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Georgia
media industry news & comment. |
Updated
12/06/18
Blog: Atlanta
stations no one knows about.
When you ask the people around
Atlanta, hey have you listen to “the surge”, “the classic
sound of star”, “the lake” “the breeze”, “99x”, “Atlanta’s
soft favorites” or “the other side of the river” chances are
they will have no idea what you are talking about.
It’s because HD radio after being
available for over thirteen years it’s as if they don’t
exists. With very little promotion outside the few spots
from the HD Radio Alliance from a few years ago it seems
like an afterthought.
Even tuning in to some of those
stations I’ve listed some have been playing a very short and
blown out playlist, voiceovers that are as old as the HD
medium itself and often times dead air for hours, days and
even weeks on end.
The only HD channels any company cares
about are the ones “feeding” the FM translators and let's
not even get into the horrible sound these stations have
with it's extremely narrow bandwidth that makes Ham Radio
sound like a HQ .flac file.
Moreover some of the channels I’ve
listen to seem to be self-advertising “hey we’re a new
station playing bla, bla, and its free, no commercials, no
annoying DJ’s, no fun whatsoever, so listen” to the people
already tuned in.
The spirit of Yogi Berra is alive and
well with some of these program directors who put this stuff
together some even voice these channels themselves. It’s
like the old adage If Dane Cook is in a forest all by
himself telling jokes is he still unfunny?
Atlanta radio late fall update highlights
-WYZE-AM (1480) signs off the
air after 80+ years in service citing signal problems making
it Atlanta's 3 AM signal to fall silent after WTJH (1260,
replaced by WMDG) and WMLB (1690).
-WBZY-FM (105.3) tweaks format to a
younger skewing Spanish language format (see previous
comments below about similar tweaks and simulcasts).
-WSTR-HD-2 (94.1 HD-2) becomes
Atlanta's only fulltime 'non-religious' Christmas music
station again for the third year in a row.
-94.9 HD-2 which had been silent is
airing a locally programmed Adult Hits format
with no ID's at this time. (update: 94.9 is now branded as
"the lake" with a "we play everything" tag.
[Click
Here for audio of TOH] aprox size 300kb
-94.9 HD-3 has dropped its simulcast
of WGST and is now airing an Adult Contemporary format
branded as "the breeze" to brand-block any other
station (like those owned by Entercom) use of the name in
Atlanta.) WGST is not currently airing on any HD channel at
this time. [Click
Here for audio of a sweep] aprox size
300kb ---
--- (note: curious as to why they
decided not to brand-block the "Peach" name, seems if anyone
wished to launch an AC/Soft station in Atlanta that catered
to an older demo that would be the perfect brand name to
use.)
SiMan leaves U-One
SiMan has announced during the
GRHOF dinner this past weekend that he was leaving
Urban-One. SiMan was with Majic from the start in 2009 and
its predecessor Urban AC/Talk “Grown Folks Radio 102.5” as
evening host. He moved to “Grown Folks Radio” after a stint
at cross-town then Urban Oldies station Kiss 104.1.
As reported last week Ryan Cameron is
to make his radio return to Majic in afternoons beginning
the first of November while SiMan and Chubb Rock would
return to nights but those plans have changed.
No word yet what SiMan’s next move
might be, he perhaps may return to Kiss 104.1 or even Mix
87.7, However Cox Media has been on a personnel purge in
recent months after the news of them getting out of the
media business altogether.
A new AM signal replaces
an old Joy
After the FCC in 2010 deleted
WTJH "We're the Joy House" an Urban Gospel station at 1260
AM, a new station has filled it's dial position as WMDG
moves in from Cartersville in Bartow County to the north of
Atlanta.
Formerly 'News Talk 1270' is now AM
1260 currently airing a Contemporary Religious format with
no other identification except the TOH which simply says "WMDG
East Point." [Audio
of TOH] aprox size 400kb
Ryan Cameron returns to
97.5 and U-One
After sitting out his
non-compete with CBS/Entercom, Ryan has returned to his old
stomping grounds at Urban-One. Ryan joins Majic 107.5/97.5
for afternoons the current show hosted by SiMan & Chubb Rock
will return to nights.
Ryan Joined then Radio-One back in
January of 1996 to host mornings at newly launched "Hot
97.5" WHTA replacing Art Terrell who was the stations first
morning host. Ryan quickly gained traction at the station to
become one of the most popular morning shows in Atlanta in
the late 90's.
He also hosted a teen youth talk show
that aired Monday nights called Check Yourself dealing with
social issues concerning teens and young adults. This will
be the second time that Ryan's voice will be heard on the
97.5 frequency.
