Why is the FCC not paying attention anymore to assigning frequencies?

[Road Hog]

In DFW there are only two open frequencies: 99.9 and 104.1 FM. Nobody wants to pay the auction fee for either, so both will remain open for the forseeable future. 104.1 used to be occupied by a Cumulus signal but they went dark a few years ago and Cumulus gave the license back to the FCC. 99.9 FM is a popular frequency for private Christmas light shows and an occasional pop-up pirate station that gets popped by the FCC on a regular basis.

[zachary_amaryllis]

couple of interesting local things on this subject..

once one enters the canyon i live in, all the denver stations go away. up here, we get a couple out of fort collins, and some good ones from laramie and cheyenne. you can't get the wyoming ones in town because denver clobbers them.

i use an fm-doohickey to play music off my phone since i have an older car that doesn't do bluetooth, and the tape player doesn't work, and no aux jack. in town, the doohickey often battles with radio stations, its hard to find a clear spot for it to do its thang.

[bandit957]

Here's another interesting note about local FM reception. When I was in high school, people were surprised that I regularly listened to Lexington's WLAP-FM, since most people listened to Cincinnati radio. Some kid at school who was a total idiot claimed this was because there was an electronics shop a couple blocks up from me that rebroadcast WLAP-FM.

He never explained why they would have chosen to rebroadcast that station, how they could have rebroadcast it at the same frequency they received it, or how this station covered the southern two-thirds of the county just as well. There were a few kids at school who lived a few miles from me who listened to it too.

I lived near the bottom of a big hill that sloped down from a major road and faced a little to the southeast. Maybe my reception was better because it bounced off the hill. I'm not sure though.

[hbelkins]

^^^

OTOH, while we had WKQQ-FM (98.1, Double Q), I always liked it when I was in range to get either WEBN from Cincinnati or a station from Louisville whose call letters were, i think, WQMF. Much better album-oriented rock stations, IMHO, than Double-Q.

[bwana39]

Back in high school, WLS-AM was my go-to station; remember, this was when it was still called "Musicradio 89". I knew the writing was on the wall, as a similar station in NYC had flipped to news/talk a few years before WLS did. Fortunately, I can still get the classic hits I grew up listening to on sister station WLS-FM 94.7, though lately I've been streaming it in Seattle.

Was John Records Landecker still on WLS when you listened?

My radio regimen was pretty much top 40. in the daytime either KLIF-1190 Dallas,710 KEEL Shreveport,  or KPLT 1490 Paris. KEEL was pretty week by the time it got to where I lived. At night , I had a few more options. WOAI 1200 San Antonio, WLAC 1510 Nashville, and WLS 890 Chicago. Sometimes some Mexican radio.

At different times, WFAA 570 Dallas and  KIMP 960 Mount Pleasant played something worth listening to.

When I finally got an FM radio it changed some. KPXI 100.7 Mount Pleasant was TERRIBLE, but it was powerful. KROK  94.5 (Now KRUF) and KMBQ 93.7 (Now KXKS)  from Shreveport were both rockers at one point or another. Especially KMBQ came in most of the time.  Sometimes on the right day you could either get Q102 KTXQ 102.1, the ZOO 98-KZEW (97.9) , the Eagle 97.1 KEGL, or even KVIL-FM 103.7 all from DFW.  Tyler had KTYL 93.1. It was not as terrible as KPXI, but it was there.

Then there was the worst all time station. KTAL-FM. 98.1 before 1986 it played ACR or something with no format type. They blasted out 100Kw of mono.  Then in 1986. It became 98-Rocks then "STEREO 98 Rocks" .

98 rocks is 35 years in as the HOME OF ROCK and ROLL. One thing. Texarkana is the city of license, but Shreveport Bossier is clearly the market. Sometimes there isn't even a good signal here in TXK.

[bwana39]

The bottom line is as long as the lawyers and engineers for adjoining signals and close frequency signals can agree, you can move existing licenses however you want as long as you can MARGINALLY service the city of license.

