Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio Stations

Dravecky

I just wanted to take a moment to remember our good friend and a driving force behind this project, and others, Dravecky. We lost him 4 years ago today, April 23.

An admin, he was honored with 3 good articles and 145 DYKs, plus he had 104,715 edits to his name, including one (his last) the morning he passed. Dravecky was a friend to all, on and off Wikipedia. A SciFi fan above all else. He helped do the behind the scenes stuff (along with his longtime girlfriend Robyn) for FenCon, WhoFest, among many others and met many of his favorite actors and actresses. He loved his University of Alabama Crimson Tide football.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say he is still missed by all here. Roll Tide, Dravecky. :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 15:39 on April 23, 2020 (UTC) • #StayAtHome

Is {{XMSR}} needed?

The last of the traffic/weather channels were removed from Sirius XM in March 2023 (SXM now has an Infotainment package). Is {{XMSR}} no longer needed, or can/should it be repurposed? -- DrChuck68 (talk) 23:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

R from radio repeater

Hi all, I created a redirect template (Template:R from radio repeater) for tagging redirects that point from the call sign of a repeater to the article for the station being repeated. I thought people in this WikiProject might be interested in using (or editing) the template, so I wanted to let everyone here know. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:03, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

It's a good idea, but the language should probably refer to broadcast translator, which is what's usually used (at least in the U.S.) for AM, FM and TV, not radio repeater, which is usually about two-way radio systems. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:40, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction! Radio technology isn't an area I'm very familiar with, so it's a big help to have someone more knowledgeable look over the information. I'll update the template documentation per your suggestions. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 13:43, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Great! I've added it to a few translator redirects, but there are a bunch in Special:WhatLinksHere/CSN_International_translators and Category:NPR member translators that it could be added to, too. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:16, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm an inveterate wikignome, particularly on this project, so I'd probably end up using this a lot. But what do you envision being the purpose of the maintenance category that this template is populating? Not a criticism – legitimately curious. Mlaffs (talk) 23:09, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

WMFN in Template:Chicago Radio

For those not in the know, WMFN was a station started in West Michigan that eventually moved its COL to Peotone, Illinois by a broadcaster who never had designs on actually serving Peotone, but the broader Chicago region at large. As seen by its coverage map, its signal is nearly non-existent inland south of Kankakee, but it blankets Chicago and Milwaukee pretty well. The station owner, Birach Broadcasting Corporation, is outside a couple stations, known for running ethnic formats from stations in the suburban areas of major cities and getting FCC approval to blast those signals into the main urban core.

This has come into issue because the station in technicality serves Will County, but carries the Black Information Network under a LMA with iHeartMedia Chicago. Their advertising in Chicago proper doesn't mention Peotone, and all of their own advertising carried on the station revolves around Chicago and south suburban businesses. If Peotone or Will County is mentioned on the station outside the station ID, it's about the theoretical third airport that's never come to be, or usually in derision because of a negative story about discrimination. Since the Main Studio Rule was dropped, WMFN and Birach don't have any commitments to Will County or Peotone and can do anything they want, and once they entered the LMA with iHeart, their only focus has been distributing the network, and marketing it to, Chicago. Their signal source is WVAZ's second HD Radio subchannel, a Chicago station itself. For all intents and purposes, the station is a Chicago station using its Peotone COL as a flag of convenience, and has been for over ten years (it also previously aired Chicago-focused ethnic formats since the COL move to Peotone). Any programming it had specifically regarding the south suburbs has long been dropped. The station has physical billboard advertising in the city of Chicago advertising that BIN is available on 640 AM.

Knowing all of this, I have tried to add the station to the Chicago radio template while keeping it in the Template:Joliet-Morris-Crete Radio because that's still a radio market of its own, but if its being reported, its actual reach in WillCo like its signal is negligible in the Nielsens but stronger in Chicago (if Birach or iHeart even bother with them). Because COLs don't really matter now post-MSR repeal, I've tried to explain my addition of it in this manner, but @Tdl1060 has continually removed it despite explanation each time, and now dropped WP:DISRUPT on me to chill any discussion on this any further.

I feel like I'm justified in adding WMFN to the Chicago radio template and since we don't use official Nielsen ratings DMAs per the 2007 OTRS report they filed against us (which did involve TV at the time, but now encompasses radio after the Arbitron purchase), we do not defer to specific markets, more so post-MSR repeal. I'd like a neutral third opinion on the matter; if it's determined I am in the wrong, no issue here. But I'm coming here as a realist that knows the station has always been meant to serve Chicago and the market it is in does not matter one bit, because the goal of radio is always to serve the most people, and here, iHeart would not enter an LMA to carry a network around Black news in the nation's third largest city, to somehow only serve Kankakee and a range of farm towns. Thank you. Nate • (chatter) 21:04, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

• Is it audible in Chicago on a regular basis? Is it not trying to serve some other market? Then it belongs. This one does. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 21:11, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