Just to note in 1997 while Ryan was at
Hot 97.5 Radio-One was in the process of launching a new
signal that was to become the northern simulcast of Hot
97.5, banners and tee-shirts had been printed in
anticipation of the new simulcast.
However it would end up becoming the
first incarnation of Majic at 107.5 with an Urban Oldies
format before becoming Atlanta's Smooth Jazz station after
the format was killed off from Cox Media's Jazz Flavors
104.1 WJZF in the year 2000.
Majic would return as an Urban AC
format in 2009 after absorbing sister station Urban AC/Talk
"Grown Folks Radio 102.5."
La Raza in Country out at
107.1.
 The
simulcast of Cox Media's 106.1 WNGC "Your Georgia Country"
as ended on Women's World Broadcasting's 107.1 WTSH and in
now simulcasting Davis Broadcasting's La Raza 102.3/100.1 on
an LMA.
The move expands the Regional Mexican
programming to the west of Atlanta from Cobb County to just
over the Alabama Line just east of Fort Payne AL. This
move coincides with earlier reports of Cox Media exiting out
of Radio and TV in the near future.
Note: This move puzzles me as I have
stated earlier this year with the biggest loser in Atlanta
Radio, I-Heart's 105.3 barely breaking into the 1 shares over
the past 10 years as the Hispanic population continues to
integrate itself into American culture and language.
One wonders who will be listening to
this station, who are they catering to especially in the
most heavily Spanish speaking populated city of Rome Georgia?!?!?
/sarcasm/
Blog: SOCIAL
MEDIA IS DEAD
It wasn’t just over 5 years ago that so-called media critics
and bloggers preached about ALL radio BRANDS must be on
SOCIAL MEDIA or ELSE! The problem with how these people view
social media as a must is quite disturbing. The true
statement should be that; no Radio and TV doesn’t need
social media to stay solvent, never needed to.
Social media sites to me are like a
loaf of bread (Forrest Gump moment), they can be useful for awhile but after some time they become stale and moldy and
serve no purpose at all. The biggest problem that I see is
the over reliance of social media in almost every on-air
break for one reason or another always has to have some
mention of a post on a social site.
Radio should and always be the creator
of content not the reciprocator of it. Social media isn’t a
bad thing when used in conjunction with any field but
understand that you have no control over what is posted and
what you post.
You DON’T own the page you have set up
for your brand; you have no rights on those platforms to
post what you want, when you want and how much you want. As
we’ve seen over the past few months with all the government
hearings over content on those platforms and the subsequent
bans we need to end our (heavy) reliance of that which we
have no governance over.
Okay yeah this blog headline is a bit
clickbaity but it’s proving more of my points.
WIGO-AM 1570 has returned on the air
WIGO AM 1570 the urban variety
station has returned to the air at reduced power as they
work to repair their tower which collapsed back in the
spring.
Cumulus really, really wants back on the air.
 The
Cumulus/Gradick drama seems to be never ending after getting
no headway with the FCC trying to return the W255CJ (98.9)
translator back on the air in it's current form.
Cumulus has submitted
an application to reduce the power of the translator to
180watts from it's current 250w, along with a major null to
the west as to prevent any interference with Gradick's WWGA
(98.9) signal.
The new signal would
still cover in entire inside I-285 perimeter as well as
trample over (albeit slightly less) three LPFM signals
including WGRU-LP 99.1 in Riverdale, Ga preventing any of
those signals from being audible in more populated areas.
Stay tuned!
Herman Cain retires from
WSB Radio
The 2013
replacement of Neal Boortz; Herman Cain is leaving WSB Radio
on Friday (8/3) the 72 year old has seen his show cut back
from three hours down to just one after Cox Media decided to
give former Regular Guy Eric Von Haessler as weekday show.
Eric will now expand
into a full three hour show starting next week. Eric who's
political leanings are better matching of Neal's
Libertarianism than Cain's Conservative one.
Ratings for WSB AM/FM
have greatly improved since moving Eric to mid mornings
first doing a one hour show at 11am as a lead into Rush
Limbaugh to swapping with Herman back in the beginning of
the year from 9-11am.
Herman started doing a
local weekend show on WGKA 920 AM less than 10 years
ago before moving to WSB as a weeknight host. Herman left
radio to pursue a run for the white house before returning
to WSB Radio at the end of 2012.
Like Boortz Herman
will offer daily commentary for WSB AM/FM as well as doing a
daily podcast.
Cox Media Group to sell
all TV properties.
In a press
release sent out today (7/24) Cox Media is planning to spin
off all of it's TV properties while retaining it's radio and
newspapers for now.
In what some are
wrongfully calling a stunning announcement It's one that has
been a long time coming. As TV audiences continue to
decrease with streaming services taking more of the market
share.
