Lorne wrote:

Here's a Radio-Canada article from 2023 that refers to their Toronto station as CBLFT.
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1965396/cblft-anniversaire-television-radio

The CB--- callsigns aren't official international calls anyway, since that block of letters belongs to Chile. That's why the CBC's shortwave relays used CKZU and CKZN as their calls.

That said, there were a few English CBC TV stations that had five-letter calls. CBKST Saskatoon was one.

torontostan wrote:

Sounds like they could benefit from CHKT or CHIN's site if they were to vacate?
 

CHIN has no site anymore. They lost the Toronto Island site for an expansion of the adjacent waste treatment plant last year, and they're operating daytime-only from the CHLO 530 site for now.

Running 680 from the island would require tall towers, and that's impossible because of the proximity to Billy Bishop. And while it would be a flamethrower signal into downtown, it would be difficult and maybe impossible to create a directional pattern wide enough to get out to the suburbs east and west while also protecting Montreal, Raleigh and Boston. 
 

torontostan wrote:

Scarboroughbluffsradiof99 wrote:

Neeti should have made CHAM a full survice format like CHSC was.
Country on weakdays with talkshows, evenings and weakends have a variety of ethnic programs in a variety of languages.
They now have a 24/7 punjabi format which breaks a bunch of CRTC rules.
They should have stuck with there stunt format mixing punjabi with caribbian, african and latin music.
And, neeti should not have lied and applied for an ethnic licence for CHAM.
He said he would not make the stations ethnic, but that's what he did with CHAM.

A brand new full service english AM radio station in a subpar market? Am I speaking to someone from years past or something? Zero chance of profitability with that operation. Who cares if it's multilingual programming, that's the only worthwhile endeavour for AM radio outside of major cities anymore. If the CRTC shuts him down, the frequency will go dormant... which of those two options better serves the population?

While we're discussing GTHA radio...... my prediction is we'll see one of the "big" 5 AM stations in Toronto (CHUM or CFIQ in particular) announce that they're either going off the air, or becoming a multilingual station this year... I fail to see how they could be worth more than the land their transmitters sit on.

Interestingly, the most valuable Toronto AM site by far is also the one that belongs to the most valuable Toronto AM station: that lakeside piece of land in Grimsby that was just open farmland when Rogers moved 680 there in 1985 is now thoroughly surrounded by high-rise condos as urban sprawl continues to push east from Hamilton along the QEW.

If it were any station other than 680 News (or maybe CFRB) on that site, the land would surely have been sold and there would be even more condos there now.

I have to imagine that Rogers is at least thinking about what happens there in the next decade or so. Moving 680 up the escarpment to the 590 site would make the 680 sign

Meh. It's better than being off the air entirely, to be sure, but it's still never going to be as good as a proper quarter-wavelength vertical tower. And it's not really new technology at all. 

For a small station on the upper part of the dial (higher frequency = shorter wavelength = shorter tower), it could be a workable solution for something like a CINA or a CHTO, but then they're already using short monopole towers that do basically the same thing as this, except they use a helical spiral of wire instead of the skirt to improve the performance of the antenna. And they can already do it from a warehouse rooftop.

Scarboroughbluffsradiof99 wrote:

But, How could I always get CING like a local in Scarborough?
But when I go to visit family in the queen street east area, I cant get it at all.
Even when they swiched to the CHCH tower, the signal still comes in here in Scarborough.
I'm in the Midland and Kingston road area near the bluffs.

Simple - when you're downtown, the very strong signals from the CN Tower and First Canadian Place overload the front end of your radio. Anything that's not coming from those two sites receives interference, and that includes CING. 

Out in Scarborough, you're not as close to CN/FCP, so the signals reaching you from those sites don't overload your radio and CING can come through better. 
 

Even given how crowded the dial is around Oakville, seems like using 93.9 is asking for trouble, what with CBL right there next door on 94.1.

107.5? 104.9? Or even the currently vacant 103.9? All would be less obvious as sources of interference.

mace wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

Thank you for this! I had no idea how it worked. But what if you had a prolonged sequence of black, like in a horror movie? I guess you would have lost that part of the picture. 

And losing ten seconds of show each and every time there was a pause, not to mention the mechanical wear on the machine? I can see why it didn't catch on. I wonder whatever became of "Mr. Shelton."

Back before I was born, my parents bought a gadget that allowed a VHF TV (as they almost all were then) to get UHF channels. That was around the time Channel 17 first signed on the air and was an NBC affiliate. I found the thing in their basement many years later and tried it - and it worked, 

I think when Channel 17 went off the air (before returning as an educational station) they disconnected it, because at the time there were no more UHF stations in Buffalo.

It wasn't exactly like this one, but had a tuning dial and I think may have used Channel 3 to display the signals. 

I wonder how clear the reception in the GTA would have been of WBUF when it was owned by NBC. I have read that viewers in East Buffalo got better NBC reception from Rochester than was available from WBUF.

