July 15, 2008

WBAA-FM granted permission by FCC to increase power

The move will allow WBAA Radio to potentially increase its audience area by 90,000 people, the station's general manager Tim Singleton said.

"It will increase the size of the signal a few miles but, more importantly, it will increase the strength and quality of the signal in our main coverage area of Tippecanoe County," Singleton said. "We've had comments from several years from people in Kokomo (about the signal), and we hope this helps."

Another radio station moving its transmitter led WBAA to seek more power, Singleton said.

"When the FM station went on the air in 1993, 5,000 watts was the maximum power we could get because of a station on the same frequency in Richmond, Ind.," he said. "Last winter we found out the station in Richmond moved its transmitter, allowing us to increase our power."

Singleton said WBAA, which can be found at 101.3 on the FM dial and at 920 on the AM dial, will now combine the effort to increase power with its conversion to digital.

"We received a grant last August from the Corporation for Private Broadcasting to assist us in converting both operations to digital," he said. "We started the AM conversion and put the FM on hold because the conversion requires new equipment. It didn't make sense to get a new transmitter for the digital conversion and another new transmitter when we got an increase in power. Now we can do both.

"We're working with Corporation for Private Broadcasting to do the digital conversion and get a new transmitter. We'll be working on an extension of the federal grant that expires Sept. 30. This (conversion and increasing power) will cost some money, but we have some money allocated for it."

Singleton said converting to digital will have more of an impact on the FM station than the AM, allowing the possibility for more programming.

"Digital for AM radio gives people with a digital radio digital quality," he said. "For FM, digital will allow us to add one or two channels to the main channel. The main channel will stay the same, but this allows us to buy additional channels. Just like with digital TV, you can get more channels and programming. We have not yet determined what programming we will add to the supplementary FM channels. It can give more diversity to our programming."

People will have to purchase digital receivers to receive digital radio signals, Singleton said.

Singleton said he expects the station to have the digital conversion and new power transmitter in operation sometime after the first of the year.

Writer: Greg McClure, (765) 494-9394, gmcclure@purdue.edu

Source: Tim Singleton, (765) 494-3960, tjsingle@wbaa.org

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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