Posted by Raslin5 on July 26, 2021, 11:28 am Edited by board administrator July 26, 2021, 12:16 pm
Everyone’s favorite AM radio station underdog AM1530 in Elmhurst has changed their format from sports to boomer familiar music. The station is now transmitting with just one tower and has no plans to change that at this time. Their FM translator is operational.
ADMIN NOTE: post edited due to no linkback/verification of quote.
"Source?" is correct. Raslin5 might not understand what is expected. You have to linkback a quote where you read it or it is considered abuse of fair use (to the person making the quote or the author of the article). Or it is not true and made up. I tried vetting the quote, I can't find it. I have deleted the unverified quote allowing the rest to remain.
Sorry all. The quote was from an email Matt sent to me earlier this morning as a response to my asking him about the format change and his current antenna status. Was a good idea to delete that part of the post since I can’t share his email with everyone.
In any case let’s not get distracted
What do you all think about the format change? Seems an interesting choice to me. I like music on AM radio so I will be tuning in as much as possible.
Excellent! A WCKG post! Made my day. His daddy and he just got $650,000 from the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority for the property. Santa Claus does exist! That is $649,000 more than the station is worth. It’s all public record in Cook County property records, or look up 130 Concord St., Elmhurst and a number of real estate records will reflect the price. Even though it is an Elmhurst address it is in Cook County, not DuPage.
I tried to be polite last time I posted about this property because his engineer was just parroting the same lies Matt told him and I didn’t feel like arguing. As I’ve stated before, the reason I even care about this property is because it’s another example of someone who has zero interest in running a radio station to serve the public, but instead purchased it with the hope to flip it and make some money. It is America and you can certainly do that, but the years of lies, pretend formats, etc. are both hysterical and disheartening. The state made the “flip” possible through eminent domain, otherwise they would’ve taken a brutal financial beating. Look at their website, they’ve been running music for weeks and they still have it listed as Sportsbook radio and list the Dan Patrick show on the air every day. If they cared at all they would at least take the two minutes necessary and update what is actually on the station. I feel bad for the young guy who did the one hour talk show in the afternoon. You can tell he really puts a lot of effort into it and works hard, and I wonder if they even told him the show is not on the air anymore. He still has it listed on his social media as being on WCKG every day at 2pm. Hope he is able to find another broadcast outlet, he is better than most things on sports stations in town. Always had good guests.
As has been the case, the station is actively for sale with no buyers in sight. But now because they got the giant payoff for the property they are still going to try to find someone to buy the translator and the AM license. The translator can take a feed from another property and is not married to the AM so if anyone buys the translator they would likely just pull the plug on the AM if they can’t sell it. But building out the translator to have any kind of signal is extremely expensive.
For the original poster, the reason he told you they have no plans to change the “format” is because it costs zero dollars to run it out of his house. And broadcasting from one tower at 190 watts is because they have nowhere to build another tower. And by that I mean they don’t want to buy or lease other property. They only want to keep the station on the air so they don’t lose the license. The station already was destroyed in critical hours by WCKY and at 190 watts it is an even bigger joke. They want to get out of the station with whatever they can. They don’t want to sink the money they got into building the translator, so they continue to pray for another arrival from Santa Claus. I wish them the best!
Jeremy, I believe the translator is still on the air from the AM site. But I see nothing filed with the FCC stating where the antenna is mounted, what height, etc., or if they just dropped the power and are running it in an emergency situation tfn. There was no antenna visibly mounted on top of the existing tower. Drove past it on the tollway the other day and could pick up the translator signal for about 45 seconds.
This is some great reading, the best I've read in a long time. I like how the OP said, "everyone's favorite AM radio station." That cracked me up. My question is, what do you think will happen from here? How will the second half of 2021 treat AM 1530?
I'll say the same thing. If this current era of radio/TV/etc. isn't awful enough...On the flip side, I've always wanted to hear what 1530 is like (during the daytime), without Elmhurst on the air. Either way, I think another one's getting ready to go.