(and doesn’t that sound nice on a day when we got over 15 inches of snow here at Toppy Central?)
Today’s update, tied in to this Tower Site of the Week installment (and the next one coming on Friday), completes our lineup of IDs from Santa Barbara, California, at least through the middle of 2012. Thanks to Garrett Wollman for helping make it possible! (Check out all his IDs here.)
The markets that dot the coast of California between San Francisco and Los Angeles (or, more specifically, between Monterey and Ventura) are an interesting bunch. The ruggedness of the coast means none of the cities and towns that dot the landscape go very far inland. It also means that signals don’t propagate in neat circles. And the sparseness of that population means there’s a lot of simulcasting going on to bring programming to areas that might not otherwise be able to sustain it on its own.
So this week, we have a batch of AM stations from Santa Barbara, some of which can be heard extremely clearly more than 150 miles down the coast in San Diego (so long as you stay near the water) – and a batch of noncommercial FMs, too, showing the on-air overlap between the San Luis Obispo market, 90 miles or so up the coast, and Santa Barbara.
(And just to add to the fun, the classical service that stretches all along the coast actually comes from Los Angeles, 90 miles or so southeast of Santa Barbara, where KUSC 91.5 is the parent to satellite signals as far afield as Morro Bay, near SLO, and Palm Springs. More on its upcoming changes in next week’s Toppy installment!)
You can see where some of these signals originate at Tower Site of the Week, in the first of three Santa Barbara installments. Check it out!
If you’re a geography geek like I am, you’ve probably heard that old chestnut of a trivia question: “What city is further west, Reno or Los Angeles?” The answer, of course, is Reno, and that’s in part because the California coastline takes a dramatic jog from north-south to east-west once you get past Los Angeles.
Right there at the start of the westward turn is the market we call Oxnard/Ventura, California, and a 2012 visit there produced not only some neat Tower Site of the Week images but also a big batch of IDs to fill out a market that had been only sparsely represented here in the past. (Thanks to Garrett Wollman for some of his IDs from that trip, too; if memory serves, he stayed overnight in Ventura and had more time to pick up IDs than I did just passing through en route to Santa Barbara, which we’ll see and hear next week.)
We really like San Diego. Not just because the weather’s usually sunny and around 72, no matter what the time of year (and does that ever sound nice after this northeastern winter!), but also because it’s a fascinating radio market. You can hear Los Angeles’ big AM and FM signals if you’re in the right spot, there’s plenty of local “Sandy Eggo” radio on the dial to hold our attention, and then there’s all that neat stuff floating over the border from Mexico just a few miles to the south.
This week’s update includes IDs from several San Diego trips that haven’t made it up here yet: there’s the April 2012 visit recently chronicled here and here in Tower Site of the Week, some December 2012 IDs from my most recent visit there, plus some July 2011 IDs from the end of the Great Cross-Country Rush, and even some April 2005 audio that just never made it on to Toppy before, and I don’t know why.
Enjoy!
Do the math here: Rochester, New York rimshotter WODX 107.3 runs a whopping 650 watts from its transmitter site high atop Bristol Mountain, 35 miles or so southeast of town. That means WODX’s HD channel is running a mighty 6.5 watts, right? And except for me here at NERW Central with a big antenna pointed down at the mountain, I’ve got to believe not many other listeners can even hear that HD signal…which means that in all likelihood, I was probably the only person listening when I recorded that fresh WODX-HD2 ID earlier today. The same is probably true for most of the more powerful HD2s in town…and who knows about the only HD3, WBZA-98.9-HD3, which relays the regional Family Life Network and its religious programming? But that’s OK: we have a fresh, full batch of Rochester HD2 and HD3s for you here on Toppy tonight. Um….enjoy?
Los Angeles. City of Angels. Biggest radio market in the entire U.S., if you’re counting by revenue.
But all those Los Angelenos going nowhere on the streets with the Spanish names probably haven’t heard the IDs we’re presenting this week, and it’s not just because Ibiquity was still three decades away when Billy Joel was singing about laying low in the canyons.
Yes, this week we bring you a big pile of HD2 (and a couple of HD3) IDs from up and down the LA dial. Were we the only ones listening to these signals when we were rolling on them? Very possibly – but at least they’re documented for posterity now.
Enjoy!
(And while you’re at it, check out the latest Los Angeles installment over at Tower Site of the Week, too…)
