The real and currently employed broadcast engineer has arrived on scene to explain...

The have deployed MDCL.  Modulation-Dependent Carrier Level (MDCL) control technologies or algorithms, used on AM transmitters to reduce transmitter power consumption.  Broadcasters reported seeing anywhere from 20 to 40% savings on their power bills.  This is usually deployed on high power stations (50 kW). 

So before we call Entercom cheap... maybe understanding how much money is involved will give you the understanding on how this is mot a bad business decision and could be good for the environmentalists out there.

As an example, BC power rates are far less than Ontario.  My former 50 kW Nautel transmitter sent me a hydro bill of just under $5,000 a month.  God only knows what that would be at Hydro One rates.  However, the last time I was running a solid state AM in Ontario (a late 80's vintage Nautel) just about the time Hydro One introduced a 28% increase around 2012, the power bill was around $ 2,500 a month on a 10 kW transmitter.  In practice I have heard you really save about 21%.  So shaving $500 a month off the power bill for a free feature (on recent Nautel transmitters) that is FCC and ISED approved is worth a try. 

So, a 10 kW transmitter is worth $500 a month in power savings or a 50 kW could see $1,500 a month savings. In one example that is 6 grand a year, in the other 18 grand a year.  Sure maybe the mother corp is just going to put it into bank, but it could also a significant contribution to paying for a new transmitter if the one you have is getting to its 20 or 30 year mark of service.  Now since I don't have power bills in frot of me, I'm not sure what kWh load that takes off the grid, but it is also a significant amount of power.
 

Thanks for those great answers. I really wasn’t sure if what the 'BEN engineer told me was technically possible, let alone feasible. But apparently, it was. I wonder if any of the GTHA-area radio stations are doing the same thing. (Which could explain why CHAM has been putting out such a weak signal into Toronto at night of late…)
 
As for my snide comments about Entercom being cheap, I wasn’t entirely referring to this transmitter energy reduction thing. While the company airs a number of local shows, a lot of what they put on the air these days is syndicated programming – meaning they’re saving salaries on producers and hosts, among other “inconveniences” who all have the nerve to demand a salary for their work, or relying more on automation and voice tracking in the case of their music stations.   
 
It’s a sad reflection on what one company has done to one market, by owning what used to be the three biggest and most successful outlets in the city. WGR, WBEN and WKBW (now WWKB) are shadows of their former selves.
 
I realize the glory days of Top 40 radio is long gone, but if you’d heard these stations during the 70s, you would have been astounded at how good they were. (In fact, WGR-AM won the Billboard Station of the Year Award on numerous occasions and handily deserved the honour.)
 
But far more importantly, they were in fierce competition with each other, going after their rivals full bore, 24 hours a day. That made all of them better and they just kept improving as they had a singular goal to become the #1 station in town.
 
Now that the same owner controls them (and admittedly the formats are different) that competitive spirit is completely gone. "Just OK" is good enough and we don’t have to spend anything on them, because there are fewer companies to compete with, so why bother?
 
Yes, I’m an old fogey, I suppose. Or at least I can see him from here. But I miss those days when the major Buffalo stations were actually competing for an audience. Now, that audience has little choice if they want to hear over-the-air local radio. And frankly, none of them are really worth listening to these days. Full power or not.

RadioActive wrote:

And talk about knowing your audience. Buffalo has a large Polish population and WGR was probably the only Top 40 station in North America that actually had a PAMS jingle sung entirely in that language! It was just one of the things that made them so unique and helped them win that Billboard Award. 

"GR 55 had great jingles, like this one...

http://rockradioscrapbook.ca/wgr-gladyourealive.mp3