{"id":17406,"date":"2016-11-19T17:17:33","date_gmt":"2016-11-19T22:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=17406"},"modified":"2016-11-19T17:31:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T22:31:30","slug":"wdtw-am-in-detroit-is-back-on-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=17406","title":{"rendered":"WDTW-AM in Detroit is back on the air!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call me skeptical, but we have at least one spy in the area.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17406"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17413,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17406\/revisions\/17413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}