by Eldon-Mr.CFAY » Sun Aug 25, 2013 3:03 pm
Greetings Everyone,
Again interesting comments from everyone. Good to see your comments there Dan on Radio West too! Yes it will be interesting to see if anyone including the CBC applies for 1570 in the near future. Feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, August summer flu going around. Hope you are all feeling okay. Anyway I found radiofans comments interesting about the FCC in Ferndale. Ted I have never seen their monitoring station location in Ferndale all through the years either but have heard about them a lot. What I was going to say was how strange that they would worry about KARI 550 in Blaine Birth Bay which is considerably north of Ferndale causing intereference to the monitoring station if they boosted to 50,000 watts on 550. When for years now 1550 has been 10,000 watts and later 50,000 watts daytime right in the FCC's backyard in Ferndale!!! However after reading what Jon posted about the protest from Industry Canada to the move I see very clearly that The FCC mentions KRPI 1550 moving their transmitter site from Ferndale to Point Roberts will eliminate current interference and overload at some locations in the Ferndale area that are presently happening, could be that FCC monitorin station is experiencing some interference from 1550 and is very happy to see the transmitter site move out of Ferndale to Point Roberts!!!!!! At least that is how I read what Jon posted here from the FCC Notice on the move at the bottom of the notice!
Now another point, Sky I know the FCC really does not give a rats butt about what format or programming Am radio stations do, they do have some concern however for the new Low Power FM service which was created about 10 years ago and do want most of those stations to be local programming. However even that FCC policy on Low Power FM is not completely consistent or at least has not been in the recent past. There are some ( in the minority of the plus 800 low power fms on the air in the USA) that are complete satellite religious broadcasters with very little local programming on the low power fm dial. Example would be some of the staions broadcasting The Three Angels Network in the states, KETL LPFM in Republic, Washington. They did hope to provide some local programming but to my knowledge basically just broadcast that network to date. Now getting back to AM stations, I remember reading in Broadcast Engineering and Broadcast Magazine which I used to get from the states by subscription for quite a few years about competitive hearings for new AM stations in the 80s and 90s. The FCC looked at medium and small markets and where two or more applications were been applied for they were concerned about technically what application would serve the town or city been applied for by the station applicants better!!! Now that was not programming but strictly from a technical point of view. If an application was not giving a good technical coverage for the proposed town or city of license as well they would lose out and not get a license from the FCC.. However later on in perhaps 1996 or late 90s the FCC went to a lottery system of picking the successful applicant out of multiple applications for a town or city so they may have got rid of previous application requirements at that point. My Point is this if a station is applying or has applied to the FCC for a license to serve certain towns or city in the USA then normally that is what they are supposed to do. If their technical coverage does not reach that area of license it would seem that they would be in violation technically of not serving their licensed city or town. In the case of KRPI 1550 Ferndale , have they requested a Change of Location of the station from Ferndale to Point Roberts???? Not just application to move the transmitter site to Point Roberts but an actual Change of Location of the Station from Ferndale to Point Roberts? In other words if this is approved 1550 will no longer show Ferndale in the FCC database but Point Roberts as location of license???? That is an important point (no pun intended) because it would mean that really only Point Roberts would have to be covered with a good signal from KRPI 1550 not Ferndale regardless of program format! I know the FCC does not and has not really cared about program formats of AM stations in the states for years! However as Sky pointed out they are concerned about the technical requirements and have fined many stations in the past for not having lights lit on the towers, overpower at times etc. etc.. I have heard in recent years though the FCC has become a little less strict on technical matters though due to budget cuts and some daytime only stations and other AMers stay on past sunset or do not drop their day power after sunset to night levels. If the FCC finds out from various sources though I think they will still warn them and impose fines etc.
