Well here we are –
Spring and time to head to the Desert for the ‘Big NAB Show’. Up
until recently, I had not planned on going again this year. For
those that asked, I said I needed a really big reason to go there and,
lacking it, I would not be in attendance. Then the phone rang with
a call informing me that I was being presented with an award on
Tuesday. A bit more information came my way and, at that point, it
was mind-changing time. It seems that media publications are
covering this pretty well so I will spare you the details.
Looking at the NAB Show Website….Take a look at the North Hall.
They created a large room with what they are calling ‘The Main
Stage’. This is where the presentation will be made on Tuesday
afternoon. Hope you can be there.
If you have never been to the NAB Convention, you should, for sure, put
it on your bucket list. For first timers they are always amazed as
just how big this event is. The Las Vegas Convention Center is
huge and this show fills it, and then some. April 7-12.
With Cumulus now in bankruptcy, there are, as expected, a number of
changes being made. One of them, centered in Chicago,
recently got a lot of press. A rather famous radio station there,
WLUP (called ‘The Loop’) has, for some time, been operated by
Cumulus. Then came the news the it was being sold to EMF,
resulting in a quick swap from Classic Rock to Contemporary
Christian. Unlike a lot of radio format/ownership changes, this
time they did not start playing funny noises or Christmas music.
They had a big send-off featuring some of the station's historic
voices. Pretty cool. Apparently the format lives on, on
another market station's HD-2 channel. To put this into Seattle
terms, this would be like KZOK changing owners and formats to something
similar to KCMS.
Coming as a bit of a shock to many, GatesAir has announced they are
suspending the sale of AM transmitters. The reason cited is a
shortage of what they call ‘critical components’, explaining they have
enough for product support, but not enough to keep making new
transmitters. I suspect there are some stations that have taken
this as their cue to stock up on things, especially certain solid-state
devices that are usually the first to become hard to get. Another
factor here is that, with the market share for AM getting smaller, not
many owners are investing in new AM Radio hardware anyway.
GatesAir, by issuing a very carefully worded statement, has not shut the
door completely on future newer AM Transmitters. The decision
pretty much leaves the high-power market to Nautel.
I suspect that not many broadcasters are investing in new AM
Transmitters these days. Obviously Bonneville, who operates a pair
of AM’s in Seattle (KIRO-710 and KTTH-770) feels the other way.
That’s why I feel so fortunate to be able to play a small part in the
installation of a new Nautel NX50 at KIRO.
To set the stage….Since 1997 KIRO has been operating a Nautel ND50 as their main transmitter (shown here).
Their backup has been
a pair of legacy Continental 317’s. The older of the two, dating
back to 1975, has been removed and somewhat parted out. (That one
took the place of their old Western Electric.) One of the cabinets
is shown here on a hand-truck heading to the door.
Replacing the old CEC 317 is a new Nautel NX50 shown here with its new master – Steven Allen.
This will be the 2nd NX50 in the area, the other being just down the
road at 1090. It’s amazing how much smaller this new transmitter
is compared to the ND50. It’s about 1/3 the size.
Fortunately, Steve also maintains the 1090 NX50 so is quite familiar
with this model.
The screen you see in the middle of the front is what the maker calls an
AUI or Advanced User Interface. It will be filled with a colorful
display of everything you’d ever want to know regarding the operation of
the transmitter.
Not only is the transmitter smaller, it’s much more efficient, thanks to
the use of what’s called LDMOS devices. The ND 50 required a
considerable about of air-handling. Steve was telling me that the
NX50 will exhaust into the room. The experience I have at West
Tiger Mt. with KIRO-FM’s Nautel GV30 is that the transmitter does not
produce enough heat to keep the transmitter room warm in winter.
What a change from the days of vacuum tubes, or, for that matter, the
previous generation of solid-state transmitters.
Here you can see the new NX50, standing in the former location of the
older Continental 317. To the left is their newer 317 that was
installed back in 1985 that will become what’s known as in the trade, as
a deep backup. Obviously the newer, and all solid state, ND50 will become the primary Auxiliary.
The cabinet to the right of the old Continental (with the white upper door) is the Dummy Load used with that transmitter.
