Cleveland, OH - HDTV - Page 103

I found what appears to be a former AM array in Seven Hills in a residential neighborhood off of Rockside Road on Google Earth. (41°24'30.50"N 81°40'22.90"W) Was that 1260's original/daytime transmitter? And if I understand correctly, they later built a nighttime transmitter in Brecksville which is now the current daytime/nighttime transmitter for WWMK.

That's it! You had a very astute observation. I took a look at Google maps myself and can see the old access drive that lead to the now empty lot at the end of Rockhaven Dr. The nighttime transmitter was always the location in Brecksville along Snowville RD next to I-77. WRDZ just moved the daytime pattern to the existing nighttime site.

BTW that was not "1260's" original daytime site. Before it was WIXY 1260 began it's life as WDOK. It was after 1260 became WIXY that the daytime site was moved north to Seven Hills in an effort to get a better signal to the northeast (Euclid & Lake County).

FYI: 1260's pattern was a severe figure 8 to protect co-channel stations in Erie and Indianapolis. The narrow portion of the "8" is so bad you lose the signal dramatically if you drove along route 82. It's a phasey mess by the time you got to Strongsville to the west and Twinsburg to the east.
Edited by Michael P 2341 - 9/26/12 at 4:08pm

Broadcasters count on cable and satellite carriage and think of the OTA situation as secondary. After all every cable and satellite sub is paying to get what others get free OTA.

Does anyone know where to find the data on the Cleveland local stations as far as subscriber vs. free OTA viewers?

The label varies by device, so there may be other digital TV's that see the whole WOIO-DT. My Dish Network DVR with OTA shows "WJWD", chopping off the "T". I guess it all depends on whether a hyphen is used.
Edited by Michael P 2341 - 9/25/12 at 2:26pm

Thanks for clearing things up with me about 1260. I use to listen to AM 1260 Radio Disney back in the early 2000's when I was younger. This station was the reason I got interested in radio & television.

Very interesting that you mentioned route 82. My dad and I would sometimes have lunch with my mom who works in Brecksville. She works right there by WTAM and the current 1260 transmitter. On our way back home on route 82, I noticed that 1260 would start to get weak near Nordonia, ~5 miles away from their transmitter. Throughout Macedonia and Twinsburg the reception was a complete mess, even though Radio-Locator showed that those cities were well within the local (strong) coverage area. However, if you traveled north towards Solon, the reception would improve. I believe this was the result of the figure 8 pattern that you mentioned about. Just about anywhere 5 miles south-east of the transmitter reception is a disaster. No matter where you are, Hudson, Akron, Cuyahoga Falls or Kent, reception is weak, even though all those cities are located within the local coverage area according to Radio-Locator.

Over the years, I learned more information about 1260 and other stations though various sites and forums. One forum mentioned that there were two transmitters for 1260 at one time. I do browse around on Google Earth often, and when I found the former site, the only thing I could think of was 1260. When I saw your post about the daytime/nighttime transmitters being active at the same time, I decided to ask, thinking that you would have the answer. As far as I can tell on Google Earth, the towers have been removed prior to 1994 and the transmitter building was demolished sometime between 2003-2004. Seems to me that they are saving that site for something... I would think that they would have sold it a long time ago and built houses there. I also read somewhere (not here) that 102.1 was also located here before moving onto the WQHS tower. Can you or anyone confirm this?

Also replying back to the WOIO- D topic, all my TV's use to say WOIO-DT, then one day they started saying WOIO- D. I'll double check my TVs and converter boxes since they update the channel label automatically without rescanning. I rarely do channel rescans.

Thank you for the advice. I had the splitter/amp in place because I planned on splitting the signal to a total of 3 TV's. I decided to bypass it and my signal to my main TV did increase a bit. I wish I would have installed a better brand pre-amp on the mast, like a winegard.

My cable runs are all RG-6. I had the antenna installed on the roof by a guy who is a contractor for the cable company so he used high quality cable and terminators. He also properly grounded the antenna to my main electrical ground.

What has me completely baffled at the moment is that all summer long I was able to get good enough signal to watch most of the Cleveland and Youngstown stations, but recently I can't pick up anything outside of 20 miles. I thought it was related to my transformer that converts the leads to the coax (I remembered it looked sketchy when I put the antenna together) so I replaced it with new one this weekend. Still, I can't get any signals from Cleveland or Youngstown, only Akron. Can the trees or weather changes be causing this? I do have large trees that are taller than the antenna in the direction of both Cleveland an Youngstown, but they have been there all summer and didn't seem to interfere.

