Carrier Current, 10 Watt FM Alumni, etc.

[Ben Zonia]

I found this on ARSA, and wondered if the Steve Wright shown on the Survey was the long time Family Life Radio manager and executive. Looks like it is.



I found three Linkedin profiles which trace back to carrier current station WFRS 560 and Ferris State.

JJ Duling

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjduling

Al Nash

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alnashpao?o ... gle.com%2F

Steve Wright

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-wrigh ... gle.com%2F

Can you think of other Alumni from carrier currents, 10 watt and low ERP student run FMs, etc. that you know of?

[HD74]

Specs Howard had a carrier current station in its old home on 8 mile.
You could listen in the parking garage.
I think it was WNLD, but hazy memory from back then.

[Honeyman]

The entire Michigan State Radio Network was carrier current when I was in school (1974-78). It consisted of 4 stations in various residence halls and buildings across campus.

[TC Talks]

WNMC was founded in 1967 as a student organization broadcasting to the dormitories at NMC as a carrier-current station. In 1979, WNMC made its FM debut at 90.9, broadcasting at a mere 10 watts.

It's older than most FM's in Traverse City. Now it booms at 600 Watts and pulls a larger audience than more than half the stations in Traverse City.

[TC Talks]

Huh, I worked at WGVC from 87-93 and I don't recall any AM's owned by the College until we secured WMAX. I was an adjunct professor for Broadcast 100 and 201, and I never recall a student station after Kevin Mathews got WSRX gutted.

Maybe it was a lp "Welcome to Grand Valley" pre-recorded type thing like the Mackinaw Bridge has?

[Honeyman]

GVSU had one at AM 1610 in Allendale. I have no idea when the station left the airwaves. I heard it 25 years ago. Signal could be heard in the car within a few miles of campus.

How is that possible to hear it in a car the way it's transmitted?

[Ben Zonia]

GVSU had one at AM 1610 in Allendale. I have no idea when the station left the airwaves. I heard it 25 years ago. Signal could be heard in the car within a few miles of campus.

How is that possible to hear it in a car the way it's transmitted?

Likely it was a TIS type station. If it were a carrier current station, and you heard it a few miles away, it wasn't operating legally. One mile from a carrier current station, with a 20 foot vertical wire, and a preamp, I could not get the fundamental, but did hear a harmonic 2 X the fundamental frequency weakly. Even that was likely illegal.

[TC Talks]

Huh, must have come about after 1993. I'll have to track down Lumpy or Walenta and ask them about that.

[billmich88888]

Alum of the University of michigan carrier current station back in the day.

[Willie108]

I ran on of the MSU carrier current stations late 70's to early 80's. The board applied for an FM, but the owner of WJIM held it up for years.

[Ben Zonia]

Do any of the other Carrier Currents use unofficial call letters? What are some of them? Do any of them have published or in house Music Surveys? Do any of you have copies of those surveys? I think there are a few others with a few surveys available on ARSA. Also a lot of 10 watt, and some with more power may have surveys to contribute. Many of them I've seen are way ahead of the curve on tracks and artists that became big, not just esoteric ones.

[TC Talks]

Most reporting is done via http://www.spinitron.com/ these days. Reporting goes digitally to the various genre lists. BMI uses this too.

Listeners tend to want a broader range of music than the crap commercial stations offer. Community Radio is more akin to streaming music and more closely follows music you can actually see live.

For example: Interlochen sells out their 4,000 seat venue in the summer with acts that simply are not found on Commercial Radio.

[Ben Zonia]

I ran on of the MSU carrier current stations late 70's to early 80's. The board applied for an FM, but the owner of WJIM held it up for years.

Didn't it eventually come on the air in 1989, and is now WDBM 88.9? They probably would have been approved earlier if they had found a consultant familiar with the intricacies of the convoluted Channel 6 interference rules in Part 73.525. This includes Vertical Only and mixed (Elliptical) polarization, along with a directional angle sector exclusion with a simple receiving antenna to get the affected population down. Many applicants were simply told there was just no way to get approved without a Channel 6 agreement. This limited development of the NCE-FM other than a few powerful stations and the 10 watt ones in Michigan because there were 3 Channel 6 stations with Grade B contours covering most of the state. The rules made it look like you had to locate on the Channel 6 tower, which was also difficult to negotiate. In fact, you just had to get close enough so that the interference ratios could be met. It might have been easier from the WKAR-FM and WKAR-TV tower site instead of the WKAR 870 site where WDBM remains. Of course, all the Channel 6 stations in Michigan are no longer on Physical Channel 6. This resulted in scores of applications in Michigan alone in the latest NCE-FM window.

Channel 6 objections resulted in four noncommercial stations on the 92-108 MHz commercial band, WFBE 95.1 (now a commercial allotment), WDET 101.9, WMUK 102.1, and WVGR 104.1. Other powerful ones were close to or on the Channel 6 towers. 91.7 practically being out of the NCE-FM band allowed WUOM to operate from a very sparsely populated area.