For the past 20-minutes I've been listening to a silent carrier from local licensed station 1380 AM, which normally carries wall-to-wall sports, probably from a satellite.
Let's check our bearings. It' a Sunday morning, 11:52 AM CST. This has happened before with this station, also on weekends, when their programming simply stops but the transmitter remains turned on.
Are station's today still required to have someone "on duty" and "in charge" during broadcast operations? When I last worked in licensed radio (1970s) an on-duty operator was a requirement.
If they'd just shut off their transmitter a part 15 station could benefit from 1380 on the dial, not a bad spot.
If the operator is sleeping off a sport's bar hangover or up the street at Steak-n-Shake he may be returning to conscious attendance at any moment, and I'm still listening.
Three hours later, still monitoring the silent carrier at 1380 kHz, the home of 5kW KXFN, and there is zero programming, not even hourly I.D.s.
Looking at their radio-locator.com listing, it is interesting to note that when they switch to 1kW directional at sundown the nighttime towers are in a totally different location.
Daytime tower for 1380 are across the Mississippi in Illinois directly north of St. Louis.
Nightime towers are south of the City, also across the River.
While all that goes on this listener is always in the same place.
There is an AM not far from me that routinely has dead air, or at least they used to.
The auto ID on the hour and half hour followed by a short news brief will play, then nothing.
I tried calling the station to inquire but no one answered. I checked their website and found some numbers for admin and sales personnel. I got hold of one guy in sales. He didn't seem to concerned and suggested I call the "Call-In" line for the co-located FM.
The FM guy answered after a while and simply stated "Oh yeah, they're having some transmitter problems" but no one was there at the moment. End of discussion.
At 3 PM CST audio started coming from 1380, the Daytona Race Cars on what sounded like a telephone connection, very thin quality.
I decided not to try calling the station because I'm not really an undercover or over-cover reporter, so I leave it to others to fight for liberty and justice.
I am sure that if I had called it would be something like MRAM experienced, either no one would answer or they would sluff me off with some feeble excuse.
There is an AM station here that has the dead carrier thing going on.
Last time, it stayed that way for days - transmitter on, no audio.
I think if I had $300k invested in a radio station I would be wanting to have an on-air product available
at all times that I was allowed to operate. I know technical problems occur, but in the old days we used to physically be there.
Our local 1410, 5 kW day/night is now
Fox Sports Radio. Every once and a
while things freeze somewhere in their
system and the programming reverts to
silence. This has not happened too often,
but it has a few times. Once it happened
at night, and I was able to hear other stations
on 1410 under their carrier. I didn't get any
IDs though.
In the 1950s and 1960s this station was a gigantic
force in the local top 40 radio race. In fact, the callsign
was WPOP, for "POP" music - I guess.
By the way, speaking of AM DX, some transatlantics
were trying to poke their way up in the spaces between
the domestic AM stations last night. I heard Spain on 684 kHz.
This is easy in Connecticut. It was there, but weak. Not
much of an opening to Europe, I guess.
Best Wishes,
Bruce, The Dog Radio Group