I am listening to CBC Radio One’s Saturday Night Blues program. Yet another good radio show that comes in here via skywave from CBE in Windsor, Ontario. It is in the process of migrating to the FM band, channel 248B (97.5 MHz) after which the AM station will be turned off after a three-month simulcast. I know I can stream this program, but that is a pain because it slows my computer down, plus, it does not sound as good coming from the computer speakers as it does from the AM radio even with the occasional fade.
According to the FCC website (yes, the FCC has records of Canadian, Mexican, Cuban, and Bahamanian radio stations), it is a class A station with a 2-tower directional, 1/2 wave towers with 10,000 watts, unlimited. Pattern nulls to the south with a big fat main lobe north, east, and west.
I wonder what they are going to do with the transmitter when they turn the station off. I wonder what kind of transmitter it is, sounds like a tube unit to me. Certainly sounds good with that old blues music tonight.
Radio 1 is a great station and is also transmitted here in my hometown Toronto at 99.1 FM.
I work for 2 AM stations (680News and FAN590) and 2 FM stations (98.1 CHFI and 92.5 KISSFM even though there format isn’t what I enjoy listening too, so I find my self tuning into Radio1 and Radio2, even Radio3.
I had no idea that they were turning off there AM site, I wonder if they will be selling there frequency too.
I think Canada may be slowly going broke with their wonderful Socialist health-care system and are turning out the lights!
Just came across this post. In November 2012, CBC moved their Windsor CBC French service, CBEF over to the 1550 transmitter / site near Windsor (CBEF was formerly on 540 from a different transmitter site). The 540 transmitter site was in rough shape, whereas the 1550 site remains well taken care of. As such the 1550 site and transmitter is still going, just with the French service as opposed to Radio One.