New Seattle AM music station KVI 570
 

Hits of 60's 70's, and they are announcing that DJs will be there in January. It's only 5KW, but all the time, day/night. This gives me 2 listenable stations for the antique radios in this town, the other KIXI 880.

Now, if they would put music back on the AM radio dial in Cleveland. All we have here on AM anymore is talk, sports, religion and Radio Disney, like most major US metro areas. The only AM music station I can get here these days is AM 740 in Toronto. There was a 50kW "Music of Your Life" station on 850 in Cleveland, but about five years ago it switched to ESPN sports, and has been a sports talk station since. Is there any chance that WKVI will be streaming on the Internet once it changes to oldies? :scratch2:

Yes KVI streams ( the stream is about 30 seconds or so behind the actual broadcast):

http://www.kvi.com/

jr

I live near Austin, Texas and the only AM music station left here(with music I like) is a AM/FM simulcast out of San Antonio. I have to use my 6 tube(with RF amp stage) antique radios to pick it up. I hope the station does not get tired of paying the AM electric bill.

That AM/FM simulcast may not last long. Many times radio stations duplicate their programming on AM and FM when they are between formats; when one of the stations (usually the FM) finally settles on its new format the simulcast ends, leaving the other station to go to talk, sports, religion, or to go silent altogether. This has happened several times in the Cleveland area, and when the dust settled the AM station almost always has switched to some non-music format (as did a suburban Cleveland 500-watt station on 1330 about five years ago--it went from oldies to satellite talk, and has not looked back).

As I write this, the AM radio dial in the greater Cleveland area, to say nothing of the city itself, is almost 100 percent talk, sports or religion. There is still a music station on 1260 that used to be 5kW top-40, but today it carries Radio Disney. It's music, all right, but the format is not to my liking (the station is described on RadioStationWorld.com as "teen pop" and I am 54 years old, although I do remember and used to listen to 1260 when I was a teenager in suburban Cleveland during the 1970s).

BTW, if your favorite SA station drops your favorite music any time after January 3 next year, you can hear KVI 570 in Seattle over their Internet stream. Most stations in major US cities, especially those operated by media conglomerates such as Clear Channel, et al. have Internet audio streams these days, so even if you are out of OTA listening range you can still hear the programming. Look at RadioStationWorld.com's listings for your area; if there is a loudspeaker icon near the station's callsign, that station streams over the Internet during at least part of its broadcast day. Note, however, that many of these audio streams require Windows Media Player 11 or some other modern media player compatible with Windows XP or better to be heard properly, or at all. I found this out from sad experience, as some stations I would really like to listen to over the Web require media players that simply are not compatible with my 11-year-old Windows 98 system.

In the very early '90's, 102.1 went on the air as an adult contemporary/lite rock station. It seems like that station was changing formats every time the wind changed direction and it's last format was classic country from a satellite feed. Then, the station went silent for several months. Recently, it came back on the air and it's programming is nothing more than a simulcast of 910 AM, which is political talk radio.

On 1390 AM, there's a southern gospel station and that station has been some sort of gospel station for the past 25 years. Recently, they started simulcasting on an LPFM frequency on 93.something. And, the FM station actually sounds worse than the AM station.

If you do have a decent music station in your area, consider yourself lucky. The last decent music AM station that we had was WYLS. In early 2005, they switched to automated black gospel and have never looked back, despite the many thousands of calls and letters from angry listeners. Before that, we had WMOX, which switched from music to 100% talk in the mid '90's. WQIC-1450 was a black programmed station; but, they played decent R&B/soul from the old days. That station was sold in the early '90's and has had numerous call letters and format changes since then. They are now black gospel. WNBN-1290 is a locally owned station and has been black gospel since it signed on in '88. And, WMER-1350 is currently southern gospel and has been a gospel station for 25+ years. Before that, they were WFEZ and played easy listening music. WALT-910 is now talk; but, they used to be black gospel and rap/r&b before they were gospel. Actually, 910 was home to WCOC, which was one of the oldest stations in the area and remained on the air until it was sold in '73. So, our current AM line-up consist of 2 talk stations, 3 black gospel stations, and 1 southern gospel station. And, I don't mean any offense; but, do we really need 3 black gospel stations in one market? I don't think so! No more than we need the 3 or 4 modern "country" stations that are on the FM dial. There is an oldies station (1150, IIRC) out of Tuscaloosa, AL; but, it is very hard to receive and is very noisy even when I can bring it in.