I hate to keep getting up on my roof as it is vry steep and has slate tiles....I'm hoping I can get it fixed right in one shot.

Any advice is appreciated!

That time frame for the demolition of the northern tower site sounds about right, although I wan no longer associated with the station by that time. I started at WRDZ in the fall of 1988 on the very first day they were on the air as WRDZ. Prior to that the station was briefly WMJI-AM, simulcasting 105.7. Before that it was WBBG, a "Big Band/Music of your Life" format. Before that it was WBBG with a talk radio format, before that WMGC a "soft rock A/C" format that called itself "Magic" years before WMJI would be "Majic". Before that it was the iconic WIXY 1260 the station I grew up listening to (much like your listening to Radio Disney). It started out as the original WDOK before there was the FM version and continued as WDOK AM & FM until the AM became WIXY in 1964.

Back to the tower site in Seven Hills. About a year or so after WRDZ was on the air they moved the daytime pattern to the Brecksville site. I was not privy to the business dealings of the station ownership, but I'm willing to bet they may have rented the Seven Hills site. The owners were out of towners and had no sense of the station's history or why the daytime site was in Seven Hills (they never asked - I would have told them, as I lived in one of the affected areas that got weak reception when the daytime site was in Brecksville). In any event I never heard anything more about the Seven Hills site. I have been in the Brecksville transmitter building (after the daytime pattern returned to there) but never in the Seven Hills building. I just thought of something, we went AM stereo around the same time the daytime pattern moved to Brecksville. So I bet the cost of converting to AM stereo was cut by not having to have two separate transmitters. We also added an STA (studio transmitter link) that was a very short microwave beam that was shot down Snowville Rd. from Carl Smith's building to the transmitter site. So having one transmitter site saved the owners big money.

Judging by the satellite photo of the Seven Hills site it appears the lot is landlocked with only a narrow driveway leading to the lot. The terrain to the north of the lot would not allow access from the north, as there is quite a drop-off there. It's near the Lancaster Drive overpass on I-480. If you happen to drive on I-480 look up to the south when you go under the bridge and you will see the big hill that is preventing access.

I can't say for certain because 102.1 was already on the WQHS tower by the time I got involved with radio, but it's a safe bet that the Seven Hills site was the original location of 102.1. The population of Greater Cleveland was not as spread out as it is today so the Brecksville site made no sense unless they were trying to serve both Cleveland and Akron with the same station. Serving Akron had to be the driving force behind the WRDZ ownership using the Brecksville site over the Seven Hills site. There are parts of Akron that do get a decent signal on 1260, but that is the west side of Akron that gets it well. The East side suffers from the figure 8 pattern. BTW I was able to pick up 1260 back in the days of the first incarnation of WBBG all the way to Alliance! That was during the daytime so it had to be coming from the Seven Hills site.
Edited by Michael P 2341 - 9/26/12 at 1:45pm

Yes, I mentioned here that the Akron stations have been coming in very good this past summer for me with very few breakups. Now that fall is here, I noticed that they are starting to break up more often. Of course my problem is that my antenna isn't pointed towards Akron.

I noticed that too when I use to listen to 1260. The west side has better reception than the east, and this is also true down by Akron. I do recall being in Akron's west side and receiving the station with a stronger signal and less static compared to Akron's east side. I was also able to pick up 1260 one time on the car radio (engine off) at a campsite south of Youngstown, just barely receiving it. Weather may have been a factor at that time. Because of this, I have always thought that the daytime pattern towards the east/south east reflected the nighttime pattern and was only throwing out 5,000 watts instead of the full 10,000 watts.

Once in a while I tune to 1260 and listen to it for a few moments. The audio quality is terrible and isn't loud enough to overcome the static/noise from what I remember. I think this started when the owners installed the HD Radio equipment. And if 1260 had AM stereo equipment, how come it isn't used today, or up until the installation of the HD equipment?
Edited by snowdog 88 - 9/26/12 at 5:20pm

Sadly AM stereo turned out to be a bust due to four competing and non compatible systems. The FCC declined to chose one system over the other resulting in consumer confusion. I had an AM stereo receiver in my car when I worked for WRDZ and used it one time to show one of our advertizes how well AM stereo can sound with the proper equipment. It impressed the station manager but not enough to get a raise.

