local anywhere in Edmonton). CKJR is non-directional days and favours Edmonton at night! So, I had to reassure myself that they really are licensed for 10KW day and night (they are).

They have got to have serious transmitter trouble. It could be something as simple as ground conductivity. I've heard other stations with really rotten signals (KAFY in Bakersfield, California, comes to mind) that were constantly having their grounding radials (typically sections of old railway track) stolen. Or maybe what was once a swamp as a transmitter site isn't so wet anymore.

And it is not just me. A friend, driving home from work mid-morning this morning, from the South East end of Edmonton, to Sherwood Park, said it was too noisy to listen to comfortably. He should have a better signal, being closer, than I have.

[radiofan]

Maybe W-1440's stream suffers from whatever is messing up their on-air signal. The streaming they provide on their website sounds like their on-air signal does under high tension power lines in St. Albert!

[Dan Sys]

I think 1200 Victoria was 50 KW but the new 1200 for Vancouver is going to be only 25 KW? I'll defer to Dan on this one.

Yes, that is correct. CJRJ 1200 will be 25KW fulltime (if they ever get on the air).

Jon, both CKDA Victoria and CHMG St. Albert operated on 1200 at the same time for awhile. CKDA made the flip from 1220 to 1200 in 1986 and occupied that frequency (later as CKXM) until 2000. Not sure when CHMG flipped to FM, but there were a few years for sure when both stations were located at 1200.

[jon]

Didn't recognize or catch the single name of the W-1440 PM Drive guy, but, in an on-air promo this evening, he said he was starting Tuesday. Presumably that means next Tuesday, not today. Anyone heard Billy Williams doing AM Drive yet?

[jon]

You sure have that one nailed! It is 8:35 a.m., the tail end of AM Drive, and W-1440 is back to their favourite programming, Open Carrier, better known as an extended period of Dead Air. Last one I heard was about an hour long....

If nothing else, it allowed me to identify the local station I was hearing in the background on my ghetto blaster in the house: CFRN-1260. Can't come up with the arithmetic ("local mixing product") to explain how a local from 1260 ends up being heard on 1440, but CFRN may be the closest transmitter to me here, probably 6-8 miles due West.

[Cliff Bashly Kinkade]

Have you tried some "productive & constructive" hobbies?

You mean like making posting like a fucktard a hobby?

[jon]

I thought I'd break the silence on this one by writing some fiction based on two facts:

• CKJR has a terrible signal
• A 5-10 watt airport traffic station at DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) on 530 KHz was heard in New Zealand

Palm Beach, Florida - October 5, 2006 - Two retired Collins enginners, Biff Tannen and Marty McFly, have admitted their part in a previously unknown April Fools prank in 1974. In a Press Release released this morning, Biff and Marty explained that they switched two shipments of radio transmitters from the Collins plant on April 1, 1974.

A 10,000 watt AM transmitter destined for a small community in Alberta (that is the Canadian state-like territory North of Montana) was instead shipped to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, which had requested a 10 watt transmitter. Both transmitters have been in continuous operation since then.

The reason that the error has gone undetected is that the transmitters both have the same Power guage, with "10" shown three quarters of the way across the scale. The Chief Engineers (CE) at each radio station have diligently checked the Power guage to be sure that it is reading exactly 10. When asked if they were not suspicious of a power problem after receiving reception reports from DX'ers all over the world, the Texas CE, who requested his name not be used, said "there is no other U.S. station on 530, so we just thought these listeners had good receivers and antennas." A secretary to the Alberta CE, who works from his office in Newfoundland, quoted him as saying "we knew it wasn't a 50,000 watt transmitter, so we figured we would be lucky if it could be heard across town."

Biff and Marty have had trouble selling the movie rights to their story, because of the need to change their names to avoid a conflict with characters in the Back to the Future trilogy.