CJSB 540 --> CKQB-FM 106.9 Ottawa
Rene Kahle
Standard Broadcasting, who has a construction permit to move their Ottawa
station ("54 Rock" - CJSB AM 540) to 106.9 FM, has fired up their FM
transmitter. The FM station is identifying itself as "CKQB-FM 106.9
Ottawa".
The format of 54 Rock was Classic Rock. The format of the new FM station
is top secret, however it will not be Classic Rock because the station's
promise of performance to the CRTC requires them to play at least 50%
current music. Most rumour that I have heard has said that the station
will have a Modern Rock or AAA format of some sort.
The transmitter is currently being tested. When it was first fired up,
they had some sort of frequency range sweep test going for about 24
hours. They then went off the air yesterday. Late this afternoon, they
came back on playing comedy albums (commercial-free and announcer-free),
with an automatic ID at 11, 26, 41, and 56 minutes after each hour.
They have been off the air for short periods since then, and empty
carrier for about an hour once.
The real format, call letters (CKQB may be temporary, to throw us off),
and name of the station, are still secret. The station seems to be
ready to sign on by Sept. 1. I'll keep you posted.
--
Rene Kahle VA3RDK | Computer Science | ug93...@mach00.scs.carleton.ca
RR #3, Ashton, Ont. | Carleton "U" | re...@techpro.com
Canada K0A 1B0 | Ottawa,Ontario | aa...@freenet.carleton.ca
(45 05 20 N, 76 00 10 W) == (Grid Square FN15XC)
Talk1370
ug93...@alpha11.scs.carleton.ca (Rene Kahle) writes:
(on CKQB-FM's impending debut)
Actually it'll be programmed entirely from the jukebox in the
office of Standard Broadcasting's president Gary Slaight in
Toronto. :-)
Just kidding, although I've visited his office and he does have
a jukebox there. (I hear he uses it to program Mix 99.9 in Toronto
these days.) The word on the street from some of my sources in
the Canadian radio industry is that it will actually be some-
thing not TOO far off what they've been doing on 540 AM with a
little more of a AAA flavor to it than the current CJSB playlist.
What seems odd is that they didn't stick with the AM license as
well as move their music programming to FM, and try to do a
personality talk format with it a few years ago when the oppor-
tunity was there. It would've been a natural when CBC was the
only N/T game in town in the late 80s, and the market cried out
for a personality talker. (Even CBC knew that, and approached
me with the idea of bringing me aboard as CBO/920 morning
host in 1989, but the negotiations crashed and burned when the
issue of money & benefits came up.) Instead, once again CHUM
Ltd. found a hole in the market and filled it, as they do so often
and so well across Canada, by re-formatting CFRA/580 as a
talker. Now there's a hole on the AM band; don't be surprised if
a U.S. station somewhere in the Northeast fills it.
Bob Smith, middays WXXI/1370 Rochester NY
Garrett Wollman
[about 540-CJSB Ottawa]
>Now there's a hole on the AM band; don't be surprised if
>a U.S. station somewhere in the Northeast fills it.
I wonder about that. (And I hope that it doesn't happen.) In my neck
of the woods, I get WWCS Canonsburg and CBEF Windsor regularly
(usually trading off well into the night); I received CJSB only couple
of times in my half-year here. (A week ago I was lucky enough to hear
CBT Grand Falls, Nfld. sign off.)
It seems to me that any US operator who wanted to start up a 540 in
the northeast would pretty quickly have to deal with treaty issues.
That reminds me... Does anyone know why the Canadians seem so
enamored of short-spacing their stations, especially the commercial
ones? 540 is not even the best example; consider 800, which has CKLW
Windsor, CJAD Montreal, and CHRC Quebec on it. If I had reference
books in my office, I'm certain I could come up with more.
To re-join this with the other thread, 530-CIAO is a regular for me
here in Brighton.
Another Canadian question: The week of the 15th, 940-CBM Montreal did
not sign off overnight. Rather, when they usually would have turned
on a test tone (which I have been told some of their relays carry all
night), they instead switched into a relay of the CBC Stereo service
on CBM-FM. Does anyone know why? That same week, 1070-CBA Moncton
left a dead carrier up overnight, almost blocking out the usual CHOK
Sarnia.
