In this letter to the editor, the author responds to the story “KADD in Utah Is on the Air With ZoneCasting.” Radio World welcomes letters to the editor on this or any story. Email [email protected].
I’m sure KADD(FM)’s implementation of ZoneCasting will work quite well for them. However, it should be noted that the reasons why it will work well for KADD — or really any Vegas-region FM — are the same reasons why it’s a very poor “use case” for most other stations:
1. That’s Class C FM country, with those big, big, yuuuuge 100 kW signals. Often on mountaintops surrounded by very large and very flat valleys. A single signal, from the right mountaintop, can easily cover 150+ miles inside its service contour.
2. That means that one signal might technically “cover” Las Vegas, but it’s right at the edge of the service contour. Meaning you can still meet the minimum distance spacings while also providing a “local” signal to Vegas from a very distant tower. So you can squeeze more “local” stations onto the dial with much less risk of interference amongst each other.
3. As KADD provides a fine example: It’s not hard to have powerful — hundreds, even thousands of watts ERP — boosters in both Las Vegas and St. George, Utah, yet with zero risk of interference between them, as the communities are over 100 miles apart. There’s little but unoccupied desert between them. So any self-interference can be engineered to occur over areas that literally do not matter in the slightest as there’s zero or near-zero population there.
4. Last but not least, all those mountains help provide natural terrain shielding, which also goes a very long way to preventing self-interference.
There’s a few other mountainous areas, such as western Colorado or parts of California, where all these natural advantages come into play. I’m sure ZoneCasting could work well enough for at least some stations there, too. But it’s utter foolishness for anyone to believe that any success KADD has with ZoneCasting is vindication for the technology everywhere else.
East of the Rockies
Certainly anywhere near the Northeast Corridor — if not a lot of the U.S. east of the Mississippi — it would be an utter disaster; we’ve seen, quite readily, the limitations of booster technology with WXRV(FM) “The River” on 92.5 from Haverhill, Mass., on the north side of the Boston metro. Their booster system has worked wonders for improving their coverage — in Boston — as seen by their significantly improved ratings.
But we’ve also seen major problems with self-interference any time there’s a hiccup in the booster — and those happen more than you’d think. Even when it all works perfectly, there’s a gigantic amount of self-interference in the communities south of Boston; trying to listen to 92.5 in towns like Medfield, Franklin, Walpole or Norwood (or anywhere south of those towns) yields a highly unpleasant “flanging” sound as the booster signals start arriving out of phase with the main at your location.
WXRV doesn’t care about interference over those communities, nor do they have to — they’re all outside of WXRV’s service contour — but it illustrates how a booster with different programming would be guaranteed to be both highly noticeable and highly self-interfering over highly-populated areas.
I imagine it would drive listeners away in droves. Now WXRV is run by people smart enough not to do this. But it’s practically a hallmark of our industry that there’s dumb-as-dirt managers who see the ability to “sell more ads” and they’ll do it in a heartbeat, no matter how destructive it is to their own signal, and to the perception of radio in general to listeners in their area. THAT’S why ZoneCasting is just a bad idea overall. It might make sense for a small number of stations, but it makes no sense at all for the vast majority of them.
— Aaron Read, Providence, R.I.