The much older Continentals generated a lot of waste heat, requiring a
considerable amount of fans, blowers and related duct-work, some of
which is visible in this picture on top of the unit.
If you are keeping track, Vashon Island is now home to 4 Generations of
Nautel AM Transmitters. Counting just the 50,000 Watt Transmitters
on Vashon, there are 5 Nautel and 4 Harris (now GatesAir). The
frequencies running 50 kw transmitters are – 710, 820, 950, 1000 and
1090.
In this next picture is Tom Pierson (left) along with Steven Allen, obviously happy to see the new Nautel. Tom, by the way, is retiring in June of this year, his place being taken by Paul Carvalho.
Just to prove that I was indeed there – Here is a ‘selfie’ of me looking at the display of the NX50.
At one time there were
several makers of 50 kw AM Transmitters. RCA, Gates, GE,
Continental….and many more were making lower powered models. The
transition from Tube to Solid-State electronics changed a lot of things,
for one, it provided an opening for the Canadian manufacturer, Nautel
to enter the business, producing one of the first 50,000 watt AM
transmitters without a vacuum tube. A couple of those are still
installed here in this area at 1090 and 1210. GatesAir (then
called Harris) also produced 50 kw Solid State Transmitters, the DX50
and 3DX50, that sold well. They are on the air on 770, 820 and 950
from Vashon.
It was not unusual for a broadcast transmitter to be in service for 30
or more years. Today the life-cycle of all electronic devices has
become shorter. For example, the average desk-top computer is
lucky to make it to 5 years….ditto for the office copier. In the
radio industry this has not gone unnoticed. Today’s transmitters
are not likely to be in service for 30 years. Being big ticket
items, shorter life-cycles are hard for many to swallow.
Sure, smaller AM radio transmitters, with power levels 10,000 watts or
under cost less than the higher powered models, however, expressed as a
percentage of the profit of a smaller, lower-powered station,
transmitters are still one of the more expensive pieces of equipment
they own. The expectation that a piece of equipment is going to
last a long time is a hard thing to change.
Have you ever wondered what happens to an old AM transmitter when it’s
time is up? Other than a museum piece, there is not much interest
in those huge old 50,000 watt monsters. On the other hand, there
is a lot of interest in the lower powered 1,000 watt models that are
commonly grabbed by Amateur Radio operators (Hams) that are interested
in preserving these creations and converting them to use on Amateur
Radio frequencies. Making these legacy devices work there is not
that difficult if you look at the fact that Hams have a ‘band’ of
frequencies they can use that is ‘just above’ the AM Broadcast Band,
1800 to 2000 KHz. It’s called 160 Meters. Some more
ambitious types change their frequency to operate in the 75 Meter band
(3.5 to 4.0 MHz). If you have a shortwave radio, some evening tune
to the 160 meter band. Chances are good you will hear Hams
talking to each other using one of these historic transmitters.
Here are a couple of links to U-Tube videos that will show more about
the topic. One of the contributors is Pete Policani,
K7PP. Pete and I go way back to when we were in high
school together, later, I took his place at KMO in Tacoma.
I could not help but notice that Doug Irwin (former Seattle Radio Chief
now in Los Angeles) ran a story on this topic recently. In this
instance telling how an old Gates BC1-T had been restored, ending up at
the ARRL station in Connecticut. ARRL is the national organization of Amateur Radio operators. Doug ended his story with this -
Do you have an AM transmitter restoration project you’d like to tell us about? If so, drop a message about it to radio@radiomagonline.com.
Glad to see there is wider interest in this topic. Trust me, if I
had the room, I’d have a good old Collins, Gates or RCA transmitter on
the air at K7CR.
For many years Apple has been one of the biggest players. In fact,
it’s been the world’s most valuable publically traded company.
Guess what? – That Seattle based Zillion pound gorilla is about to take
the top spot….Yep, Amazon may become a $1 Trillion company.
