musical chairs
Jan. 18th, 2011 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacKDFC, San Francisco's pathetic excuse for a classical music FM station, has been sold to an NPO and is changing frequencies.
First question. Will this move away from an advertising-supported model mean an improvement in its execrable lowest-uncommon-denominator programming? Possibly not. We are informed that the current staff, including the self-important H.S. and the vacuous D.N. as announcers, will remain, and that's not a good sign.
Second question. What's with the frequencies? The two other classical stations within far-hailing distance, KBOQ in Monterey and KXPR in Sacramento, both changed frequencies within the last several years, both acquiring much less powerful signals that could no longer leak over the mountains and sometimes be heard in the Bay Area. An unfortunate outcome, as they're both much better stations than KDFC.
KDFC, we're told, is moving to two new frequencies, though the article doesn't say why two, and it also says it'll be tri-casting on all three frequencies starting this afternoon for the next week, when the old one goes off the air. When I went out to my car to check (I only listen to the radio in the car; at home I have all my CDs, and at home I do not have an operable radio antenna), at 5 PM, I found that KDFC was on the old frequency, 102.1, and one of the new ones, 89.9, but not the other new one, 90.3, which was broadcasting an NPR station. (ETA: Thanks to a comment on SFgate I can guess that what I was hearing on 90.3 was the local repeater station of KUSP drowning KDFC out.)
Even more curiously, the announcement said that 90.3 is for the City and 89.9 is for the North Bay, yet I was picking it up just fine in the South Bay, which is said to be an area which will have difficulty picking up any of the new signals. So it's supposed to be another move to a weaker signal, but is it?
First question. Will this move away from an advertising-supported model mean an improvement in its execrable lowest-uncommon-denominator programming? Possibly not. We are informed that the current staff, including the self-important H.S. and the vacuous D.N. as announcers, will remain, and that's not a good sign.
Second question. What's with the frequencies? The two other classical stations within far-hailing distance, KBOQ in Monterey and KXPR in Sacramento, both changed frequencies within the last several years, both acquiring much less powerful signals that could no longer leak over the mountains and sometimes be heard in the Bay Area. An unfortunate outcome, as they're both much better stations than KDFC.
KDFC, we're told, is moving to two new frequencies, though the article doesn't say why two, and it also says it'll be tri-casting on all three frequencies starting this afternoon for the next week, when the old one goes off the air. When I went out to my car to check (I only listen to the radio in the car; at home I have all my CDs, and at home I do not have an operable radio antenna), at 5 PM, I found that KDFC was on the old frequency, 102.1, and one of the new ones, 89.9, but not the other new one, 90.3, which was broadcasting an NPR station. (ETA: Thanks to a comment on SFgate I can guess that what I was hearing on 90.3 was the local repeater station of KUSP drowning KDFC out.)
Even more curiously, the announcement said that 90.3 is for the City and 89.9 is for the North Bay, yet I was picking it up just fine in the South Bay, which is said to be an area which will have difficulty picking up any of the new signals. So it's supposed to be another move to a weaker signal, but is it?
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 03:23 am (UTC)