AM Blowtorch KDWN 720 KHz Las Vegas going dark March 1

[northwoods]

The negative side is that if a station like KDWN, a high powered AM in a large, growing market still can't make enough money off its AM, it's a sign that AM will thin out to nothing within a decade or so. There won't be distant stuff to hear. That's the problem.

Even as late as ten years ago, in 2012-2014, the Shortwave bands were fairly active at night and during the morning hours.

Now the 31 Meter band -- which was wall to wall signals in the 1980s -- is mostly dead. Maybe 3-5 signals a night. Take a listen to the 31 Meter Band some night. That will be the AM band in the US probably well before 2040, maybe even before 2035.

If that happend witch i hope never happens then the 2000 mile pulls would be comming into your shack from Canada and the Caribbean solo into the USA depending on your setup. Its never going to happen. To many rual towns like my family and neighbor depend on AM for news. They advertise all of the car shows farm reports pancake fire house breakfast and road reports. Like they are part of your family every morning. AM Radio will never die.

 

[northwoods]

Radio experts will tell you that nighttime listeners bring in little ad revenue, and out of town listeners bring in no ad revenue.

That's the problem. Long distance listeners don't count, really. They did in the 1960s still, and maybe into the 1970s, but not anymore.

The local public of a AM radio area market listen to a local station. Thats it. And as a owner they would not have spent a dime trying to reach and advertise far off markets. Night or day. Were different. We drive around Shooting skip on AM while were driving. 99.9% other folks do not.

 

[northwoods]

Millions of American familys grew up to AM radio every morning while dad or mom were trying to drive you to school at -40 and blowing open wind snow. These local low power stations seem to stay in the family of the owernship past down forever. Amen. They will never sell. Ever.

 

[n6hgg]

Now the 31 Meter band -- which was wall to wall signals in the 1980s -- is mostly dead. Maybe 3-5 signals a night. Take a listen to the 31 Meter Band some night. That will be the AM band in the US probably well before 2040, maybe even before 2035.

True, 2 to 5 decades in the past it was truly wonderful. However 31 and 41 and 49 meters are still well populated starting pre dawn on the west coast, at around 1130 UTC and going on until almost 1730 (0330 to 0930 PST) those bands are lit up with many Asian, Indonesian, Japanese and other oceanic stations. China is ubiquitous in their presence and influence on shortwave with many differing programs and broadcast services. It's interesting because as China has come to DOMINATE the shortwave spectrum, they also at the same time are absolutely FLOODING the market with very cheap shortwave portables for the third world citizens without internet access. An XHDATA D219 just went on sale at ALI for under 7 bucks US. So yeah, the bands aren't as populated as was once the case, but they are very alive in the night time third world and eastern hemisphere.

Only about 80 minutes to go for KDWN, a station of legends.

 

[northwoods]

The positive side is that the more of them go off the air, the more distant stuff you might find on the same frequency. KDWN was always there and within range for me on the west coast here, but now I might be able to hear WGN. It might help also for when I look across the Pacific Ocean on the AM band in the 720 kilohertz area. You would think there would be some value in somebody relicensing a new station on that frequency. I guess the market will decide.

 

[n6hgg]

One more thing about KDWN. In 1982 I got my ham ticket, and I did lots of listening just prior to that and after that. In '82 Art Bell and a few of the original crew of 3820 were on the air nightly. He was the engineer at KDWN at the time and as I remember he had a Sunday night one night per week show that was not syndicated. So he would talk about stuff on 75 meters that he wouldn't talk about later after he became a celebrity. It was fun to listen to and the 3 or 4 others on the frequency were equally interesting. Art's US Air Force stories were pretty amazing but I won't elaborate. Of course, he later syndicated after that. Lots of late nights later when I got to know those guys. RIP Arthur.

I'll miss the station for sure. 1 hour to go for KDWN....

 

[northwoods]

Art Bell and Rush same station. Miss you both. Loved Art at night coming in on AM radio. We are running out of this breed. Coast to coast. Lung caner sucks. By Rush thank you .