Actually, KVI has already switched and is playing 60s-70s Music. right now, it is pretty minimal, sorta like an iPod in "random" mode. Beginning Jan 3, it will start to sound like a "real" radio station... Here is a clip from All Access:

KVI (570 AM) Goes Oldies On Nov. 8th

"FISHER COMMUNICATIONS Talk KVI-A SEATTLE will flip to Oldies on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 8th, becoming "SEATTLE’s Greatest Hits 570 KVI” -- the first Music, News, Personality and Information station on SEATTLE’s AM dial." TRAVIS BOX will stay on as PD.

The on-air staff, which will debut on JAN. 3rd, 2011, will feature SEATTLE personalities including TOM HUTYLER (KJR and KOMO) and MARINA ROCKINGER (KBSG and KOMO) in the morning; 20-year vet and former KBSG talent MARK CHRISTOPHER will do afternoons and KJR legend RIC HANSEN will do nights . SUE ROMERO (KBSG and KOMO), BILL RICE (KJR and KOMO) and ANA KELLY (KBSG, KOMO and KPLZ) will provide local news, traffic and information.

"There was a huge opening on the SEATTLE AM radio dial for an Oldies format station and the exciting addition of SEATTLE’s Greatest Hits 570 KVI is another unique way for parent company FISHER COMMUNICATIONS to serve the community," BOX said.

FISHER RADIO/SEATTLE VP/GM JIM CLAYTON added, "We are pleased to return full-service AM Radio to SEATTLE and 570 KVI’s format change presents a huge opportunity for FISHER’s group of radio stations to enhance their overall success." "

jr

It sounds like that station will be like what AM radio used to be, with real DJ's instead of the typical satellite loop programming that's so common today. WYLS actually had real DJ's and most of them had been in radio for decades. That came to an end the day they flipped to automated black gospel.

It's sad what's happened to radio. If a station is getting a real live DJ, that means salaries, a back-up guy, extra equipment, benefits, holidays, etc. etc. Lots cheaper to subscribe to an automated service.

I remember when FM was coming in during the fifties, we had a station in town broadcasting on AM and FM. The AM station was news, music with DJ's, local baseball at night during the season (no network affiliation.) FM was a record changer playing muzak-like music. You could hear the changer cycle and drop the records from the pickup catching the vibrations. Every now and then the needle would stick and the music went round and round and round until somebody woke up and noticed.

The local AM station in my area (actually, it's about five miles from me) runs automated black gospel and has the worst sounding announcers I have ever heard on commercial radio. For example, the station has an hourly announcement that identifies the station as "fourteen sixty, doubleya-ABQ"; sounds like the "announcer" is a young girl with no broadcasting experience whatsoever and a terrible voice. It's a darn shame, since this station used to be a full-service local station with live DJs, playing top-40 music with news at the top of every hour and community news updates throughout the day. It was sold at least twice, served for a year or so as a local relay for a classical FM station that moved to a frequency unlistenable anywhere east of Cleveland, and was most recently sold to its current owners who do not seem to care beans about quality radio. This is something I've mentioned here before, and it is an extremely sad commentary on what is happening to AM radio in the US these days.

