Report a Problem

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Fred Stiening

This is a place to report a problem with the directory, and at least temporarily problems with individual streams or station schedules.

You must have a blog account to post here (different than the account to use the directory)

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26 Responses to Report a Problem

  1. crazyronin says:
    April 30, 2011 at 1:50 pm

    More of a station problem, but WNTK seems to use a codec that WMP can’t recognize (at least when using Firefox.)

    In other words: using FF as the browser, go to link for WNTK, WMP opens, Dialog box: “can’t recognize codec used to compress…”

    • Art Stone says:
      April 30, 2011 at 3:18 pm

      That codec error is bogus and misleading. It’s just one of the possible causes, and it’s been about 5 years since I’ve seen a stream that needed a codec to actually be installed.

      The server is just down – probably for a baseball game.

      * update…. the station carries Boston Red Sox games, but today’s game is not until 7:15 PM so that’s not it. They also carry college sports, but the only thing on the schedule today is Track and Field, which I’ve never heard aired on radio. 🙂 NASCAR has a race today, but it is at night and WNTK is not an affiliate.

      Maybe the cleaning lady unplugged the server to plug in the vacuum cleaner.

    • TheChairman says:
      April 30, 2011 at 5:27 pm

      I also use FireFox when testing…

      When an error such as WNTK occurs, the first thing I do is paste the link into IE8 to see if it works (note: Art says WinAmp has issues with WMP streams).

      If the stream plays via IE8, I consider the test completed. If not, I report it.

      • Art Stone says:
        April 30, 2011 at 5:37 pm

        More generally, if you go to the web site and try to play the stream and get the same result as clicking here, there is nothing I can fix. Most of the time, I don’t bother trying to contact the station since I’m not in their local listening area, so at most I mark the station as broken and most of the time it starts working in a few hours. Such is the nature of streaming, especially those stations which do it themselves and don’t have someone monitoring the stream 24 hrs a day.

  2. Art Stone says:
    May 2, 2011 at 8:47 am

    It’s come to my attention that there are some problems specific to running windows in 64 bit mode

  3. crazyronin says:
    May 11, 2011 at 6:37 pm

    WDNG-AM seems to ave lost the right to its streaming site.

    http://www.wdng.net/stream.html

    takes you to a search site. Forgot to renew and got poached, I guess. A quick search seems to show that WDNG no longer has a website.

    • Art Stone says:
      May 11, 2011 at 9:36 pm

      Anniston, Alabama was right in the path of those Alabama tornados.

      I can’t explain why there is a connection between that and the fake search page. Google Adsense does offer a service where they’ll put up a page like that on a parked domain,

      This is a tool I use to look up domain info:
      http://www.whois.sc/

      As it turns out, their domain expired on April 27, 2011 (bad timing). TuCows has the domain in its mandatory 30 day rededemption period before it officially goes up for grabs. The station probably has bigger problems to deal with than their web site…. Ihe station web site was already marked as “under construction” (that makes the URL show up in red italics on some pages) and I’ve marked the stream as broken… hopefully, it will get fixed before it expires.

  4. Parrott says:
    October 12, 2016 at 9:28 am

    Fred: do you ever listen to WGNC over in Gastonia? Is their signal strong enough to make it over your way ? I realize electric meters limit am signals these days.
    I listen to Imus there in the morning sometimes, and Beck to to see how the clintons are doing , sometimes the ‘wallbanger’ at 4pm.
    They load fast and I can use VLC to listen to them.
    WBOB in jacksonville went away or something, I don’t listen to them anymore. I think they had financial issues or something.
    parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      October 12, 2016 at 3:54 pm

      Back when I created the “radio/TV near me” and went on the zombie hunt (hoping at least one other person would play along), I did a complete scan of every AM station that theoretically should be present here – the only one missing was the one I wrote about at the time. I’m pretty sure a big part of the “AM noise” problem has to do with cars in radios wanting to get rid of AM. Leo LaPorte was talking about AM radio over the weekend – his electric car doesn’t even have an AM radio because of the issues with all the electronic noise inside the car

      I rarely even turn on the radio when I go outside. The new picture at the top is symbolic of the state of radio. More than half of all Americans now pay for an Amazon Prime account. Advertiser financed media is dying fast. We still have radio owners obsessed with making sure the employees don’t use too many sheets of toilet paper while destroying their communities with the music they play.

      • Parrott says:
        October 12, 2016 at 4:48 pm

        I didn’t realize Gastonia was that far away. I also didn’t realize Amazon prime was taking over either. With as many religious music and religion stations there are, you would think they were converting people left and right. I just don’t see all the conversion. so why clog up the airwaves with everyone saying the same thing. annoying. Thats even happening is rural Virginia. Meth still taking over.
        I wonder if someone had a good product ( show) if listeners would show up, but its not like it was. I guess advertised financed media is dying

        • Fred Stiening says:
          October 12, 2016 at 6:01 pm

          A religious station is very inexpensive to operate. The programming off the satellite is free (presumably the station gets a % of the donations). AM radio doesn’t have a segregated band for non-profits, so some are probably holding the land to sell it later – nothing stopping a non-profit station from renting the tower from its for-profit owner who gets a depreciation tax writeoff. Let’s make depreciated assets great again!

    • Fred Stiening says:
      October 12, 2016 at 5:10 pm

      Here is their coverage map from
      http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=WGNC-AM

      The answer to your question is “no” – it’s a class C station intended to only cover a small town, which it was in the 1920s. They added an FM translator but it has very limited range

    • Fred Stiening says:
      October 27, 2016 at 5:10 pm

      I was a few miles west of my normal turf and turned on the radio and WGNC was there faintly – Hannity was talking with Newt about Hillary’s “Wikipedia” leaks. Sheesh.