Now, as promised, the end of WHDH:
First of all, it turns out that WHDH still legally exists; they
haven't managed to get the 850 call changed to WEEI even though 590
has been WBNW at least over the weekend. Still, it's just as well,
considering the send-off that ARS gave them (which strengthens my
resolve even more not to listen to ARS stations if I can avoid it).
The final few seconds of News/Talk 8-50 WHDH went like this:
- Horn playing taps
- 15 sec. of a toilet flushing
- a number of hard-to-identify miscues (hit midnight here)
- legal ID: ``WHDH Boston, WBNW Boston, WVEI Worcester''
- WEEI Jingle
- break into running ABC newscast
It all seemed really sloppy to me (not to mention tasteless). I think
Sunbeam will be quite happy when they are no longer sharing the WHDH
call with that crew. As promised, the ``new'' slogan is ``Sportsradio
8-50, WEEI'', although they haven't found a way to work that into
their jingle yet.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ...
wol...@lcs.mit.edu | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
Opinions not those of| It is a bond more powerful than absence. We like people
MIT, LCS, ANA, or NSA| who like Shashish. - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant
Wayne Stacey
In a previous article, wol...@ginger.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) says:
>That reminds me... Does anyone know why the Canadians seem so
>enamored of short-spacing their stations, especially the commercial
>ones? 540 is not even the best example; consider 800, which has CKLW
>Windsor, CJAD Montreal, and CHRC Quebec on it. If I had reference
>books in my office, I'm certain I could come up with more.
The main reason for Canada using short-spacings and complicated
directional antenna arrays is that most of the best AM channels were gobbled
up by the US many years ago. These techniques are necessary to obtain a
reasonable number of AM stations in our radio markets.
Wayne Stacey
Broadcast Consulting Engineer
Ottawa Canada
Talk1370
(Garrett Wollman) writes:
(on Canadian stations)
NARBA 1941 has been amended and re-amended to cut
stations on both sides of the border a lot more slack than they
used to have...we've all mutually agreed essentially to give each
other the same protection we give our own Class I stations (which
is a hell of a lot less than we used to). That means a 540 station
in the eastern US is possible, as long as it doesn't get into the
nighttime skywave area (about 1500 km radius) of CBK in
Saskatchewan. You have a similar situation with formerly
strictly protected CBW in Winnipeg; there's now a not terribly
directional full time 5,000 watt outlet on 990 in Rochester, NY
which has to worry more about co-channel protection of a
Tennessee station than it does about Winnipeg.
Bottom line is, a similar operation on 540 is possible in the
Northeast. Since the CBC French service on 540 in Windsor is
rumored to be a candidate for the chopping block due to relative
lack of potential audience, and may go dark, it could happen
even sooner. In a case like that you could even see a 550 station
like WGR make a run for it in order to run a looser night pattern,
or the 560 daytimer south of Detroit try to go fulltime on 540.
In the case of CKLW (according to what insiders there say)
it is considered the dominant station on 800 in the northern part
of the continent, with a Mexican border station dominant to the
south. Its DA-2 patterns were set in the late 40s with the idea of
accomodating regional stations to its east. CKLW's 50,000 watts
are moderately directionalized to cover Windsor, Sarnia, Detroit,
Flint, Toledo and Cleveland day and night. Signal is restricted a bit,
to the equivalent of 5,000 watts, to the east-northeast with the null
(such as it is, it's not much of a null) roughly toward Toronto
and Montreal. You have stations on 800 in Belleville, Montreal
and Quebec, all extremely tight to the north-northeast to screen
each other and CKLW, while CKLW (which is never very directional)
is clearly audible in the background even on the edge of those
stations' prime areas---get far enough west, somewhere around
Buffalo, and it's all you hear.
The error, if there is one, is allowing stations on the air knowing
CKLW is going to clobber them at night almost within sight of their
towers on the east-west plane. It's reminiscent of the way the FCC
stacked stations on 1510 in New England and 1260 between Cen-
tral New York and mid-Ohio. Those stations should have been
put somewhere else on the dial for their own good.
Joel Runes
to FM. Unless I am totally deluded, CBO used to be on 920 KHz but was
moved to FM for some reason I am unaware of. It doesn't make much of a
difference in town, but the old CBO was easy to receive in Mt. Tremblant
Provincial Park where the mountains interfered with the reception of
CBM.
Is there some consistent reason for these changes or is it merely a
coincidence?