Just like HD radio, AM stereo only worked in the strongest signal areas. Those in the weaker areas got stereophonic noise from the other 1260's after sunset. There were around 26 stations operating on 1260 plus there was also interference from adjacent channels 1250 & 1270 to deal with. Unlike FM there are no buffers between channels. AM stereo worked like FM stereo turned upside down. By that I mean that FM stereo uses a mono FM carrier with an AM modulated subcarrier on top. AM stereo used a mono AM carrier with an FM subcarrier on top (by "on top" I mean the subcarrier was modulated on a frequency above the audible frequency. FM's subcarrier was at 38 kHZ. The four AM stereo systems used variations of the multiplex, but at different frequencies so they were not compatible with each other.

Is RCA still part of Thomason?

I've seen a small RCA Attic antenna @ the Wal*Mart, anyone have any info on that?

What's with the video on WLFM? is it my set or are they flashing the pictures with black ? There used to be a smooth transition of the slides. I had this on a couple nights while reading & found it annoying enough to cause a siezure.. Perhaps a static on what song is playing or the playlist would be nice also.

Come to think of it when I was in Maple Hts. WIXY (WMGC) had a very quiet signal, though that was not always the case, something deterioated the signal in the early 70's. ... CKLW then became the AM pop station of choice. Upon moving up to Lake County, 1260's signal always was quiet with a hetrodyne hum over it.... again CKLW was even better than a local AM, & came in better than any Cleveland AM.

Whats up with AM stereo, was that a passing fad? I only had one vehicle with a factory AM stereo (1985 Nissan) that actually worked well, though most of the stereo stations were out of town.

According to Wikipedia, Audiovox uses the RCA brand name on accessories as of 2006. And as of 2010, RCA TV's are manufactured by ON Corporation. (Whoever that is...)

I hated that Thomson SA. Their products were worse than Fungi (Funai). I bought two RCA TVs back in 2007, one was a 37" HD set, the other was a 14.1" CRT with a built-in digital tuner. The HDTV could probably be considered the WORST HDTV ever built. It skips over channels, the audio is garbled on certain channels, it shuts off if an analog channel isn't strong enough, the info screen locks the TV up if the description doesn't fit in the box, it always loses the time, it hates VCR’s, and the list goes on. Most of the problems could probably be fixed with a software update, but none exists. About a year ago, I had to replace several capacitors on the power supply as the TV was shutting down/hanging while turning it on. As for the other set, it was OK at first. The only real problem was if there was no signal on a channel for about 15 seconds, the TV would no longer decode that channel when it became available again, and the only way to fix it was to run the 5 minute channel scan. A hassle if I used an indoor antenna with it. Then at the beginning of this year it mysteriously turned on woke me up in the middle of the night with the volume cranked up to 100. I would turn down the volume but when I released the button, it started going back up to 100. When it wasn't doing that, it would continuously cycle though the channels without stopping. I later found out that leaving it unplugged for about a month would clear the problem temporally, but after a few hours of use, it would start acting up again. Capacitors look fine. Complete garbage and a waste of my money. Since then, I've stayed away from anything bearing the RCA or GE name on it.

Thomason used to make RCA antennas and accessories, but they are now made by Audiovox, as previously mentioned. There is one antenna, the RCA 751, which is distributed by Audiovox but made by Winegard, and it gets good reviews. The Walmart attic antenna is a GE antenna, and looks to be a decent design.

I'm likely getting RCA & GE confused now being in the same 'licensed' family. I recently purchased a GE remote though made by Jasco.

I was looking to find a possible replacement for the old Radio Shack 120 mile Vhf UHF Yagi in the attic, just too big to get a good beating, though I wouldn't want to repplace it with anything substandard... a few of the Low VHF elements are broken which don't affect [performance, though I have had the Ch 8 element short out.

.

Sounds possessed snowdog, though I don't know if I mentioned on this board, In March i bit the bulket after offing y ailing 32" Sony CRT & picked up a genely used Toshiba 37" 720p in use just under 2 years, low & behold after 3 weeks it developed quirks & then the main board finally blew in it's sixth week... awaiting repair, I don't have a lot into it so may be worth fixing.

I've actually had pretty good luck with Funai brands & bad luck wiith anything associated with LG. On corporation? I think that's the brand that Wal*Mart is using for some of it's accesories such as clock radios & such.... my 1979 RCA I believe is still made in Indianapolis.

I assume RCA is now owned by budget outfits in China, or at least out of the US. A shame, the name RCA should not be allowed to be registered outside the US, it does, or at least did mean Radio Corporation Of AMERICA!

