Cumulus Media has flipped WFAS-AM to AM1230Digital: New Talk for New York. The station features news talk on weekdays and sports talk on the weekends.
“Cumulus Media is committed to pursuing innovation that improves the audio experience for our listeners,” said Dave Milner, EVP, Operations. “The move to all-digital AM will significantly extend our listening area with crystal clear sound, offering more listeners the opportunity to hear our programming.”
“Cumulus Media has been a long-time supporter of HD Radio and part of the pioneer broadcasters who led the US radio industry conversion to digital broadcasting,” said Joe D’Angelo, SVP, Broadcast Radio, XPeri. “We are excited to see Cumulus continuing this role of industry leadership in converting their AM NY property to all digital HD Radio. The technology will be sure to delight both listeners and advertisers. This is another step in securing broadcast radio’s place in modern car dashboards.”
According to Cumulus Media: ‘The new digital signal now reaches beyond Westchester County, NY and into large portions of New York City (Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Manhattan), the north shore of Long Island, northern New Jersey, and Fairfield County, CT.’
That would be fine, but the FCC made a tremedous error in their judgment when they allowed the winning bidder (iBiquity?) to hold a strict license on the chips.
You can’t just build a radio to pick this up like in the old days. It takes super costly proprietary chips to decode this, and every radio sold with it has a royalty fee attached to it. I’m not a big fan of our precious spectrum being regulated by a public/private partnership with the FCC and their cronies like iBiquity…