 

[northwoods]

One more thing about KDWN. In 1982 I got my ham ticket, and I did lots of listening just prior to that and after that. In '82 Art Bell and a few of the original crew of 3820 were on the air nightly. He was the engineer at KDWN at the time and as I remember he had a Sunday night one night per week show that was not syndicated. So he would talk about stuff on 75 meters that he wouldn't talk about later after he became a celebrity. It was fun to listen to and the 3 or 4 others on the frequency were equally interesting. Art's US Air Force stories were pretty amazing but I won't elaborate. Of course, he later syndicated after that. Lots of late nights later when I got to know those guys. RIP Arthur.

I'll miss the station for sure. 1 hour to go for KDWN....

Thank you for your post. I pray it has millions of veiws. Thank you from Wisconsin. God Bless you.

 

[northwoods]

Good Night Sir.

 

[cc333]

I've managed to catch it, and I'm recording the final moments for posterity.

They just wrapped up the Star Spangled Banner at 12:03:17 AM PST.

Now we have the DX test!

EDIT: I'm hearing Morse Code at about 12:05 AM PST.

EDIT #2: Now silence...

EDIT #3: Huh, They returned to regular programming for a minute here....

EDIT #4: It's fading in and out, but I can still hear it. Looks like someone forgot to turn the transmitter off....

EDIT #5: Transmitter switched off for a second, then back on, at 12:15 PST.

c

 

[mmckenna]

I'm listening/recording also.

I'm hearing KFIR in Albany Oregon in the background. 184 watts night time power.

KDWN periodically cuts out….

 

[cc333]

That's good! The more the better, I suppose, so it's documented properly (maybe someone closer has a better, local quality recording, for example).

I'm not hearing KFIR or anything else so far, but that could be an artifact of the antenna I'm using (Tecsun AN-100), which is nulling to the north and south.

Almost 12 minutes past the scheduled shutdown time, and it's still live. Someone doesn't want to let go!

c

 

[mmckenna]

Almost 12 minutes past the scheduled shutdown time, and it's still live. Someone doesn't want to let go!

c

Someone probably driving out to the transmitter, or going to do it tomorrow.

 

[cc333]

EDIT: Ah, never mind. I'm tired.

Can anyone tell if it's still operating at daytime power?

c

 

[mmckenna]

Looking at the transmitter site, it's some prime real estate surrounded by Amazon fulfillment centers. Not surprising they got $40 million for it.

 

[n6hgg]

They went to full power at 11:52 Pacific time, and signed off at 12:59 and it went into several minutes past midnight and after the Star-Spangled Banner they transmitted a slow scan television picture and then the morse code sign off and then un-modulated carrier and then local programming when they dropped the power back to normal power levels. Interesting that they ran programming after the sign off but I figure they had some testing and shut down procedures to do. I'm going to play back my recording and get the sstv picture and the cw. The CWS sign off with pretty standard salutatory sign off stuff ham radio style, thank you for listening, and a few other things. I'll get the little video posted on YouTube in a little bit. The signal sure came alive when they went to 25,000 Watts. Of course as a 50 kw blowtorch a few years back they were pretty dominant on that frequency. On the West Coast anyway.

And yeah I was getting kfir also. I used a passive Loop to knoll out those guys out while I was listening to the station of interest. But I'm not that far from the California Oregon border and kfir comes in fairly well here. It's supposed to be low power at night, they sounded more powerful than the 146 Watts that they're supposed to be.

 

[steve9570]

No not just traffic reports Any real important news that is nation wide. WBZ am 1030 Boston

 

[marcotor]

Looking at the transmitter site, it's some prime real estate surrounded by Amazon fulfillment centers. Not surprising they got $40 million for it.

I keep wondering when what's left of KFI's now postage stamp antenna site in Buena Park finally gives itself up to iHeart's massive debt load.

 

[mmckenna]

they sounded more powerful than the 146 Watts that they're supposed to be.

Looking at their antenna site, it's even more impressive. A very short tower in a vineyard, behind someones home.

 

[mmckenna]

I keep wondering when what's left of KFI's now postage stamp antenna site in Buena Park finally gives itself up to iHeart's massive debt load.

Maybe they'll multiplex onto another tower.