Call me skeptical, but we have at least one spy in the area.
WDTW-AM (1310 kHz) had been a troubled station for a lot of reasons. Because it is near the Canadian border, it has to point the signal away from Canada after sunset. Doing that requires 6 antenna towers. It sits on land near I-96 and Telegraph road, two very major roads and close to the airport and Detroit to Chicago railroad tracks.
In December 2012, the Clear Channel owned station was running the progressive Talk shows that drew zero ratings. Overnight, they shut the station down, tore down the towers and donated the license to the Minority Media Telecommunications Council (the name has since changed) for a tax writeoff probably. At the time, the story was the land was being sold for a warehouse distribution center. The MMTC transferred the license to some guy named Pedro Zamora from Texas.
The FCC “rule” is that if your station is silent for a year, you automatically lose your license. If the land was actually sold out from under the demolished towers, it would be extraordinarily expensive to move and reconstruct an AM station in the Detroit area. Mr Zamora doesn’t appear to be a guy with that kind of money or the ability to operate a major market radio station. The FCC does have discretion to not cancel licenses, and tends to not enforce rules on “minority” licensees.
In September 2016, the FCC was told the station is back on the air. The story was that the original towers were being rebuilt as they were originally. All very curious. Who has that kind of money and why would they do it?
Sure enough:
http://www.lamegadetroit.com/radio/
and the why
http://www.zamoraentertainment.com/about.html
Amazing how one-sided our government and its institutions are that allow for minorities to get away with this kind of nonsense. Six years ago my granddaughter was given a 100% scholarship at Harvard. Granted, she was the Valedictorian of her class, but the scholarship was given not because her outstanding grades but because they needed to fill a quota. As much as it pained her, and because her integrity meant more to her than a Harvard degree, she turned it down and decided to pay her way and enroll at Duke Univ. I am hoping the Trump Administration will change this and return back to a merit system instead of a quota system.
The MMTC is apparently involved in getting handouts for cell phone tower licenses, and “internet” has crept into their name. The organization was close to a one person operation run by a lawyer in DC named David Honig. If you have the notion that it trains inner city youth how to run a radio station, the reality couldn’t be more different.
http://mmtconline.org/
A few years ago, the FCC Chairman declared that free broadband internet access was a basic human right
A bit more background
http://www.afro.com/media-civil-rights-lawyer-david-honig-semi-retired-but-still-fighting/
When I arrived at Charlotte and got to know my niece better, she felt a need to declare “I’m a Progressive and I’m proud!”. She got an unexpected response from me. Rather than getting a patronizing pat on the head and telling her I would love her no matter what, I responded with “I would be shocked if you weren’t a proud Progressive – if you were a Conservative, you never would have gotten into Columbia Medical School”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSJ_Media
The Latino newspaper that two of the staff have as their email addresses is a long standing newspaper that is circulated at Mexican grocers and restaurants that I frequent. It appears they added the station to their regional empire. I will start checking for 1310 while driving around.
I figured you would know or could find out. You have quite the ability to do research 😉
The station is streaming and the web site looks impressive – the stream probably sounds much better than the AM signal.
I’m working the list of dead but reborn list of stations. Right now I’m tracking down an AM station in Tulsa OK. The phone number and address match a Mexican grocery store. They may be related to another nearby station.
The FCC is toying around with ending the 1930s era rule against non-citizens owning radio stations. It was put in place by FDR to suppress German sentiment that the United States should stay out of the war in Europe.
I’m sure Carlos Slim would love to buy up Clear Channel and a thousand failing AM radio stations
It´s my birthday today, and I drove from Farmington to Birmingham and back. 1310 is on the air, and the signal is stronger and clearer than when it was Air America.
Hey, my birthday is tomorrow – another thing we have in common!
WTOY-AM is a pretty good example. It is a minority owned urban gospel Class D station in Salem VA (western suburb of Roanoke).
The FCC requires every licensee to file a biannual report restating who the owner of the station is. The last time WTOY-AM filed a report was 2003
http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/own_list.pl?Facility_id=29210
WTOY also was on a list of radio stations I created as a blog post of stations in VA that failed to submit their renewal application by June 1st, 2011. That usually carries a stiff fine. The renewal application was filed July 8th, 2011
They may have rebuilt much of the same tower. http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?685433-WDTW-1310-(MI)-applies-for-CP-to-relaunch-station-(an-expensive-mistake-)
That’s consistent with what I had heard. I am more curious why the plan to sell the real estate fell through (at least for now). My guess is that the land can’t get access to Telegraph to the West, and having truck traffic added to Monroe Road would cause resistance from people in the area. To get over onto I-96 via Monroe Road is not very direct.
AM signals are almost more driven by the copper wire radials buried underground than the towers, especially on directional patterns. By temporarily dismantling the towers, the FCC made them cut back a few of the radials to not interfere with other stations. Following the “who was here first” rule, being silent for four years left them second in line.
Happy Belated Birthday Fred, & Haiti !
As they say from ‘Pirates Landing’ in Elkin NC :
Happy Happy Birthday,
Happy Happy Birthday ,
Happy Happy Birthday,
AArrrrrr !
My nieces love going there. They say the have the best ‘Chicken planks’ and
arctic ‘Cod chunks’ .
Hope you had the best B-day !
parrott