Rene Kahle (ug93...@alpha11.scs.carleton.ca) wrote:
: Standard Broadcasting, who has a construction permit to move their Ottawa
: station ("54 Rock" - CJSB AM 540) to 106.9 FM, has fired up their FM
: transmitter. The FM station is identifying itself as "CKQB-FM 106.9
: Ottawa".
--
Joel Runes
z005...@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us
Joel Runes
prospect of not hearing Rush Limbaugh must be music to many people's
ears.
With respect to the goings-on at CBM, we can always hope that
the CBC goes back to 24-hour operations. Even if they replayed
highlights from Morningside and Gabareu, those away from the station
who can't receive the CBC signals during the day could hear the
programs at night.
Garrett Wollman (wol...@ginger.lcs.mit.edu) wrote:
Rene Kahle
Joel Runes <z005...@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us> wrote:
> It seems that there is a trend in Ottawa of stations moving from AM
>to FM. Unless I am totally deluded, CBO used to be on 920 KHz but was
>moved to FM for some reason I am unaware of.
>
> Is there some consistent reason for these changes or is it merely a
>coincidence?
I think it was 1991 when CBO moved from AM-920 to FM-91.5 and CBOF moved
from AM-1250 to FM-90.7, and now CJSB AM-540 has become CKQB FM-106.9.
I think it's just a coincidence that these happened in the same city.
The CRTC is not in the habit of allowing stations to move from AM to FM.
In fact, Standard Broadcasting claims that CJSB was the first commercial
radio station in Canada that was ever given permission to move from AM
to FM. (CBO, of course, is non-commercial.)
CBO, CBOF, and CJSB all used the argument that a move to FM would allow
the stations to better serve their market -- the Ottawa Valley. I can
vouch for that, because I live about 50km southwest of downtown Ottawa,
and I could barely pick up CJSB at night, and it was even noisy during
the day. I can now pick up CKQB in the basement with my Walkman!
CKQB took just about the last FM channel left in this area, 106.9 MHz,
which became available when the all-news CKO network went under nearly
five years ago. There are a few frequencies left that could handle
low-power stations. CBO and CBOF, being non-commercial, were able to
move to frequencies allocated for educational uses.
Ottawa only has three English AM stations left (one news/talk, one
all-hit, and an oldies station). There are also two French AM stations
in Hull. By contrast, the Ottawa-area has 14 FM stations. Only about
five years ago, there were fewer FM stations than AM stations!
--
Rene Kahle VA3RDK | Computer Science | ug93...@omega.scs.carleton.ca
RR #3, Ashton, Ont. | Carleton "U" | re...@igs.net
Talk1370
z005...@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us (Joel Runes) writes:
(on moving the AMs to FM)
There seems to be a policy of moving AM stations to FM
wherever possible in SOME markets, especially those markets like
Ottawa where a lot of FM allocations were sitting open...while the
AMs were operating with restrictive signal patterns (especially
at night) that didn't cover a lot of their metros. In other markets
stations are actively being encouraged to STAY on AM rather
than build on or migrate to the FM band.
Canadian broadcast pros I know tell me the idea is to put
everyone on FM where there's room and where the AMs have
to be too directional to cover the market...and to restrict the
number of FM licenses even below what's technically possible
in markets like Toronto where all the AMs are adequate to the
task of coverage and nearly all are economically viable.
They're not killing AM, just fostering it where it makes sense and let-
ting it dwindle where it doesn't do the job and FM does. A few
listeners on the fringes are going to lose service from that
kind of policy. The CRTC says this will be balanced by the
larger number of listeners in expanding metro areas who were
once screened out by directionalized AMs, who will be able to
pick up their FM replacements. I should add that no one is
being coerced to move out of the AM band in any market...just
offered a chance to move to FM if it's advantageous. Incidentally
this may let some other major market AMs both in Canada and
the US spread out their patterns if they no longer have to protect
other stations on the same or adjoining channels.
I can't wait to see what happens on 540 now that CJSB is about to go...
since a move to FM or a closedown MAY also be imminent
for the CBC French station on that channel in Windsor. My best
guess is that if all of that happens, someone will put a direc-
tional 50 kW station on that channel in the northeastern or
midwestern US, screening Saskatchewan, or someone at the
bottom end of the band on either side of the border (maybe WGR)
will move to 540 to bump up its power and spread out its night
pattern.