Always fun to look at predictions that missed the mark - About this one
from a 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics - "Computers in the future may
weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
If you are like me, you have almost become used to receiving Robo-Calls
daily. I get them on my home and cellphone. The big game now
is number spoofing. Sometimes I will call the number back just to
find out the person answering is not pleased with the fact that someone
is using ‘their’ phone number. Email is much the same – with one
interesting exception – receiving junk/spam email with the senders
address the same as yours. Last time I checked, I will not be
sending myself junk email.
Sorry to hear about the February 26th passing of Ron Diotte.
Ron spent a number of years with KSTW-TV as the station's Chief Engineer. He was 62.
Related – A number of us gathered in Tacoma recently to remember Al
Bednarczyk. The gathering was organized by KBTC-TV’s Darin
Gerchak. Darin said that he was thinking we should get together,
periodically.
I was recently driving down Pacific Highway in Fife when I suddenly
noticed that the building that housed KMO Radio, where I worked for many
years, was gone! Just a gravel outline of the building is all
that remains. I tried to find a picture of the place. The closest I
could come up with is the following. KMO had moved out many years
ago and the building was being used for other purposes. The old
tower behind the building had it’s top-half removed and was being used
as a cell-tower. Later that was torn down and a cellular ‘pole’
erected. It’s still there, but that’s all. I started work in
that building in May of 1966. 4501 Pacific Hwy East. A place that many will remember for years to come.
Well, It finally
happened. Now we have two of the
biggest radio station ownerships, Cumulus and iHeart Media are officially
bankrupt. I’m not going to pretend to
be qualified to explain how this came to pass. However, I am going to provide you with a couple of links to comments of
others that pretty well sum-up how this came to pass. The comparison to the failure of Toys-'R'-Us
is interesting. http://theweek.com/articles/761124/how-vulture-capitalists-ate-toys-
Now the messy job
of determining who gets paid, who gets paid less than what they are owed and
who will go away with nothing. One
thing I am confident about, the likelihood that the lawyers that worked on these
deals will do OK.
Recent Seattle
news is that Matt Green is leaving Entercom. At this writing, it’s not been announced who will be taking his place as
Chief of the Entercom cluster of 5 FM’s in Seattle.
I’m sure that you
either own or have heard about these devices known as ‘Smart Speakers’. Popular models have names like Siri and
Alexa. Someone has posed this
question –If you were to put Siri and
Alexa together – would they have a conversation? With all the talk about AI one has to
wonder if the day will come that we will walk into a room where two machines
are talking with each other. Perhaps
this will only take place after everyone is gone and the lights have been
turned out?
The big shuffle of
TV channels into less spectrum, commonly called Repacking, is, in some cases
impacting radio stations that share towers with a TV station caught in this
shuffle.In some cases the radio station
is facing some serious economic issues (dare I say they are negatively
impacted). This issue has migrated
up to the congressional level in the hope that some of the Federal Funds the TV
stations are receiving might come their way also. Looks like it might happen.
Another station in
the Seattle area recently took delivery of a new transmitter. The Seattle School
District's KNHC (89.5). I got this
picture shortly after it arrived at one of the ATC Sites on Cougar Mt. As you can tell, it’s a GatesAir Flexiva 10
Kw Model. I find the signage on the
side interesting – could that be directed at Nautel (a Canadian
company)?Buzz Anderson is handling the
installation at the former Entercom Site on Cougar Mt.
Earlier in this Column I wrote about AM Transmitters. Perhaps one
bright spot comes from Orban who has announced they are coming out with
something new in the way of Audio Processing for the legacy band.
They call it XPN-AM. It’s been a long time since anyone produced a
new audio processor for AM. For those of you that are not that
technical, you may be wondering what an audio processor is. Let me
go back a few years and explain that this term did not exist when I
started (over half a century ago). Back in those days broadcasters
would employ several electronic devices between their studio
console/mixer and their transmitter. First was a device called an
AGC or Automatic Gain Control. This device ‘leveled’ the
difference in volume between various sources of programming. Often
this was followed by a ‘Limiter’ that prevented the transmitter from
being ‘over-modulated’. Over-modulation would not only cause
distortion, but was a violation of FCC rules. As years went by,
these devices, along with some other tricks of the trade, were rolled
into one unit. Tubes were replaced by transistors and later
integrated circuits and computer based hardware. Today these
devices are called ‘Audio Processors’. Not only do they keep
volume levels constant and prevent over modulation of the broadcast
transmitter, but they enable the station to ‘customize’ the sound they
produce. Now, back to AM. Something new that would make AM
sound better is likely to attract some attention at the Orban booth at
this year’s NAB convention.