Local over the air
(OTA) stations have been struggling to keep and retain their
audiences for quite sometime. This has also created the
perfect storm for conglomerates to take in most if not all
of the properties to at least make them profitable as a
whole.
Companies like Gray
Communications and Sinclair Broadcast Group are most likely
to benefit from the smaller companies like Cox Media, Raycom
and Tribune selling off their properties.
Its ironic that it was
exactly 20 years ago this year that radio was in the middle
of dealing with the same fate as Clear Channel was on a
buying spree for all small radio companies those who no
longer exists like AM/FM, Paxon, Chancellor, Jacor among
others.
Rumor also has it that
Cox plans to spin off all of its remaining radio and
newspapers in the coming years with some of its properties
interconnected like WSB-AM/TV in Atlanta and WDBO-FM/ WFTV-TV
Orlando/Daytona Beach.
It seems likely that
it will happen sooner rather than later. Look for a ton of
layoffs to take place both high profile and behind the
scenes. This is just the tip of the iceberg look for more of
these announcements in the near future. [Read
More]
Jamie Dupree returns to the radio, kind of.
For those who
have not followed this story it's one of horror for any one
of us who works in radio. Our voices are our money maker and
when someone loses theirs it's as devastating as it could
ever get.
That's just what
happened to Cox Media's Jamie Dupree, Washington reporter
for WSB-AM Atlanta as well as WOKV Jacksonville, WDBO
Orlando and others. Jamie through some freak unknown
situation lost his voice one day back in 2016.
Since then he has just
been recording audio from various congressmen and writing
blogs for Cox' various news radio sites. After hospital
hopping to no avail all was pretty much lost when it came to
his voice.
However a company
overseas that makes text to speech programs was able to use
the years of audio Jamie had recorded to create a 'brand new
voice' for him.
He calls it 'Jamie
2.0' think NOAA Weather radio but instead of a generic
Imperfect Paul voice it's Jamie's. He admits it's not perfect
shall we say Imperfect Jamie? However it gets him back on
the radio once again.
[Read More]
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Trading Status:
Limited Trading
Rules
for traders:
1) I accept
airchecks in various forms; cassettes, VHS, CD/DVD
(Audio/Data) and MP3 (encoded at the highest bitrate
possible. (192k and higher)
Make sure if you are
using a computer to encode airchecks that there are no other
programs running in the background such as OS updates or
anti-virus apps or anything that uses a lot of RAM, as this
will lead to dropped bytes making the audio stutter or parts
of the audio missing.
Make sure you silence
your os' error sounds and if you can while encoding your
airchecks just leave your computer alone until it's done
this will ensure a clean rip of your recordings.
Also please don't add
your own custom jingles to the airchecks as they are
annoying and will always get removed or do too much to
manipulate the airchecks unless it's to correct the speed or
EQ.
The best way to encode
your airchecks to MP3 without a computer is to use a digital
recorder, I use the
CC-Witness and
Tascam DR-05 both are relatively cheap but work wonders
just be careful to keep good audio levels.
Pro-tip when using the
CC-Witness to record AM Radio use a passive AM loop antenna
like the one I have they mostly run under $30. Just rest
the CC inside the loop use the tuning knob on the antenna to
get the signal as clean as you can.
Also try to stay away
from anything electrical and for best pick up if you can
record outside away from buildings and electrical wiring in
the back yard.
2) If you request first you send your stuff out first.
I have been burned to many times, If you want to
know my record please don't be afraid to ask the people on
the Radio-insight Aircheck's web board.
3) All airchecks I
request should be unscoped.
4) 3 aircheck maximum will be allotted,
unless specified.
Note about longer
airchecks.
Some airchecks
are as long as 5 to 16 hours. These files are much to
large for me to upload.
So if you request those I will have to snail mail them
to you on a mp3 data disk. However I can chop
them down to a smaller size so I can upload them if you wish.
>How
To Start a Collection
I have
tons of scoped airchecks and bits and pieces of
radio station audio that just wasn't long enough to put into
my main collection so I have uploaded it all to a separate
page called Free Audio, also
showcasing current AM music radio stations.
Click Here
Auroral and Sporadic E Monitor
| Max
MUF Today: |
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| Auroral
DX: |
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| Es
in Europe: |
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Es in USA: |
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Geomag.
Field: |
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Click
Here for the TV Aircheck List and Tapeables from Atlanta's
DTV stations...!
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Deadbeat's List:
1) Alex Clarke (2018)
Note: Had never traded with him before
but gave him a chance in good faith I sent his
request to him but he never sent me mine, after
several follow ups and after he continuously
spammed my inbox with more request I had to
block him.
~Jason |
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