It's them. Channel 6 doing the same here. I like the FM side of the station for the most part. But they should be mandated to do something with that video. Guess the FCC no longer cares what's shown on the analog side of lower VHF as it's "deserted" territory anyways, or perhaps all analog VHF/UHF spectrum. I bet 15 years ago if this appeared on the analog TV dial, the FCC would have had a s*** fit. I always thought something at least half way meaningful had to be on the air, at least they do have a station ID showing. Stick a live webcam on the lake and show that or from on top of Terminal Tower, or community info on the screen, or a studio webcam, or show silent movies, have a Frankenstein marathon (video only) to celebrate them being on the air as a Franken-FM. I think they could use the term "Franken FM" to their advantage, as it's unique, a novelty, and only one to a broadcasting market, and they can promote anything they have on the video side.

I remember in the 60's and 70's, when 1260 was WIXY, it was not as strong in the eastern part of Garfield Hts. where I lived (Granger at the Maple Hts. border), as it was going more west or even north into Cleveland, where it more matched the reception strength of WKYC or WHK. Much stronger in now what's Slavic Village.

Funai is ok, although very basic and of standard quality. The only problem I had with Fungi was with a Magnavox VCR/DVD Recorder unit with a built-in SD digital tuner when it first came out in 2007. The unit had some kind of glitch where after 3-4 days it would "factory reset" itself, displaying the first-time setup screen when you turned the unit on. The reset would also erase the time, the timer record data, and the saved channels. I ended up returning it because of this. Recording to DVD was OK but the quality wasn't superb. On the highest quality the picture still looked fuzzy and compressed. This unit was also my first experience with digital TV. At the time, WVIZ was still blasting out a 1kw signal and WBNX was in the process of getting their digital channel approved. I also remember The Tube on 43.2, and an early version of Weather Now on 19.2.
They should have renamed it to RCC - Radio Corporation of CHINA!

I didn't mind the slides... but the flashing & blanking is very annoying to have on.

quote name="dannykewl" url="/t/1139546/cleveland-oh-hdtv/3060#post_22442693"]
I remember in the 60's and 70's, when 1260 was WIXY, it was not as strong in the eastern part of Garfield Hts. where I lived (Granger at the Maple Hts. border), as it was going more west or even north into Cleveland, where it more matched the reception strength of WKYC or WHK. Much stronger in now what's Slavic Village.
[/quote]

I was in the Turney-Dunham-Rockside-Lee area, looking west out of the upstairs windows I could see the Towers over the other side of the valley on a clear night.

With AM radio seeing towers does not equate with being able to hear the station. I recall driving westbound on SR-2 in Mentor. I saw WELW's tower lights before being able to hear the station at night. That's an extreme example because WELW used to be a daytime only station, but since they were allowed to broadcast after sunset with a pitiful wattage this was the case. The nighttime signal was audible to the west of the towers but not to the east.
Other examples (with more power) includes 1300 formerly WERE now WJMO with towers in North Royalton: the tower lights are visible in Strongsville but not the station's signal. 1260's "figure 8" daytime pattern would have the null running along Rockside Rd. (and presumably Snow Rd. to the west) back when the daytime pattern was in Seven Hills. Today that null affects SR. 82 (as I previously posted).

It didn't help that AM stereo, which was demonstrated in 1960, on a Mexican AM station (because it was illegal in the US), would not be legal until 1982. The broadcast lobby did not want it, first because it would have meant replacing perfectly good, recently-purchased, monaural consoles, cart machines, turntables and mikes with new stereo equipment (with no net gain in listenership since every music station would do it), then later because it would have resulted in FM stations competing with AMs.

That aside, Cleveland is a particularly bad market for AM radio. The lower frequencies (best for full-time coverage of a large area) were used up by bigger surrounding markets. Directional antenna systems were placed to deliver a good signal to Cleveland proper, but the population boomed south, east and west of the city, into the "nulls" of the stations' directional patterns. Then, many stations could not do anything to upgrade their signals (WERE, for example, can't move because of WOBL).

This made Cleveland a market with only one AM station that could cover its whole listening area day and night - WTAM. Every other station misses parts of the metro area at night.

My bad, I missed Michael P's post I didn't know there were that many different formats of AM Stereo. They all likely could not get on the same page, though fast forward 20 years later I don't see anything about it, it;s all dead I assume & all stations went back to monorual?