In the event you have not noticed – we have one less AM signal in the
area these days. 1300 KKOL is quiet. Good source of rumors
that yet another AM was biting the dust….Not so, apparently the owner,
Salem, elected to turn off their 50 kw Tacoma transmitter in preparation
to their move to Bainbridge Island where they will become the area's
first ‘Tri-Plexed’ AM facility, sharing the site with co-owned 1590 and
1680. Could not really count KKOL as a Tacoma station. The
station remained licensed to Seattle. When the time came to depart
their historic site on Harbor Island in the Port of Seattle, they just
happened to end up using a site for the past several years in the Port
of Tacoma.
The Tacoma area still has some AM’s. ….
850 is operated by iHeart from their Seattle Studios
1360, the old KMO, no longer has studios in ‘T-Town’
1450 in Puyallup is operated from studios in Federal Way
1180, licensed to Lakewood – actually has studios in Lakewood!!
Oh well, the Main Studio rule is long gone anyway.
There are some new 6+ rankings of radio stations in the Seattle area….Here’s my take-away from the latest results –
KQMV has bumped KUOW to reclaim the #1 spot.
KIRO-FM is holding on to the #3 slot.
iHeart Media is the apparent big
winner as a result of the recent swapping of stations, ending up with 4
of the top 10 stations (Entercom and Hubbard each have two).
So far KKWF is leading the country music race ranked #14, while the Hubbard country station is ranked #22?
Entercom’s decision to dump country in favor of AC on 94.1 appears to be working with the station in 12th place.
KNKX is holding steady in 10th, giving Seattle two non-comm’s in the top 10.
There are a couple of ties. Tied for #9 is KBKS and KNDD. Tied at #16 is KHTP and KPWK.
KIRO-AM (#19) is doing quite a bit better with Sports Talk than KJR in #25
AM’s continue to struggle with the top rated AM, KOMO, at #17
As my readers have long known, I’m a fan of the FM Version of HD Radio,
having installed many of the first systems in this market several years
ago. Today there are a lot more receivers out there resulting in
increased interest in making the brave move of providing unique
programming. Kudos to Entercom in Portland who has launched an HD2
channel on one of their stations (KGON) for the Portland Waterfront
Blues Festival. They call it Waterfront Blues Radio.
As usual, Nautel will have a big presence this year in the North
Hall. This year they will be showing off something really new,
a broadcast station running all digital with 12 HD Radio Audio
Channels. The way they are doing it is unique. Using an
‘even numbered’ frequency on the FM band.
In last month’s column I ran a picture of an old radio automation
system. Behind her head was a machine full of broadcast audio
cartridges that were used, back in the day, to play commercials and
other announcements.
These little plastic boxes with an endless loop of tape inside were introduced to the broadcast industry back in 1959.
Initially these little critters were used
to replace Reel-to-Reel tape machines that were used for the playing of
commercials (spots), etc. No more having to thread, play, rewind,
etc. I remember well working in a broadcast station that only had
two turntables and two tape recorders. You were very busy.
My first encounter with Tape Cartridges was in 1961 when the station
owner walked in and handed me one with instruction to hook it up.
At the time, this was all new. Initially the machines that were
used to record and play them back were all manually operated.
Studios were filled with racks of them. All you had to do is slide
the cartridge into a playback machine and push the button.
The problem was there was a need to
incorporate the tape cartridge into something that would enable a
broadcast station to be automated (like the one in the picture from last
month). This need created a number of solutions from various
manufacturers. Viewed today, they were electro-mechanical marvels.
One of the first radio automation systems I was involved with was at KMO
in 1966. That system had four reel-to-reel tape players for music
and two ‘Carousels’ for playing tape cartridges. Each machine had
room for 24 of them. Early models would play one tape cartridge
at a time, in order. This meant that you had to pre-load the
cartridges in the order they were to be played on the air.
