CLAY’S CORNER FOR JANUARY 2006
CLAY’S CORNER by Clay Freinwald, K7CR
Well folks, here we go again….a brand new year.
Lets see what’s happened since we last met - I was in Indy during the week of Dec 12th…had a chance to stop by and visit with the crew at the SBE headquarters. By the way, they are moving down the street about a block, later this month. Seems that the other tenant on the floor of the building they are on wanted the whole floor. After that, off to Greensboro, NC….just in time to experience a dandy ice storm. You think that Seattle has trouble driving in winter weather?? You ought to see how these folks deal with it! Sure was nice to get back to the warmth of the PNW.
One of the major players in our business has decided to split itself in two pieces. Viacom will become New-Viacom and CBS Corp. Along with this change will be the elimination of the name Infinity….meaning that KSTW, KMPS, KZOK etc in our area will be under the CBS umbrella.
December 18th a fire destroyed a good part of the Rose Hill transmitter building in Kirkland taking with it the transmitting equipment for 1250 and 1460, which are diplexed there. Also lost in the blaze was equipment belonging to our own Jim Dalke who is sure to have quite a story to tell at the next meeting of our chapter.
Another surprise took place in early December as Entercom made major changes to two of their radio stations, 99.9/KISW and 100.7/KQBZ. The biggest change was switching the 100.7 station from talk to Country music. Call letters changed from KQBZ to KKWF and the station’s slogan changed from The Buzz to The Wolf. As usual, I learned about the change only hours before it came to pass. Looks like Country is on the way up again. Over at KISW, they joined others in saying good-bye to Howard Stern who is switching to Sirius the sat-radio provider. All I can is – ya need a program – to keep track of all of this.
The HD Radio train appears to be picking up speed with a number of the major players coming together to promote the new system and to provide programming for additional audio channels as radio begins their version of Multicasting. For those who have or are about to purchase new HD radios, you can look forward to a lot of choices in what to listen to. Think of it this way, in this area the number of FM stations is about to double.
With the model being tested by KUOW, that number could triple! Snooping around with my Kenwood HD Radio is a real treat as I discovered that our local 94.9 outlet has programming on HD1, HD2 – and- HD3. Granted they are all pretty much talk-streams…but nonetheless…KUOW has 3 program streams on the air. Pretty cool!
Lots of rumors floating about as to the sale of ABC radio. Some of the trades, at this writing, have Entercom being the party that gets to add some legendary call letters to their stable of stations. WLS, WABC, KABC, KGO to name a few. But again this is just rumor…but lets face it…Rumors are kinda fun.
Looks like – THE END IS NEAR! The end of Analog TV that is. Unless something else comes up to change what has been a rather elastic date…February 2009 will mark the end of Analog TV. I can see it now…a flood of TV transmitters for sale, cheap, on eBay. What’s really going to be interesting is how ‘Joe Sixpack’ figures out the channel arrangement. For years we have had 4,5,7, 9, 11 &13…who knows what the final arrangement will be? Then there is the big pot of money to be paid to ‘Joe’ who claims that he can’t afford a DTV and what’s Uncle Sam to pay for a converter so he can continue to watch TV on his yellow screen Hoffman.
The FCC has been messing with the heads at the cable systems suggesting that cable should be sold on the basis of paying for just the channels you wish to watch. Knowing how this works…I’m thinking that the Commish should be careful what they wish for as this could be expensive to the consumer.
Could it be that Broadcast TV took another hook to the jaw with Monday night football? I guess I am still scratching my head over this one, there must be a lot of folks that don’t have ESPN.
Things must be a whole lot better over at Fisher these days as our local broadcast company is investing some 20 megabucks in some Hispanic TV stations. Then again they may be a dumb as a fox with this move as the Hispanic market is growing like a weed these days.
Did you see the pictures of the tower that was hit in Southern Nebraska? Yikes! Apparently a small single engine aircraft hit the 1065 foot structure in late November causing the tower to fall and taking off the air TV and FM facilities for a couple of months in that area. Tragically the 3 on board the plane died in the crash. I recall several years ago when a light plane ran into one of the guy wires on Channel 13’s tower on Gold Mt. The tower survived, the pilot did not.
Another corporate spin-off in the news is Clear Channel spinning its concert division. This impacts this area in that they have been operating the Muckleshoot entertainment venue between Auburn and Enumclaw.
Walt Lowery has announced that he has added Continental transmitters to his offerings. Continental has developed a way to create high power for FM and HD using a modified version of their venerable tube type transmitters. I actually had a chance to go to the Continental plant while in Dallas a couple of months back and see this rig.…pretty nifty application. Of course it did my heart good to see a vacuum tube being put to work. In this day and age of solid state everything…it’s still pretty hard to beat a tube as a single device with a big power gain.
Who in this business does not know the name- Scientific-Atlanta? Did you hear that Cisco Systems purchased them for just under 7 Billion bucks? Cisco’s felt that this move would help them as the rules for how TV is delivered to ‘Joe’ are being changed.
Just before Christmas I did something that I’ve not done in a long time…attended a live Radio-Show. This was the annual Christmas Jam at PLU in Parkland broadcast live on KPLU. Pretty cool!
Sign of the times – A piece in the local paper about women opening up a radio station in Baghdad, Iraq. Before the war there were only 4 radio stations in Iraq, now there are over 85.
Just before Christmas, guess what happened in the New Orleans area? An earthquake!...not a big one mind you, but a 3.0. According to Entercom’s NOLA Engineer - Joe Pollet, no one felt it. He said that the ground has the consistency of jello anyway. You have to wonder if those folks have not had enough of Mother Nature?
Sorry to report on the passing of Val Limburg. Val spent 35 years at WSU where he left his mark on many in our industry. Back in 1997 the WSAB awarded him State Broadcaster of the Year.
From the looks of things the satellite broadcasters appear to be leading the way in terms of technology, for instance – XM is working on a system that’s called
Dynamic Parking Information that will display on your car’s navigation system the number of spaces available in parking lots. I’m a thinking that local radio had better wake up the brain trust and start thinking outside the box.
Harry Jacobs has resigned from American Tower (ATC) after 5 ½ years, according to an announcement from the provider of many broadcast sites.
Here’s an interesting story….seems that a fellow was driving down the road and had his car radio in scan, apparently looking for something new to listen to. The radio stops on what appears to be a new station. As it turned out, that new station was actually a car that was traveling in the same direction whose driver was listening to an XM satellite radio channel. The picking up the old FM modulator trick. Apparently the idea of running your I-Pod into a modulator so you can pick up the audio on your car stereo is growing in popularity, range is limited of course….happy hunting.
Talking with Gary Hilliard down in Portland the other day. Seems that they are having guy anchor problems at one of their AM sites. The things are failing – Wow. Good reason to have a professional check not only your tower, but those guy anchors also.
I see where former Seattle Radio and TV anchor Aaron Brown is out of a job having been replaced at CNN. Is there anyone who is not thankful that they are on the technical side of Broadcasting?
That’s it for this month, my friends….May 2006 be a great one for you all.
Clay, K7CR, CPBE, SBE-VP etc