I read Reece's comments regarding the FM station in his area that used a record changer to provide the music, and was amazed. That sounds like something an inexperienced kid would do to get a 100-milliwatt (0.1 watt) Part 15 AM station on the air; it is no way to program a commercial FM station. Most automated stations use taped programming from reputable music services, which does not skip grooves as phonograph records can; however, the music stopping when the tape breaks or ends, with no clue to the listeners that there is a problem, is today's equivalent. I also wonder how this "automated" station in Reece's area handled it when the changer played the entire stack of records and ran out of music in the middle of the night, or after hours, when there was no engineer available to restock the changer with new platters. There must have been plenty of times when the station was broadcasting little more than dead air when that sort of thing would happen at 3 a.m., or some other unearthly hour of the morning.

Don't even get me started on the formats of local stations...Round here, its Bible beaters, Bible beaters, Bible beaters, Bible beaters, Bible beaters, Country, country, country, country, news/talk, sports, another couple Bible beaters & another country, & MAYBE ONE station that plays music where they DON'T love Houn Dogs or their Trucks, or have their heads up Jeebus' rear end...Aaaaargh....

Turns out, here in Seattle, a "classic rock" FM station KJR is now playing non-stop Xmas music. Wonder if they're getting ready to change formats? According to the FCC, KJR-FM is owned by "CITICASTERS LICENSES, INC." and KVI is owned by "FISHER BROADCASTING - SEATTLE RADIO, L.L.C.". Unless these companies are just fronts for some bigger single company, maybe there is no connection between KVI switching formats and KJR maybe changing formats after Xmas. If they in fact are really owned by the same company, then such a connection would be very likely, as some marketing types in some conference room hatched the plot... "We'll move oldies to our AM station KVI and put Rush in living stereo on our FM station..." :scratch2:

Fisher is an old Seattle based broadcast company (started in the 20s) that owns many radio and TV stations in the NW, Northern California and Montana as well. Citycasters has been a part of Clear Channel for several years... doubt that there is a "backroom plot" here. :D

Every year it seems like many stations switch to an "all Christmas" format earlier. From All Access, the "winner" for this year:

"ARTISTIC MEDIA PARTNERS Oldies WSMM (OLDIES 102.3 THE STREAM)/SOUTH BEND officially becomes the first station to flip the format to all-CHRISTMAS music.

As of YESTERDAY (10/19) at 2p ET, THE STREAM is now NORTH POLE RADIO and is playing CHRISTMAS music 24/7 now through DECEMBER 25th."

jr

PS: KVI has likely not been making much money since about six years ago when Entercom got Limbaugh for KTTH.

So much is owned by Entercomm and Clear Channel in N.O. it's a lot of the same automated crap. We have an extraordinary number of stations for our market size, but not much variety:

Religious or Gospel: 600, 750, 800, 940, 1010, 1060, 1280,
Sports Talk: 690, 870, 990, 1350, 1560
Hispanic: 830, 1540
News or Talk: 690, 870, 990, 1230
Radio Disney: 1450

A station in Franklinton, WOMN 1100 has filed a construction permit to move to my town, Chalmette. Currently they play classic country I think. Don't think that's what they'll market to New Orleans though.

The AM/FM simulcast has lasted for at least 3 years, supprising me. The AM station goes very low power at night, so I cannot receive it, but at least it is available(for now) during the day.

I have used my computer to stream material from the local radio stations. I have XP and Vista on my computers. XP is on the one that is connected to the internet. My Windows 98 computer was zapped by lightning several years ago and re-cycled(while on a surge protector). I still have the hard drive from it to prevent someone from getting social security numbers and such.