If a commercial was to play again soon, you had to leave an open space
and physically move it (or make a duplicate). Walk away time was
indeed limited. Remember that this was way before computers.
Later improvements to the device would permit them to rotate in both
directions and randomly find a particular cartridge. There were
several makers of these machines. If I recall, the ones I worked
with were made by Sonomag. http://www.mchistory.org/research/resources/findingaids/businesses/sono-mag-corporation.php
Others jumped into the game, including a firm based in Bellingham,
Washington called IGM which stood for International Good Music.
For a time, IGM sold one the original radio automations that was
controlled by equipment manufactured by Shafer. That firm went on
to build hardware used by many. Here are some interesting links:
This was the IGM ‘Go-Cart 24’, their variation of the original ‘Carousel‘:
The need and desire for
a machine that would handle more than 24 cartridges led to the
development of bigger and more sophisticated devices. A couple of
these are shown below.
The one on the right (and in the picture from last month) was a
substantial change. Rather than having the cartridges move, they
stay in place and could be played in any order. This solved the
problem of the ‘spot’ that played often. Also this enabled the more capable computer systems that were coming along to provide for significantly more walk-away time.
The Tape Cartridge
had a long, 40+ year, run as the device of choice for radio stations.Later, as their quality improved, music was
recorded on them. Late in the era of
the tape cartridge, most of the recorded audio heard on a radio station was
being played by these machines.
TV got into the
game as well. Just as in radio, TV
spots were…for many years, played on reel-to-reel machines. This changed when RCA and Ampex began
producing machines that would play the video version of radio’s tape
cartridge. In that case, they used
tape that was 2 inches wide using much the same format as used in the video
reel-to-reel machines.
Computers were
soon to take the place of anything with tape involved. Soon, hard drives with every increasing
amounts of storage capacity were on the market, resulting in what was multiple
racks of tape players being reduced to something a fraction of the size. There is a lot
written on this topic – available on-line. For a look at the radio side of this, you might start here:
Mike Brooks of
KING-FMoften contributes interesting
tidbits to this column.This month is
no exception. Once a year, in March,
the Mike and Key Amateur Radio Club has an electronic flea market at the
Fairgrounds in Puyallup. Mike scored
this item, an obviously in-house
constructed remote amplifier used, at one time, by KING-AM in Seattle.
If anyone has any
information about the history of this item – Please either send it to me or to
Mike at KING-FM.
The back side:
Last month we ran a picture that Mike
submitted showing a person holding a soldering gun as if it were a ‘test prod’. I received the following response
from a reader –
Clay:In
answer to the (burning) question accompanying Mike Brooks' picture in the
latest edition of Clay’s Corner:If
that’s a soldering iron in her hand - and it’s plugged in - she’s hanging onto
the hot end.John Ashbridge(Vancouver … BC)
Thanks Ash.
Picture time!!! This picture taken of one of the
two American Tower Sites on West Tiger Mt. east of Seattle comes from ATC Site
Manager Joe Taylor. Note the nice
coating of ice.
By chance have you
been following the FCC’s Spectrum Plans that could impact the highly
used ‘C-Band”? If not, you’d better!!
Once again pressure for spectrum to accommodate all those wireless
gizmo’s that we find ourselves unable to do without is causing the
‘Commish’ to, once again, try to figure out how ‘Sharing Spectrum’ with
existing users might be the answer. If you have a C-Band system,
you’d better, quickly, get engaged with this one. This is not
something that you can put on the stack on the back of your desk.
For reference, the NOI is (GN Docket No. 17-183).
There are thousands of Radio Stations that receive programming via
C-Band just for openers. Rest assured this has the attention of
many of the major operators. You would be wise to not to sit back
and let the big-guys battle this one. If you have a C-Band
Satellite system – my advice – get involved – NOW!
There continues to be a steady stream of news about how the hot-Seattle
real estate market is driving up prices and taxes. Perhaps news
that many are moving from California for the same reason might sound
worrisome. According to the piece I read, most of them are moving
to Nevada, Arizona and Texas. I chatted with a server recently in a
restaurant we frequent. He was telling me that a friend of his
recently moved from Seattle to Dallas and got a comparable place to live
for half what he was paying in Seattle. One factor driving up
Seattle housing costs is the fact that many Chinese are investing
here. BC recently has been looking at imposing a tax on foreign
buyers, this in an effort to make it easier for domestic buyers.