      They had a local ad for an archery range. Not gonna hear that ad on WBT.

      • Parrott says:
        October 31, 2016 at 8:11 pm

        yeah WGNC does a lot of their own ‘corny’ stuff for commercials for local business. Its kinda refreshing, funny , old school .
        They have a nice lady that does a finance roundup show at 5:30 pm, m-F. It seems it is produced right there in their own studio, as far as I can tell.
        They are not cumulost.
        parrott

        • Fred Stiening says:
          October 31, 2016 at 8:24 pm

          Because the rules before 1996 prevented large corporate owners and most stations outside of the major markets were generally one AM and one FM, many stations have interesting stories about who owns them and why.

          WGNC-AM is owned by GEORGE S. NEISLER – it is his only station. He lives in nearby Kings Mountain. He is 88 years old and his son is Mayor of Kings Mountain. His great great grandfather was the first mayor of Kings Mountain. His family used to be in the textile business. He has only owned the AM station since 2009.

          Before the Neisler family bought the station, it was owned by the guy who owned the KFC restaurant in Linconton, one of six radio stations in the area west of Charlotte.

          So imagine you are the owner of an archery range and your choice is the radio station run by the mayor who you went to school with and your uncle used to work in his textile factory – or you get a phone call from Atlanta by a sales person who has worked for Cumulus for three weeks and has never been to Kings Mountain and doesn’t know what century the Civil War was fought in. Easy choice.

          • Parrott says:
            October 31, 2016 at 11:25 pm

            I am glad you found the history of the station. I have been listening to them a little bit lately, I listen to Imus on there the 8-9 am . I don’t listen to Beck on there. I switch to WMAL and Chris.
            Then Alex until he goes crazy, then sometimes to Dennis Preger or Rush for 12 minutes,
            From three to four it is the Ted Broer show on Global star 3, radio network .
            4pm back to wgnc for Hannity and the finance lady.
            I kinda wonder around.
            parrott

            • Fred Stiening says:
              November 1, 2016 at 12:52 am

              Charlotte didn’t have a big Clear Channel presence prior to 1996 – radio was dominated by the TV station owners – WBT and WSOC. As listeners moved to FM, WLNK-FM and WSOC-FM grew. CBS accumulated 6 stations, which it recently traded to Beasley. Radio one has a few stations targeting the black music listeners. WFAE-FM is an active NPR affiliate, and religious stations are a significant share, but they are invisible in ratings since they don’t sell ads and don’t pay for ratings.

              WBT carries Rush, but iHeartRadio doesn’t have an AM station, so WGNC is one source for Beck and Hannity. The west side (toward Gastonia) is thinly populated as it mostly is the airport and related logistics, business parks and the like. WBCN is an AM expanded band station currently owned by Beasley. It has a pathetic signal and no brand awareness. It has bounced around formats – currently carrying the Premiere lineup, but being donated to Entercom as part of the WBT sale. I could see Entercom dropping the local hosts to add Hannity and Beck. Entercom has no knowledge of the Charlotte market.

              WRHI-AM is the other fringe station in Rock Hill that can be heard here. Hannity is there, but they do mostly local small town stuff.

              Cumulus has no stations here. Savage is on WGNC from 9 PM to midnight.

        • Fred Stiening says:
          October 31, 2016 at 9:03 pm

          WGNC did acquire an FM translator license from a religious broadcaster in Florida under the “once in a lifetime to save AM radio” program, which just coincidently ended today.

  5. Parrott says:
    October 23, 2016 at 9:44 pm

    Uh Fred, comment for Topic of show is off for Armed American radio with Mark Walthers. Maybe you want to have it that way. Just thought i would mention it,

    parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      October 24, 2016 at 12:26 am

      Look at the menu at the top of this page. There is an item “Report a problem”. It’s a little hard to see, but WordPress doesn’t let me change the color easily.

    • Fred Stiening says:
      October 27, 2016 at 6:42 pm

      Now if you just describe the problem you see, we would have something!

      • Parrott says:
        October 29, 2016 at 11:13 pm

        Hey, show topic button is back ! Yeah, you fixed it. Cool.
        The ‘show topic’ button hasn’t been showing up on Sunday nights during the Live show. But that screen shot looks good.
        I’ll check tomorrow night .
        parrott

        • Fred Stiening says:
          October 29, 2016 at 11:32 pm

          Well, it shows up for me because I have infinite powers. Now that you clarified the issue…

          There is a little flag that can be associated with a show where the show has been (or might be) a magnet for abuse – because the topics are immediately visible, that could be a problem. I’ll turn off the “protect from vandalism” flag and that should make it possible to set the topic. If Rachel Maddow shows up and posts something obnoxious, I’ll just deal with it…

  6. Parrott says:
    October 30, 2016 at 9:42 pm

    Hi Fred: Mark’s show is live right now, but on ‘Join the coversation’ ‘show topic’ isn’t showing. He is like 8pm to 11pm here on sunday,
    I am going to try and attach a screen shot,
    thanks

    parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      October 31, 2016 at 12:31 am

      The cause turned out to be a data problem – back when I conceived the web site, it was designed to interface with a program called Replay Radio. The format they used in their API used a fairly logical method to identify days of week…

      MTWTFSS

      If the show was not on, the day of the week was an X or a .

      So Rush is on MTWTFXX 12-15 ET)
      Coast to Coast is on XTWTFSX (1-5 ET)

      Armed American Radio is on Sunday night, so it should have been
      XXXXXXS
      But in the database it was actually
      XXXXXS

      Since I never make mistakes, the field has no edits

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