I just looked at the listing on RadioLocator.com for WOMN, and found that the construction permit is for a 50kW daytime signal, lower power and three different signal patterns -- one pattern for use from sunrise to sundown, the second for sundown to sunrise and the third for critical hours (two hours before local sunrise and two hours before local sunset). If that station moves to Chalmette (they'd better hurry if they intend to make the move, as the CP expires some time next year) you will get more signal from it than you'd ever need, which might play heck with your cable TV (although the cable company would probably put a trap in the main feed to your house to filter out the AM station's signal). I lived in the Cleveland suburb of Cleveland Heights for three years in the early 1970s. There was an FM radio station on the next street over from me (which also happened to be the main street of town) whose towers were visible from my bedroom window at night, when the red signal lights were on. Anyway, that station got into my TV on channel 6 (the station's carrier frequency was 92.3 MHz, but the signal was so strong it just blasted its way into the TV tuner -- very strong RF signals have a bad habit of pulling this trick if you are very near a powerful transmitter). The signal also came in beautifully on a stereo FM radio I had, not only on its fundamental frequency, but between every other local Cleveland FM station as well. I tried putting a small carbon resistor in the antenna line, hoping to attenuate the signal somewhat so it wouldn't cover the entire dial; no luck--the signal was just too strong (the station ran 27.5 kW ERP and the antenna [only one tower], as I said, was just about a third of a mile or less from where I was living at the time). The only way I was able to get rid of this nuisance was when we moved three years later, in 1975. The signal was also strong enough to get into the audio amplifier stages in my dad's Ampex Micro 88 solid-state stereo tape deck; this all but ruined a recording he was making of a musical program at our church.

BTW, there do not seem to be any country-western stations in the New Orleans area, according to the list of stations in your post; however, I found, on RadioStationWorld.com, two C&W (country/western) stations on FM in the area, as well as one AM C&W station in a suburb of the city, so your area is not totally without country music.

WOMN might stay with its C&W format yet; with a 50kW signal, it could serve the entire New Orleans area quite well, at least during the day. I don't know, however, how large the city of New Orleans is, or the greater NO area for that matter; if the city and its suburbs put together make up a very large metropolitan area, then WOMN's 50kW daytime signal (and its lower power night pattern) could make for some very tough competition for listeners between it and the other C&W AM in town.

Jeff, in the 1950's FM was nowheresville in most small towns and people didn't know much what to make of it. Also, most stations signed on at 6AM and off at midnight (except for some daytimers.) There were half a dozen AM stations in my immediate area (Beaumont, TX, then around 100,000 population) and then comes along this FM station that nobody could hear, except the few that had bought a radio that just happened to have the FM band on it, that most people didn't know what it did. It wasn't going to pay in the beginning to set up a complex arrangement to a deaf audience. The FM station that used the record changer used a corner of the AM station's studio so the changer was monitored and the stack changed. A lot of people back then thought FM meant "fine music" and so this really was a sort of Muzak substitute; IIRC the music was all syrupy instrumentals, think Mantovani, etc. And, of course, the source for DJ and other music in those days was vinyl: in the case of DJ's, two manual turntables with 45's on them. There were 1/4" tape decks for recorded commercials, etc.

By the late '50's and early '60's in my area, FM was being "figured out" and a Houston station played exclusively classical music. FM was pretty much classical with pop etc. on AM until around the '70's.

Another thing was most early FM sets I've found have been VERY insensitive...They seem to be set up to pick up local stations only, to take advantage of FM's higher audio frequency response.

I enjoy listening to KYA @1200 kiloCYCLES (lol) both on AM and on the net even tho the station is located in 'Frisco and I am in the L.A. area, about 450 miles south, the fading doesn't bother me, listening on one of my AA5's.
They play continuous '50's - 70's oldies, and antique commercials from the '60's.

Another good station is on Friday and Saturday nights. They are on FM 98.5, or on the net. Fridays from 9 pm PST to about 3 am, playing '40's to '70's stuff, and Saturdays, midnight PST to 3 am, all '50's.