When NBC bought WBUF, it invested in a new tall tower for channel 17 in North Buffalo and a more powerful transmitter. This was the facility that was passed off to WNED and which was used by channel 17 until the Grand Island tower went up in 1986.

With a decent antenna, WBUF would have been seen pretty decently back then in most of the GTA, for the few who had UHF reception.

(NBC also started building a new studio complex for WBUF at that same North Buffalo site, but it abandoned UHF before finishing the studios. It sold the unfinished building to WBEN radio and TV, which expanded it and moved in in 1960. WIVB/WNLO are still there today.)

Saul wrote:

The outage won't affect 89.3...a local repeater. And any other repeaters across the province. So Manitobans can still listen...

Having just recently made the drive from Winnipeg to Brandon and back, there's a good chunk of that two hours where the low-power 89.3 from downtown Winnipeg fades out and the Brandon repeater doesn't come in yet.

But depending what they're doing, it may be work that's dangerous or impossible to do at night, and it's definitely more expensive to do it that way, and it's true that 990 isn't the only or even biggest way most Manitobans hear CBC, so it surely makes economic sense to do it this way.

(Also, that 540 signal from Saskatchewan is a barn-burner across central and western Manitoba for national CBC programming)

mace wrote:

fybush wrote:

Just back from Winnipeg via Pearson, and I noticed a couple of things on my way back to the US that might be of interest to SOWNY readers.

First, I saw a CHAM billboard on the QEW around Stoney Creek. Big "AM 820" and the "CINA Punjab Radio" slogan underneath.

So the question remains:if what little announcing there is is in English, but the music is all Punjabi, does the CRTC accept that as an English-language station?
(Incidentally, 820 was one of the two best GTA signals at night in Winnipeg, along with 860.)

And am I the only one who's noticed that Pure Country is gone from 99.9-HD4 for the holiday season? It's iHeart Christmas for now.

Was 740 available in Winnipeg?

I could hear it at night but not well. There's a 740 in Fargo with a huge day signal and just enough night power to interfere.

Evuguy - WDCX is definitely on the air here in Rochester. Not sure why you're not hearing it across the lake.

As Saul correctly notes, there's no one "official" way to count a new station. From an RF perspective, there's nothing significantly different between the old CFIE 106.5 and the current CKAV, or between CKLN and CIND, even though they're new licenses on paper and using new equipment.

For that matter, CBLA is basically the same signal that was CKO. So you'd have to dig into the legalities of the situation - that an earlier license was shut down and a new one replaced it - to make the plausible argument that those are all new stations.

There's always going to be a fudge factor, because it's always a moving target. When CJBC-FM signed on at 90.3, it was on the CN Tower. Now it's on First Canadian Place. Different signal, to some extent, but nobody would argue it's not the same station.

Same for CHIN 1540. It's definitely a lesser signal than what it was from the island, but still the same station... right?

ED1 wrote:

Last night, 630 kHz in Edmonton was officially powered off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUVa3LNu9M4

They went early!

When I was out there last month, they were planning to turn it off on Nov. 10.

mace wrote:

If you really want to see how much we are getting ripped off at the gas pump divide the pump price by 22 to get the gallon price. $1.54/L=$7.00/gal.

As someone who does this mental math a lot when crossing the border, this isn't the right equation. It's 3.8 L to the gallon, so $1.54/L would be $5.85/gal. (But that's also about the highest price I see anywhere in the GTA, with $1.44 easy to find around town. That's $5.47/gal, which is US$3.94/gal. By comparison, we're averaging around US$3.25/gal here in Rochester, which translates to about C$1.19/L.)

It's just one data point, but when I was at the Mississauga Hilton a couple of weekends ago, I plopped an antenna by the window on the 6th floor to see what would come in.

CHCH and Yes TV from the new tower in Dundas locked in immediately, with stronger signals than some of the CN Tower signals (especially CFTO, and yes, I had an antenna that included VHF elements).

I was also getting most of Buffalo adequately, for whatever that's worth.

US licensees have no control over the content of advertising time purchased by candidates for federal office. They're required to sell them airtime and they can't impose any restrictions on the content, which is how you get a situation like this.

Note that it applies only to the candidates themselves and not to political action committees, which are the entities these days buying most of the ads. And it's only for candidates for federal office (president, US Senate, Congress), not for state or local races or for referenda on issues.

Which means in practice that there aren't a lot of ads like this one - it's usually from third-party candidates who usually don't have a lot of money to spend on TV campaigns.

I'm on a GO train heading home from Pearson after a few lovely days in Alberta, in part to hear the CHED move.

The loop of promos on 630 will go away Nov. 10 and 630 will fall silent entirely.

The signal comparison is interesting. 880 is as good or better than 630 across metro Edmonton, and better than 630 to the north, for whatever that's worth.

But down highway 2 toward Red Deer and Calgary, there's no comparison. 630 is loud and clear in Calgary, while 880 is weaker during the day and gone entirely at night to protect KRVN in Nebraska.

(In fairness, CHED lost one of six towers at the 630 site and has been non-directional for a few months.)