? on FM radio satellite feeds

[meldar_b]

Just wondering if anyone knows how to get the sat feeds that the FM stations uses to program their stations. A local fm station WKLW 94.7 Paintsville, KY uses a sat feed that gives this small town station a big city sound playing music from the '80's, '90's and today with DJ's laurie allen, chaz kelly, mark tavlor, mike tanner from a live satellite network somewhere. I want to know if I can/should be able to pick these feeds up. My main interest is looking for a sat feed that plays a rock format. Back in the late 80's and 90's a local station carried one of these feeds called "All Hit Radio" I think it was from washington DC area I remember hearing this on a bunch of stations using this feed back in the day.

Yes I know about the commercial free channels of Music Choice DMX, Musak feeds on satellite.

Thanks

 

[Mr Tony]

Once you get outside of the larger metro areas most stations are satellite fed. (when I go to our cabin its the same way...9 stations and 7 are satellite fed almost all day).

The sad part is most of the stations like that require a specific receiver (stargate) that the station subscribes to in order to feed that radio station.

 

[mattb]

Once you get outside of the larger metro areas most stations are satellite fed. (when I go to our cabin its the same way...9 stations and 7 are satellite fed almost all day).

The sad part is most of the stations like that require a specific receiver (stargate) that the station subscribes to in order to feed that radio station.

These broadcasts require a C-Band dish pointed out to I think its 137W and require a special "authorized" satellite receiver called a StarGuide III that must maintain a network/phone connection to stay authorized to the network in question. Radio stations airing these 24/7 Satellite networks pay a fee to air their programming (cheaper than hiring a local staff) or sometimes get it at a discount by bartering (airing tons of network spots in their local spots) to get a discount.

I worked for a small Market Clear Channel radio station back in 1999 and we had a rack of those starguide receivers, We typically had to have a dedicated receiver for each network we ran CNN News required its own receiver from Westwood One, we ran a lot of sports, that had to have their own receiver per team (Cleveland Browns on one recv, Cleveland Indians on another), had a starguide dedicated to Dr Laura and Rush Limbaugh etc... luckly all the "signals" came from the same bird so they could use one dish and just a bunch of splitters to feed the signal to each receiver)

 

[Diamond Jim]

Thanks Matt, that's very interesting. I was into radio back in the early 70s when everything was done in the studio. I figured things had changed, but I had no idea how much.

My tag line: "this is the Armed Forces radio and television network." 1971-72

 

[Mr Tony]

very interesting indeed

I wonder if they get a discount for having X amount of stations on one format?

I know a local MN guy owns like 15 radio stations and all are on either Jones Radio or Starguide stations. All his country stations (sans one) is the same "jones radio country" so you can drive like 75 miles and not miss a tune because the 2 stations have the same thing. All have ABC news at top of hour so at our cabin 5 of the 9 stations have ABC news at top of hour

 

[mattb]

very interesting indeed

I wonder if they get a discount for having X amount of stations on one format?

I know a local MN guy owns like 15 radio stations and all are on either Jones Radio or Starguide stations. All his country stations (sans one) is the same "jones radio country" so you can drive like 75 miles and not miss a tune because the 2 stations have the same thing. All have ABC news at top of hour so at our cabin 5 of the 9 stations have ABC news at top of hour

I would suspect there are deals on having X number of stations running the same format.

Dal Global (used to be WestWood One)
ABC Radio Networks
Jones Radio

are the 3 providers of the satellite delivered music networks using the starguide platform (though I believe jones is moving towards a new generation of receiver that can store audio etc..)

a lot of stations have moved away from satellite delivered networks in favor of local automation systems with the music automated in house with voice tracks (recorded shifts) ie.. pay a part timer to track out (record) a weeks worth of overnights or evenings in a couple of hours and it can sound "local and live" if done right.

A lot of rural stations still rely on the satellite music networks though as its easy to rack mount a satellite receiver, program a computer to insert a "local id" upon call from the satellite feed and walk away only having to worry about the local spots that your sales guy sells.

 

[DiscoLoveGrapes]

very interesting indeed

I wonder if they get a discount for having X amount of stations on one format?

I know a local MN guy owns like 15 radio stations and all are on either Jones Radio or Starguide stations. All his country stations (sans one) is the same "jones radio country" so you can drive like 75 miles and not miss a tune because the 2 stations have the same thing. All have ABC news at top of hour so at our cabin 5 of the 9 stations have ABC news at top of hour

I worked at a Jones Satellite affiliate that was about 20 hours a day satellite fed in southern Minnesota about 5 years ago. 60 miles away was another one. A few months in they switched to another Jones format with a nearby station with the same delivery. The GM was cheap, so the other station they owned was about 18 hours of automation from the 80s running country music. How much unmanned radio there is these days is depressing.

 

[Tron]

I miss the old cart machine, reel-to-reel, and turntable days It is so easy now to set up a cheap, midrange PC and load it with MP3s and automation software

 

[meldar_b]

thanks

thanks for the info:up

I kinda figured that it would be just about impossible to get these broadcasts.

Thanks

 

[Diamond Jim]

A lot of stations have moved away from satellite delivered networks in favor of local automation systems with the music automated in house with voice tracks (recorded shifts) ie.. pay a part timer to track out (record) a weeks worth of overnights or evenings in a couple of hours and it can sound "local and live" if done right.

We had a guy that worked at the Post Office during the day and had a midnight to 6am show on a local radio station. One day I ask him how he did it, working from 7am to 3pm at the PO then 12 to 6 am at the station and he told he went in and did his show as mentioned above. That made me think, yea, a lot of things have changed.

 

[Mr Tony]

When I lived in Duluth, MN one company owned 3 stations
KQ95 (classic rock with some new stuff)
X106 (hard rock)
92.1 The Beat (new stuff)

and it seemed like the same guy was on radio all day. He was on KQ in the morning (which was live) from 8-noon (as Scott Savage) then became "The Milkman" on X106 from noon-6 and became "Scotty" on 92.1 from 6-9. the last two were voicetracked

 

[aegrotatio]

White Springs TV on 129-degrees runs a few of those radio station feeder links. Some of them are FTA and can be found on the audio subchannels of transponder 11964 horizontal.