{"id":999,"date":"2010-07-29T14:48:25","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T18:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2023-07-09T16:48:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T20:48:53","slug":"downgrading-am-stations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/2010\/07\/downgrading-am-stations\/","title":{"rendered":"Downgrading AM stations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the AM stations around here that I am familiar with is considering a downgrade, which is to say reduce power and get rid of a directional antenna system in favor of a non-DA antenna. \u00a0In this particular case, it makes sense, as the station can co-locate with another AM that is closer to the COL by a good distance. \u00a0The coverage from the new site at reduced power looks to be a good fit. \u00a0If this can be arraigned, the AM station in question would lose a multi-tower AM antenna system that is 50 years old and all the attendant headaches, expenses, and labor that goes with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"five<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many AM stations that are DA-2 or even DA should consider downgrading to a lower power level and getting rid of their DA system. \u00a0Directional antenna systems on AM stations are maintenance nightmares. \u00a0Unfortunately, in the ’50s, 60s, and 70s, it was often thought that adding power, and extra towers to an AM station would give them great swaths of extra coverage. \u00a0Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it did not. \u00a0Often what happened was some area was added, but in areas that were nulls toward protected stations, signal strengths went down. \u00a0What the station ended up with was more towers, more maintenance, monitor points, a sample system, and more expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking an AM station in the other direction might actually make more sense. \u00a0Go back to one tower non-directional 1 KW or whatever power can be used in the daytime. \u00a0Time was when the FCC would only allow certain power levels; .5, 1, 5, 10, and 50 KW. \u00a0Those were what a new station had to work with. \u00a0No longer is that the case, any power level can be used so long as it meets interference contours and the city of license contour coverage requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presunrise authority is normally 500 watts and is available at 6 am, post-sunset authority varies but often a PSA extends the on-air time to 9 pm in the wintertime. \u00a0For a local radio station, which is what all but the class A AM stations are destined to become, this will be adequate. \u00a0 For a losing station, it may be that, or turn in the license and sell the land to a developer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diplexing on another AM station’s tower closer to town is also a good way to get out of maintaining an expensive antenna array with diminishing income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something to think about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the AM stations around here that I am familiar with is considering a downgrade, which is to say reduce power and get rid of a directional antenna system in favor of a non-DA antenna. \u00a0In this particular case, it makes sense, as the station can co-locate with another AM that is closer to … Continue reading Downgrading AM stations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[87,33,49],"class_list":["post-999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-am","tag-am-towers","tag-predictions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=999"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12216,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/999\/revisions\/12216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}