  In that case, the suburban navboxes for all metropolitan areas need to be merged, because all of those stations are serving the market of the main metro area. Otherwise, we will have endless navbox creep based on original research. "Joliet-Morris-Crete" is not technically a separate market, and no one has argued it belongs in the Kankakee navbox. Signal strength and billboard advertising and other marketing issues are not firm verifiable factors. I for one do live in suburban Chicago and have seen plenty of billboards for BIN on IL 171 (First Ave), but none of them mention it being on AM 640. Tdl1060 (talk) 02:59, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

• Two sources list the station at the LMA's start specifically stating it was 'Chicago's 640 AM', and a well-trusted source noted it was specifically moved to where it was to serve Chicago back to 2014. iHeart wouldn't launch a station that was moved into the market to completely exclude the main market where its signal covers and demographic lives or call it "BIN Monee"; WGBO-DT has never been called 'a Joliet station' despite its COL; it's Chicago's Univision station. Certainly not original research. Nate • (chatter) 03:19, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

WGBO-TV broadcasts from downtown Chicago and Joliet is part of the Chicago market. There is no separate navbox for suburban TV stations. Will County is part of the Chicago market, as is DuPage, Lake, Kane, Kendall, and McHenry. Every station in the "Joliet-Morris-Crete" navbox is in the Chicago market. The problem that is the source of this dispute is rooted in the fact that we have separate navboxes for suburban counties. Perhaps we shouldn't, but there is no reason for WMFN to be singled out, when plenty of other suburban stations serve Chicago that are only in suburban navboxes, including some that have far move coverage in Cook County than they do in the counties that they are included in the navboxes for. Either the existing clear criteria for inclusion is maintained (city of license and location of transmitter site), a new clear criteria is established that would not rely on original research, or suburban navboxes need to be abolished alltogether.--Tdl1060 (talk) 07:39, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Call Sign History

Copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio: I needed to add a station's previous call signs to an article and when I tried to find those the way I have in the past, I got an "access denied" message. Can someone tell me how to find former call signs now, and more importantly, can a bot update all the links to the former source?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:57, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

What database have you tried? - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:21, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

What I must have seen used and what I added to articles that need them was this.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:46, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

This will get you to this, which will lead to this. - LuckyLouie (talk) 22:24, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, but that doesn't solve the problem. I can access the information for new stations (example), but what happens when someone wants to use the existing link to go to the site and doesn't know about this procedure?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:15, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I think what you’re saying is there are an unknown number of links to the FCC database that are published in articles that are dead or no longer working. You might ask at Village Pump for possible solutions, but I think they will need the specific articles and the specific dead links you want help repairing. - LuckyLouie (talk) 00:54, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to figure out all the articles. I thought maybe there would be a way to search for the first part of that URL and then somehow replace that. It's not simple because the URL hasn't changed, but getting there is the problem.16:22, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I think a WP reference search for specific url prefixes does exist. I don't recall exactly how it works, but again, the Village Pump could probably help. Or perhaps @User:DrChuck68 could help. Good luck! BTW I was just poking around and found this: [[1]]. It appears to be a template to generate a link to callsign history PDF's contained in the FCC database. There are some other interesting templates in the "see also" section of that page. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:57, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. And to be clear, in my previous post, "getting there" refers to the list of former call signs, not to the articles that have the URLs that won't work.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:03, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

One more discovery: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio Stations. These might be the people that can help. - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:27, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

• I've been trying to avoid using {{FCC letter}} because I wonder how much longer CDBS links like that will work. Any CDBS history card or imported letter is mirrored in LMS, but we don't have an equivalent template (I've been using {{Cite web}}). But that's not exactly what you're looking for. Vchimpanzee, what exactly wasn't loading? Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 20:19, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

• Hi, might I suggest REC's FCCData website? It's updated directly from the FCC (though they are having connection issues) and is basically all FCC data just easier to access. The callsign history is at the bottom left. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 22:02, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

What we need is a way to access the information that is already sourced, if someone has a reason to need to look it up.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:25, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee Can you provide one of the non-working URLs and the article it's in? Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 00:07, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/call_hist.pl?Facility_id=4841&Callsign=WKIX-FM is in WKIX-FM.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:36, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

• It's worth noting that the available call sign history - both the FCC's own on CDBS and LMS, and REC's FCCData site as a result - is absolutely borked right now and has been for a while. Some histories on LMS have the dates of the changes, but show the exact same call sign at each date (rather than the actual historical ones). Some stations are updated in CDBS, while others there don't reflect changes that have happened in the last few months. It's completely mishegas. There may not actually be a form of the link right now that would give you the correct information, and certainly not consistently so. Doesn't solve the problem, but thought it should be factored in. Mlaffs (talk) 01:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

In case anyone is wondering, I was trying to list all the stations that had ever been WKIX and just happened to remember those letters anytime I saw an article in need of former call signs and I needed to see the URL.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Is Special:Linksearch useful here? Certes (talk) 22:19, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

While http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/call_hist.pl?Facility_id=4841&Callsign=WKIX-FM leads to access denied, simply changing "http" to "https" creates a working link: https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/call_hist.pl?Facility_id=4841&Callsign=WKIX-FM. Is that the only issue with these links, or is there more to it? -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 23:45, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

It may be as simple enough as taking this to Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests if that's the issue. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 23:49, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Okay, that seems to be the problem.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:26, 2 September 2023 (UTC)