Yes, it is the wild wild west. Instead of gunfights, you have lawyers settling the fights the engineers create. Generally you pay the one you are interfering with to move the other direction, change to a different frequency, install a tailored directional antenna,   or just take a stipend to ignore the interference.

Community or public service is of minimal import with commercial radio (or tv as far as that goes) today.

[bandit957]

I have a vague memory from the late '70s of family members listening to AM stations from Lexington, Louisville, or Dayton - sometimes on a car radio.

When I was growing up in the '70s, '80s, and early '90s, the biggest (often only) FM top 40 station in Cincinnati was WKRQ (Q-102). But it seemed like they had a playlist of about 6 songs, and I thought other top 40 stations had a better music selection. In middle school, my fave station was WCLU, which was a tiny AM station where records skipped all the time. When I was in high school, I always listened to WLAP-FM of Lexington. In my later high school years, WAQZ was briefly a satellite-fed top 40 as "The Heat", but running off a satellite all the time isn't exactly the stuff of legends.

And the whole idea of city of license has turned into a complete joke. It's the biggest dog and pony show in any field of American law. Nobody follows it anymore.

[bandit957]

I thought of another top 40 station that I almost never think about anymore. Briefly around 1984-85, WPFB-FM in Middletown was top 40. I listened to it a little bit, since we could usually pick it up pretty well. I always called it WRTS, because it was obsessed with playing "Romancing The Stone" by Eddy Grant constantly. The rest of the time they were always playing Howard Jones.

[dvferyance]

I agree I am starting to get so annoyed with these overlapping stations I don't know why they are even being allowed. Here in the SW Milwaukee suburbs. I used to be able to get 96.1 well out of Lake Geneva but now it's hard to get due to the WGLB FM transmitter on 96.1. WZOK Rockford on 97.5 used to go almost as far east as OHare but now it only goes as far as Hoffman Estates due to another transmitter in Chicago on 97.5. They are plenty of other examples but it would take too long to explain them no need anyways you get the idea. Given WLW's very powerful signal it makes no sense to me why they would need an FM transmitter. At night they can be heard in like the whole eastern half of the country no issue there. Same can be said about WLAC in Nashville and WSB in Atlanta. However I don't necessarily agree with that nobody outside the Cincinnati area listens to WLW. They have had the same signal pattern for like 90-100 years now I see no reason to change it. I live outside the Chicago area and listen to WIND and WLS quite often as programs like Dennis Prager, Charlie Kirk, Larry Elder, Dan Bongino and Ben Shapario are not carried in Milwaukee.

[Henry]

Back in high school, WLS-AM was my go-to station; remember, this was when it was still called "Musicradio 89". I knew the writing was on the wall, as a similar station in NYC had flipped to news/talk a few years before WLS did. Fortunately, I can still get the classic hits I grew up listening to on sister station WLS-FM 94.7, though lately I've been streaming it in Seattle.

Was John Records Landecker still on WLS when you listened?

Yes, he was. In fact, he was there when it flipped to news/talk a year after I graduated from high school.

Of course, I remember being mocked by my friends who listened to WLS' crosstown rival B96, but my parents didn't like any of the music that was playing on the latter station, and they even went far to quote Bob Seger: "Today's music ain't got the same soul".

[zachary_amaryllis]

And the whole idea of city of license has turned into a complete joke. It's the biggest dog and pony show in any field of American law. Nobody follows it anymore.

107.9 in this area has been a lot of things over the years. i remember when it was an elevator music channel. the transmitter is atop a nearby mountain. now, what used to be denver's kbpi ('kbpi rrrrrrrrrocks the rrrrrrockies") is on it, even though they say they're a denver station. barely receivable there now.

kpaw says they're from 'warren afb' in cheyenne, but points squarely at fort collins.

[ftballfan]

This is now fixed, but between the digital transition and the repack, WCMW and WCWF (both full-power stations) were both on RF 21 and are less than 80 miles apart (and most of that 80 miles is over Lake Michigan). During the repack, WCMW moved to RF 20 while WCWF moved to RF 15.