While digging through Drew’s Basement Archives, I found this short aircheck featuring Tom Rothman from his days at KCNB in Waterloo. Tom went on to spend many years at Minnesota News Network. Unfortunately, I didn’t record his newscast. All I have is his outro as the automation jingles back into music.
KCNB was the automated sister station of KXEL/1540. The station would later become Hot Hits KOKZ, engaging in one of Iowa’s legendary CHR wars against crosstown rival KFMW “FM108.” This catch from Apple Valley, Minnesota was made before 105.7 began transmitting an upgraded signal from the tall tower between Waterloo and Cedar Rapids. At the time, I believe they were just using a set of side-mounted FM bays on one of the KXEL towers (?) Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
Reception was made using my Pioneer SX-3900 receiver, Winegard 10 element FM yagi antenna, Alliance U-100 Tenna Rotor, and Belden ultra low loss RG59 coaxial cable. The recording was made on a Technics stereo cassette deck with Scotch Highlander 90 tape.
The KCNB signal at the time was from a 600-foot tower on the NE side of Waterloo. That facility is still the aux site of KOKZ, which now broadcasts from a 1400 foot tower near Jesup, IA. The two KXEL AM towers are about 25 miles S of there, in Dysart, IA.
Hi George! Do you happen to know when KOKZ moved to Jesup?
As for KXEL, that signal boomed into northern Minnesota at night. Our family cabin was 12 miles NE of Park Rapids. KXEL was usually the strongest station on the dial. Even a bit more so than KSTP, despite KXEL being twice as far away.
KOKZ moved to Jesup in the spring of 1985, I believe.
Yes, KXEL is a monster at night. We regularly receive DX reports from all over the northern US and Canada. We seem to get a lot of cards from Norway and that area. Perhaps that part of the world has less atmospheric noise. My only problem with 1540 is there are a couple of stations that are not switching off at night, out of DA tolerance, and/or way off frequency, resulting in a howling sound on the channel, due to the hetrodyne between KX and the other station. Takes a while to root them out. I’d appreciate knowing if that’s what you hear at night.
Hi George,
I’ll give it a listen and see what I hear. When I lived in Florida, ZNS in the Bahamas was pretty strong at night, but that was several years ago. Are they still on, or have they migrated to FM?