As I find with HD there is a lack of equipment, I was able to replace dads factory radio when the cassette player went toth a JVC unit with HD for a mere $130, yet you cannot purchase a home receiver with HD on it unless you go way top end.

I'm taking HD is only on the FM bandsm & the am's are simulcasted on their sister stations on FM? (Some out of town AM's tout they are on HD.. ie: WCBS)

1100 WTAM was another animal, the night signal out by me was often interefered with by WOWO, WBT & KMOX. I remember driving through the Statesville NC area back in the early 80's where the only AM signal I was getting was WGAR 1220 at one point.

You can get just a standalone HD radio tuner for $50, plugs right into your home stereo. How well they work I have no idea.
http://www.amazon.com/Coby-HDR650-Component-Radio-Receiver/dp/B001DU1ZHS/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t

HD radio is also on AM stations, only, as far as I know, there are no subchannels, and you need to have an excellent signal-to-noise ratio (almost no adjacent-channel interference) to lock the HD signal on AM (put another way, to get the digital signal on AM, the signal has to be so good you do not need it!).

The HD on AM also causes far more interference than HD on FM. Try listening to either WBZ on 1030 or WHO on 1040 at night, and notice the rush of a waterfall in every fade, from the digital signal of the other station (digital radio on AM uses the adjacent channels).

WTAM is "another animal" - an omnidirectional Class A (formerly Class I-A) station, with it's skywave contours protected (i.e., no other station on 1100 could have a .025 mV/m signal in Nashville, Boston or Marquette, it would interfere with WTAM out there!)

WKNR (the former WGAR) 1220 has the second-best coverage. It has a null to the west, but is 50kW. On most nights, it sounds better in Montreal than in Lorain.

If you tune in to 1260 at the top-of-the hour, their id says "This is WWMK, and WWMK HD1 Cleveland." Seeing that they say HD1, I assume that AM digital can have more (at the most, 2) subchannels, but doing so would probably take a toll on the quality. From what I read online, the quality of AM digital isn't that good and sounds like an online stream optimized for dial-up. Plus, AM digital would be problematic (or even impossible to receive) due to interference depending where you live, making me wonder why AM stations even bothered to waste their money on this technology.

The lower frequencies on the AM band are not all in bigger surrounding markets. WHLO 640 is in Akron (smaller market), WKBN 570 is in Youngstown (ditto), CFCO 630 is in Chatham Ontario (again small market), this is just 3 examples of stations nearby Cleveland on lower frequencies. The closest "bigger market" station is WJR 760 in Detroit and CKLW 800 across the river in Windsor. Many of the other low end AM's are in far off big markets, but nonetheless receivable in Cleveland at night: Chicago, NYC and Nashville.

As for the directional patterns, it's true that that an AM station had to put a certain strength signal into the downtown of the city of license, however equally true is the protection that the stations had to provide to other stations on the same and adjacent frequencies.

I was just in Brecksville this evening and was sitting in a parking lot about 1 mile NE of the 1260 transmitter. When I went to tune into 1260, the car radio seeked right past it as if the signal wasn't strong enough! After finally getting it on 1260, the station seem like it was coming in strong, but you could hear the hissing interference in the background from the HD carrier. It might also have something to do with WTAM since their tower is just down the street. I remember being in the same parking lot several years ago before either station had HD, and I would often hear 1100 faintly bleed over 1260. 1100 would often try to "push" 1260 off its frequency when traveling on Snowville Road creating an effect similar to a slightly off-tuned dial. Driving past the WTAM tower would cause 1100 to appear on almost any AM frequency regardless if it was in use. If that’s what 50,000 watts can do, I hate to see what WLW 700 did years ago when they blew out a whopping 500,000 watts back in the 1930's!

Now the label for 19-1 says "WOIO -" and the label for 43-1 now says "WUAB D". What is going on here?

WRDZ's studio was in the Carl Smith building, which is the home of WTAM's (then WWWE) transmitter. The source of the 1100 bleed was the studio itself, as we were basking in that 50 kw glow. It took a lot of work to filter out the interference. BTW: When the humidity and/or atmospheric pressure was just right you could hear WWWE radiating off the gutters of the house next door! WRDZ was sold and would become WMIH. The WMIH owners moved the studios to Playhouse Square (The Hanna Building if I'm not mistaken). Now that's it's Radio Disney they probably don't even have a local studio, all they need is a satellite dish at the transmitter site. I can't say this for certain but I would not be surprised since all they need to insert locally is an automated legal ID at the top of the hour on an otherwise 100% satellite-delivered program stream.