Radiofan I doubt very much I would have much of a loop antenna demand from the South Asian Community of Greater Vancouver. I am shocked that KRPA 1110 Oak Harbor is still on the air with that South Asian format. As mentioned previously with only 500 watts and been a daytimer the signal is more for a dxing target in the day in areas of the Fraser Valley and Greater Vancouver, it certainly is not a listenable signal in Surrey or South Van. for most of the South Asian population who probably do not own good dx AM radios and could care less about the weak 1110 signal right next to 50,000 watt CKWX `1130 AM.. Even in Langley City in the day you have to carefully null out WX 1130 to receive 1110 Oak Harbor, Washington. In a few Langley area parks the signal of 1110 does come in fairly well with my good AM DX radios and portable loop antenna. Most South Asian listeners would not go to that trouble to hear it especially with 4 other strong local or semi-local AM and FM stations on their front door including CJRJ 1200, Red FM 93.3, KRPI 1550 Ferndale perhaps even closer at Point Roberts, and KVRI 1600. Absolutely no need for Satnam USA's 1110 Oak Harbor at all!!!! In fact if Satnam streams on the internet I am surprised they even bothered buying 1110 Oak Harbor, Washington in the first place. They must have virtually no listeners in Oak Harbor, the Air Force Base there, Skagit County-Mount Vernon as very, very few South Asians in that area. If Bellingham has 4 that area even less. Oak Harbor has a Dutch Heritage base in their population, big windmill near city entrance and I think they have an annual festival about that too. I am very surprised that Satnam would not have just sold 1110 and tried to make some money that way off it or let it go dark and hand the license back to the FCC. I doubt very much the FCC will approve any power increase on 1110 for them or even allow a change of location from that distance. The change of location idea was something kicked around on Radio West over a year ago about 1110 but so far I have seen no indication anywhere of that! I have tried to find feedback on 1110 Oak Harbor over the past year in the local newspaper down there but found virtually nothing. What I did find was a website that is quite bland and indicates no South Asian programming format but leads you to believe its their former local and network talk format under previous ownership. I also found they had moved their offices, phone number and whatever studio they are using from Oak Harbor to a Mount Vernon, Washington address. The contact person appears to be a non-asian name perhaps a sales person or their lawyer!!!
Regarding sales to South Asian residents, yes I actually have sold quite a few south asian residents west of Newton in Central Surrey radio and electronic parts when I and several friends were selling at The Surrey Public Market for a whole year from 1997 to 1998. It was a seven day a week thing as the Manager there wanted the Flea Market and Public Market to be open 7 days a week, quite a job, lucky I had some friends working for me but working 7 days a week was not a whole lot of fun! Anyway met some interesting people there from the USA and elsewhere. One guy who was selling there with his son had recently moved to Panarama Ridge in South Surrey from the States. He was from Nicarauga and his brother owned the high power AM station in Managua, Nicarauga on 540 Khz. with 50,000 Watts and a couple of smaller station in Nicarauga, the company and station name was Radio Corporation! Real nice guy and knew quite a bit about radio broadcasting too as he helped his brother operate the stations. Anyway it was not a South Asian but a biker from Kansas City, Missouri who was visiting Greater Vancouver and South Surrey (traveling on his Harley with his wife) that bought a portable Ferrite Loop Antenna off me, I remember he bought a bunch of vinyl record albums too. Nice guy and he paid me full price for it even though it was a flea market where negotiations happen quite frequently. I will tell you one thing, even though we had pretty reasonable prices on radio parts, audio connectors etc.. the South Asians who came there always tried to get it down to the lowest common denominator, in some cases you could say it would be a Free Market instead of a Flea Market!!! I had a couple of South Asian Radio Service Techies who bought tubes and other parts off me that were pretty good guys but again they did try to get the best deal. I did not mind too much becabecause they were regular customers. But as far as loop antennas go not one sale to a South Asian Customer. We had put a lot of effort into our sales and display booth there and had lots of vinyl records, some collector radios, lots of radio parts including tubes and some loop antennas plus radio books and magazines too. If any of you ever visited Surrey Public Market at 64th Ave. and King George Hwy in 1997 to 1998 I may have seen you there. The building is still here but is a white elephant because the owner could never get the price he wanted for the property. I believe the Surrey Public Market there closed in late 1998! Was never reopensed since!
Anyhow a few more comments of KRPI and other South Asian listening topics!
Take care, 73s ,
Eldon