Well, today Seattle FM station KJR ( I like the call letters) switched to "oldies 95.7"... This might be somewhat of a blow to KVI 570 AM.
jr

I think Zenith's FM radios from about 1960 to 1970 or so, particularly the MJ1035 and C845 (from 1965 and 1960, respectively), are quite sensitive; Zenith was not one to cut corners on anything they designed, built and marketed, as long as the original Zenith Radio Corporation existed. I have a C845 that can get FM stations from 50-60 miles away using its built in antenna with no trouble at all, and the sound is very good. I live near Lake Erie and can often hear FM stations from Canada (SW Ontario), Detroit, Toledo, Ohio,et al., as well as all Cleveland stations, on this radio when the band opens up.

I have a feeling that the C845 and other high-end Zenith table and console FM sets must have sold like hotcakes in radio fringe areas, because of their excellent sensitivity and selectivity. Both the C845 and MJ1035 have RF amplifiers ahead of the antenna, and both have RF stages on AM and FM. However, the MJ1035 uses two separate RF stages for each frequency band, whereas the C845 uses a single tube (6BJ6) as an RF amp, switched between AM and FM as necessary. Even my Zenith R-70 AM/FM transistor portable, from 1980, will pull in FM stations like crazy under good propagation conditions, even though it does not have an RF stage on AM. The only thing I don't like about it is the lack of an AFC defeat switch.

I think the reason why this set is so good in this regard (excellent FM sensitivity/selectivity) is that it has four IF stages on FM and at least two on AM. It is probably the best transistor AM/FM portable I have seen in years, even though it was built to Zenith's standards by the company's subsidiary in Korea at the time. However, I do think that the R-70 may have been one of the last really good FM portables to bear the Zenith name, as by the mid-1980s the company had gone out of the radio business and left Chicago for good.

I think that is just the Muntz factor, those manufacturers cheaping out. As otehrs have mentioned, Zenith spent the money to make quality FM sets.

Speaking of cheapening out, I have a couple of GE AM/FM sets that use a single tube as both one of the FM IF amplifiers and the FM RF amplifier. One of these chassis is part of a TV/phono/radio set that cost $500 in 1950! As I am near some strong FM stations these work ok, except for warmup drift(no AFC in 1950).

As mentioned, Zenith did make some quality sets at time(still no AFC though). However some of the lower cost Zenith sets used the 12BE6 tube for both the AM and FM converter(unlike the higher cost sets using the 12AT7). In my experience, these cheaper sets seem to have more drift issues.

Possibly at that time, Zenith considered AFC an unnecessary "crutch" to obtain stability. Good design involving the proper temperature coefficient capacitors, could result in a stable FM receiver, without introducing distortion producing AFC circuitry. The best component tuners of the period did not use AFC.

jr

PS: Some Decent Pix of a Marantz 10B on this listing.... no AFC switch!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Marantz-...item5195a06770

Not affiliated,
jr

Funny you mention this. I have several Zenith AM/FM radios from around 1950. Among the more expensive sets, I have a couple that are rock solid, needing no re-tuning as they warm up. The others seem to need a touch up once they are warm.

I did notice that there is a capacitor with a negative TC listed in the Sams. I suspect this is not working quite as it should(or the 50 year old tubes are drifting to much) in the ones that need a touchup.

Another thing to remember is that at this time, there were no solid state components(other than selenium rectifiers), so it would have been fairly costly to add AFC to a table radio.

I figured that they'd stop with the Xmas music on Dec 26th. They went full time Xmas music a week before Thanksgiving. The way stations quickly drop Xmas music on Dec 26th I figured that there must be an FCC regulation about it :D So they returned to oldies (they called it something else like classic hits). Full time Xmas music sometimes signals a format change.

That is true but not a reliable indicator, as a majority of stations return to "normal" programming after Christmas. The biggest clue in this case was when Clear Channel fired the KJR program director 5 days before Christmas... Merry Christmas Clear Channel !:no:
jr

Just odd, to see a post on a local radio station i listen to.

But yes, theres nothing, or very little on am anymore. But im glad to just pick this up on my shop radio, a little old 1937 zenith, caseless, girl.