Doc Searls Weblog

So I just learned that a Kansas City Jazz station is headed toward existence. If you love any of these musicians, this should be very good news.

The story begins,

By this time next year, Kansas City-style jazz might be bebopping out of a new radio station near you.

The Mutual Musicians Foundation in the 18th and Vine jazz district announced this week it’s been granted a construction permit for a noncommercial, low-power FM radio station. The foundation is hoping the KC jazz station, at 104.7 FM, will be on the air by next January.

It will be called KOJH-LP. LP stands for low power, or what the FCC calls LPFM. Here’s the application for what’s now a granted CP, or Construction Permit.

In fact there is a jazz station called KOJH already — a streaming one in Oklahoma. Though it’s not a licensed radio station, it may have inherited those call letters from one. (I’ve looked, but haven’t been able to tell. Maybe the lazyweb knows.)

Here’s the station’s mission, filed with the FCC.

KOJH will broadcast from the Arts Asylum at Harrison and E. 9th Street. A new tower will go on the building. From there they will radiate a whopping 22 watts at 207 feet above the average terrain, at 104.7fm. It’s a tiny signal that will won’t reach far out of downtown.

Worse, most of Kansas City’s big FM stations have effective radiated powers (what’s concentrated toward the horizon, or populations) of 100,000 watts, and transmit from a collection of towers over 1000 feet tall, just a short distance east of downtown. One of those is KBEQ on 104.3, just two notches down the dial from KOJH. This means you will need a good radio to keep KBEQ from blasting KOJH sideways. Today’s car radios are good enough to keep that from happening. (And will likely get KOJH up to a dozen or more miles away.) Recent-vintage portable and home radios will have a hard time, unless they’re very close to the KOJH transmitter.

(Many manufacturers quit caring decades ago. And now Radio Shack has filed for bankruptcy. Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business, which ran in The Onion in 2007, has proven prophetic.)

So it is good to know KOJH plans to stream online, because that’s the future of radio.

But there are other stepping stones.

For example, something the Mutual Musicians Foundation might consider doing, while they get underway with KOJH, is buying an AM station that’s dropped out of the ratings. Some possibles, going up the dial:

• KCCV/760. 6000 watts day, 200 watts night.
• WHB/810. 50000 watts day, 5000 watts night.
• KBMZ/980. 5000 watts day and night.
• KCWJ/1030. 5000 watts day, 500 watts night.
• KCTO/1160. 5000 watts day, 230 watts night.
• KYYS/1250. 25000 watts day, 3700 watts night.
• KDTD/1340. 1000 watts, day and night.
• KCNW/1380. 2500 watts day, 300 watts night.
• KKLO/1410. 5000 watts day, 500 watts night.
• KCZZ/1480. 1000 watts day, 500 watts night.
• KWOD/1660. 10000 watts day, 1000 watts night.

(Note that wattage is just one variable. Location of the transmitter, efficiency of the towers, directionality of the signal, ground conductivity and frequency all matter too. For example, the lower the station’s frequency, the longer the wavelength, and the better its signal travels along the ground.)

Only three AM stations show up in Kansas City’s latest ratings: KCSP, a sports station at 610am, KCMO, a right-wing talk station at 710am, and KPRT, a gospel music station at 1590am. (With 1000 watts by day and just 50 watts at night, I’m amazed KPRT makes the ratings at all.)

All the un-rated stations listed above put signals across all of KOJH’s coverage area, and then some. Some, such as WHB (a legendary station and signal), may never be for sale. But I’ll bet some others are on the market today, and will only get cheaper.

Music sounds awful on AM, unless the station radiates HD radio encoding. Most engineers I know in broadcasting dislike HD radio and consider it a gimmick. But it does sound quite good on both AM and FM. The difference it makes on AM is amazing.

Loyal listeners of a format will do the work required to get a signal. I’m sure that’s the case with KPRT’s gospel listeners, for example. Now, after stumbling for years, HD radio is picking up with manufacturers. There is a nice list on the HD Radio site. Meanwhile, the market value of AM radio stations, especially ones with no ratings, is crashing to the point where the cost of operating them exceeds their income. (An AM station sucks about twice the wattage off the grid as it radiates from its transmitter.) In coming years many of them will sell for a song.

So those changes — the rise of HD Rado and the decline of also-ran AM station prices — are factors the KOJH folks might want to keep in mind as they fire up their LP signal on FM. Think local, but think big too.

Bonus link.