Cumulus shopped around and realized the land underneath the WMAL tower was a lot more valuable than the license. The same is true of KABC in Los Angeles. First a map:
This is the tower farm west of Bethesda, MD
The light green roughly heart shaped area
Pulling back, the area is right by the 495 icon on the left side
WMAL is not a Class A 50 kW day/night flamethrower – it is Class B 10kw, 5k at night local AM station so far West that it doesn’t reach Baltmore, let alone Philadelphia or New York.
The land is being sold to Toll Brothers, a well known real estate developer with a national reputation – the final price will be between $75 to $90 million, or about $250k for each house they plan to build.
The approvals and such are far enough along that Cumulus has to file paperwork on what they will do with no transmitter. WMAL is already simulcast on WMAL-FM, so the reality is they don’t need to do anything except tear the tower down. Even then, they have a year to do something.
The plan filed with the FCC is a bit unusual – they propose to move WMAL-AM to another existing AM tower they don’t own and do what is called “diplexing”, which means using a single tower to broadcast two AM stations at the same time.
The new shared tower is located near Germantown, which is much further away from The District
My guess is the actual plan is to go dark, move the listeners all to FM, sell the license for whatever they can get (perhaps the owner of this tower) – or maybe hope the FCC approves fiberglass antennas that could be put on top of a 7-11.
Mary Berner takes control of Cumulus this week. The rumor mill says she may hire back all the Westwood One music talent. It could well be that she was angry that the Dickeys fired the host of a format she listened to, or knew socially. Change isn’t always for the reasons you expect.
WMAL is required by the FCC to use one directional antenna pattern during the day, and a second one at night to protect stations on adjacent frequencies and on the same frequency. Changing the transmitter location will require some re-engineering to provide the same protections.
That’s a fact. Diplexing precludes a directional signal since multiple tower directional antennas need the antenna spacing to match the wavelength. They will operate at lower power at night – the problem could end up being not adequately covering their community of license (Washington DC). It’s definitely a sketchy proposal – but the good side is it doesn’t really matter if they fail.
The plan for KABC-AM is in, too. It will move to the tower(s) of KWKW-AM, which carries ESPN Deportes, from two towers in the middle of a parking lot – just off the Financial District on Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
KABC also has the issue of where to move their studio, which sits at the base of their current towers.
Dipsticks. House of cards.
parrott
Here is an update. As a result of WMAL’s move, WSPZ and WWDC are affected with “1260 The Answer” moving to “570 The Answer” in the DC market
https://radioinsight.com/headlines/119865/salem-prepares-move-1260-answer-washington/
I don’t know about you all, but doesn’t it seems things are more complicated and more convoluted than ever these days ?
I was looking at the coverage area for WMAL, and you could have rode on the whole entire length of the Richmond, Fredricksburg & Potomac RR, while listening to WMAL
(back in the day) . Seems like they extended further south than west for coverage.
The AM radio in the Jeep could pick up WMAL all the way to the west end of I 66, where it ends at I 81.
The radio in my Dodge Ram truck can pick up WMAL south on I81, all the way to
Mt. Jackson. Just north of Harrisonburg. I attribute this to the truck being a diesel and it doesn’t have spark plugs interfering with RF. ( could just be a better radio or antenna) 🙂
Guess that era is ending
best
parrott
There is more money selling the real estate than running the station. That probably keeps the tax assessments low until you sell the land some day a decade in the future. Several of my individual stock picks are related to that premise – that urban infilling will continue to grow.
In 1910, the population of Charlotte was 31,000. Today, the city is around 800,000 and the metro area is several million