Problem is that Seattle, apparently, is not doing this, resulting in
continued upward price pressure in this area.
Here are a couple of items in the news that underscore what I’ve been writing about:
Headline - Seattle median home prices jump $20,000 in a month to
$777,000. OK, so Seattle is really expensive. Can you find
something cheaper on the other side of Lake Washington? Well…Maybe
not. Reportedly over there (called the Eastside), the median
price for a home is at $950,000 and going up.
Another interesting fact to consider – population growth.
According to the latest Nielsen radio ratings report, there are now
3.863 Million people over the age of 6. This has pushed the area
to become Market #12 in the US. We have a ways to go to catch up
with Los Angeles, the biggest market on the West Coast, with some 4
million within the city and 10 Million in LA County. Of course,
they have a much larger land area than Seattle will ever have.
Reports are that people are leaving San Francisco in great numbers due
to that area's high cost of living. According to Redfin, San
Francisco lost more residents that any other city in the country in the
last Qtr. of 2017. Another study showed that 49% of residents of
the Bay Area would consider leaving California because of the cost of
living.
So, with that –
Is Seattle going to be the same?
What, if anything, can be done about it?
Areas on the other side of the Cascade Mountains are becoming
increasingly attractive due to their lower prices. There are many
now that are commuting into Seattle over Snoqualmie Pass from areas on
the other side.
Another option is living on a boat. Often the cost of ‘living
aboard’ could be the only way you can afford to continue to live in
these rapidly growing areas.
Here’s a study that made me scratch my head…. "One in 5 Homes Use
Digital Antennas for Live TV". Whoa! A Digital
Antenna? Wait a minute, how can a piece of aluminum become a
‘Digital’ Antenna? This reminds me of years ago when Color TV was
coming out. Many were convinced that they had to replace their old
‘Black and White Antenna’ with a new model designed for Color.
Remember the name ‘Colorceptor’?
Apparently an antenna becomes ‘Digital’ when it’s used to receive ‘Digital’ TV. Much like the antennas of old became ‘Color Antennas’ when used to receive Color TV?
Of course, I had to think of how this naming convention applies to
radio. Radio folks are not quick to jump on these things for the
simple reason that you would find it hard to find a radio antenna for
sale, not to mention few even would think to look for one. Gee,
would not HD radio work better if you had a Digital Radio Antenna?
Speaking of which – If you have a newer vehicle – where in the world did
they put the radio antenna? Vehicle makers have long wanted to
get rid of the ‘car radio whip’ and set out to put the antenna in the
front or rear glass. But not anymore. Now we have this gizmo
on the roof (commonly called a shark-fin) that apparently handles – AM –
FM- Satellite and GPS duties. My question is how does it work so
well on AM? I guess it could be called a – Color Radio Antenna –
as they are always the same color as the vehicle they are attached to.
Kudos to the FCC for their recent crackdown on Pirate Radio
stations. One of them was operating in Des Moines, creating issues
with the reception of KNKX/88.5. The Portland office of the
Commission determined who the operator was, etc. The crack
engineering department at KNKX, I understand, assisted. Keep
hearing that the FCC is going to gain new ‘tools’ for dealing with this
issue. Hopefully the FCC will not fall back to the technique they
used to maintain order on the CB Band (throwing in the towel and giving
up). Confiscation of equipment and jail time if the fine is not
promptly paid sound good to me.
If you recall, I wrote that long time WSU Broadcast Engineer, Don Eckis,
had retired. It’s been announced that Brady Aldrich has accepted
the position in Wenatchee. Brady has roots here in the PNW and is
reportedly happy to be returning to the area from working in
Mississippi. I understand that his Dad worked in broadcasting in
Seattle too.
Well, my friends, time to ship this off for another month.
I hope to see many of you in Las Vegas at this year’s NAB.
'Till next month in most of these same locations -
