The New A's Radio World Order

The A's haven't yet officially announced which stations will carry games for the 2006 season. Based on A's-related programming emerging recently on KYCY-1550, and information fans are picking up from tickets, it looks like KTRB-860 will also carry the A's. Assuming this is correct, here's how the radio landscape will look like when the season starts.

KYCY-1550 (KYOU-Radio) is the "Podcast" station out of Belmont. It has a directional signal which is aimed up the Peninsula towards San Francisco. That means the South Bay and non-Marin North Bay won't be covered well by KYCY's signal. KYCY previously had an application to relocate to the San Jose area, but the station's parent, radio giant CBS Infinity, pulled the request last fall. To understand your relationship to the station's transmitter, take a look at the two links below from radio-locator.com:

• Daytime Coverage Map
• Nighttime Coverage Map

KTRB-860 is a little more complicated. For the last ten years, the Pappas-owned newstalk station was based out of the Modesto area with a 50,000-watt signal during the day and 10,000-watt signal at night. Last year Pappas announced its intention to invade the Bay Area, and so they did. When construction is complete, it will essentially be a 50,000-watt station day and night. However, it will have three different transmitter locations. During the day KTRB will transmit from the area just south of Sears Point/Infineon Raceway. At night, the transmitter will be in the hills south of Livermore. KTRB will also have a critical hours transmitter that operates only during the dawn and dusk hours at 40,000 watts. That transmitter will be located near Bethel Island.

• Daytime Coverage Map (Sears Point)
• Nighttime Coverage Map (Livermore)
• Critical Hours Coverage Map (Bethel Island/Antioch)

I tried calling the KTRB offices to check on the status of transmitter construction, but all I get is a busy signal. E-mail is next. KTRB's construction permit expires on May 27, so there should be some urgency for them to build everything quickly. As for the old Modesto station, Pappas is planning to replace its old 860-Modesto station with KPMP-840, also based out of Modesto. Here's hoping that the A's managed to work a deal in which KPMP also becomes a station on the network so that at least a portion of the Central Valley is covered.

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To see how these changes can affect listeners, I've created a table showing the start times for the 2006 season.

The twilight period (4-8 PM based on the season) could be tricky as the KTRB critical hours transmitter kicks in. I'm not sure if a 4:05 PM broadcast from the Eastern Time Zone will switch transmitters midstream or not until the after the game is completed; some clarification from radio technical folks would be appreciated.

Based on the footprint represented by combining the coverage maps, here's where I expect listeners to dial in based on the schedule:

• East Bay 880 Corridor: KTRB-860 or KYCY-1550 for both day and night games
• Tri-Valley, 680 Corridor, and further inland: KTRB-860 for both day and night games
• Sonoma/Napa/Solano Counties: KTRB-860 for both day and night games
• SF/Peninsula: KYCY-1550 for both day and night games
• Marin: KTRB-860 for day games, KYCY-1550 or KTRB-860 for night games
• South Bay: KTRB-860 for both day and night games

Of course, this is dependent on the new KTRB transmitters being operational before the start of the season, which AFAIK isn't the case yet. Who's left out? Portions of Santa Cruz County, all of Monterey and San Benito Counties, and southern Santa Clara County (south San Jose, Morgan Hill, Gilroy). Sacramento's also in the dark at night, while it should be able to get day games on KTRB.