Report on Am Broadcasting Possibilities in the Greater
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REPORT ON AM BROADCASTING POSSIBILITIES IN THE GREATER TORONTO AREA Contract U4240-0-0034 Douglas R. Forde FINAL April 17, 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Executive Summary 2. Acknowledgements 3. Historical Perspective 4. Rules and Agreements 4.1 Rules needing review 5. Overview of all AM Channels 6. Review by Channel Appendix 1. Letter from Gordon Elder on sharing Toronto Island sites Appendix 2. Studies required to assess feasibility of second adjacent channel co-siting 1. Executive Summary This report relates to AM broadcasting aspects of Industry Canada’s response to CRTC Public Notice 2001-10, “Report to the Governor in Council on measures to ensure that the residents of the Greater Toronto Area receive a range of radio services reflective of the diversity of their languages and cultures”. It contains the author’s analysis of the engineering report which the CRTC commissioned from Imagineering Limited on this topic, as well as the results of his own studies. The Imagineering report reviews all current radio broadcasting bands and provides recommendations on each. The following table contains a summary of the possibilities in the AM band identified by Imagineering or the author: Channel Potential Coverage Comments (km in max. dir.) Day Night 790 70 11 Suitable site unlikely to be found. Could operate at lower parameters if colocated with existing station near market. 940 70 2 Requires exception to night-time protection rules. Siting would be difficult. Could operate at lower parameters if colocated with existing station near market.. Mutually exclusive with 950. 950 80 30 Former Barrie station. Needs access to port lands site. 1100 50 0 Day only. Mutually exclusive with 1110. 1110 120 2 Can share Toronto Island site 1190 90 0 Day only. Mutually exclusive with 1200. 1200 80/120 10/35 From Oakville site/ from port lands site 1280 0* 0* *Protection requirements preclude operation near lakeshore or serving downtown Toronto. Could operate at or slightly above LP parameters to serve communities not near Lake Ontario, but would displace LP station CFYZ serving Pearson Airport 1470 ** 25** Formerly used by CHOW Welland and fully equipped site available for sale. Serves most of GTA daytime, but subject to interference at night. Moving closer to Toronto is possible if CHKT’s Toronto Island site can be shared. **From Island site, cannot serve west part of GTA day. Could use 1480 or 1500 day. 1480 40 3 Formerly used by CKAN Newmarket; site dismantled. Difficult to serve much of GTA at night. Mutually exclusive with 1470 and 1500. 1500 85 6 Siting difficult for night operation. Day can site anywhere and could have 60 km non-directional service.. Mutually exclusive with 1480. 1580 70(ND) 4 Requires exception to night-time protection rules. 1610*** 70 12-25 LP station CHEV would be displaced. Markham application would serve only NE corner of GTA night 1630*** 70 12-25 1650*** 70 12-25 May be incompatible with application on 1670. 1670*** 70 12-25 East York application could switch to 1650 or 1690 to ensure availability of third channel 1690*** 70 12-25 May be incompatible with application on 1670. ***There is a possibility that five stations could be cosited 20 kHz apart from 1610 to 1690 kHz. Two relatively simple studies, outlined in Appendix 2, are required to determine if this is practical. In case the 20 kHz cositing is not practical, it is recommended that the 1670 kHz applicant be requested or required to revise his application to 1650 or 1690 kHz to permit an additional station in the GTA. Siting Considerations Good coverage of the GTA, particularly downtown Toronto, requires a lakeshore or Toronto Island site for the high AM channels. Multilingual stations CHKT on 1430 kHz and CHIN on 1540 kHz currently use Toronto Island sites, which could potentially be shared with new stations on two other channels. (See Appendix 1, a letter from J. Gordon Elder, P. Eng., who designed and built these two stations.) In addition, the port lands and Leslie Street Spit area shown in Figure 2.3c of the Imagineering report would be a very good location for at least two other channels below 1600 kHz, as well as any or all of the five available channels in the expanded band. The white box in the map below shows the approximate boundary of the GTA. 2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge and thank Jean Alain of the Broadcast Applications Engineering Division for the excellent technical support, especially the provision of the maps included in the report. Thanks are also due to Paul Vaccani and Kirit Mehta for their excellent constructive comments and ideas, and to both Kirit and Jean for ensuring that I had the necessary software and materials to carry out this project. I also acknowledge with thanks the contribution of Gordon Elder, whose expert analysis of the possiblity of sharing the existing Toronto Island facilities which he designed and built, are shown in Appendix 1. 3. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AM broadcasting has existed since the early 1900s, the first commercial station being CFCF Montreal on 600 kHz. The first international agreement was the 1937 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA), revised in 1950 when the top of the band was moved from 1550 to 1600 kHz. This agreement included, though not all at the same time, Canada, USA, Mexico, Bahamas, Dominican Republic and Cuba. It included basic protection criteria which are still mostly applicable today. It also included a division of channels, with some “clear” channels designated for national coverage, a good number of regional channels which generally were capable of serving large metropolitan areas and a few local channels intended for simple inexpensive operations to serve small cities and towns. In 1982, with the signing of the ITU Region 2 Agreement (Rio 1982 Agreement), the channel designations in NARBA were replaced by class designations. The “clear” channels were replaced by class A which have substantial, but not national, service contours. The local channel stations became class C, mostly 1000 watts non-directional, and everything else became class B. Simultaneously with ratifying the Rio 1982 Agreement, Canada abrogated, i.e. officially withdrew from, NARBA The Region 2 agreement was complemented in 1984 by a bilateral agreement between Canada and the USA which elaborated the technical criteria somewhat and added a number of allotments which made use of the relaxed protection of the former clear channel stations. Many of these allotments were quickly taken up by existing stations to improve their coverage. For example, CFGO Ottawa improved day and night service moving from 1440 to 1200 kHz, and CFGM (now CFYI) Richmond Hill, which had fairly good day service and very limited night service on 1320 kHz, now serves the entire GTA, day and night, on 640 kHz. Figures 1 shows the present coverage of this station, which is typical of the low frequency, high power Toronto stations located south of Lake Ontario. Of these former clear channels, only 1200 kHz and possibly 1500 kHz still offer the possibility of new service both day and night in the GTA. In 1988 another Region 2 agreement expanded the AM broadcasting band upwards from 1600 to 1700 kHz. This agreement divided the ten new channels equally among neighbouring countries in border areas, eg. 1610, 1630, 1650, 1670 and 1690 kHz for Canada and 1620, 1640, 1660, 1680 and 1700 kHz for the USA. On its “priority channel”, a country can put a 1 kW non- directional station anywhere within the area designated in the Agreement or can increase power up to 10 kW provided that interference would be no worse than could be caused by a 1 kW station at the border. This “expanded band” has hardly been used in Canada with only a few low power stations, mostly on 1610 kHz. It offers good possibilities for ethnic broadcasting in the GTA and includes two current applications. A practice in the 1990s by AM stations with modest service who were also looking for the higher fidelity available in the FM band was what the CRTC referred to as AM-FM flips. This has also left a few AM channels which can provide a degree of service in the GTA. Most notable is the former CBC channel of 740 kHz, which has superb GTA coverage. This channel has been taken over by a new operator, who is leasing the CBC facilities and using them exactly as before. A bi- product of this is that the new operator, who already operated an ethnic station in the GTA has increased the ethnic programming on that station Three other interesting channels, which are studied in detail, are 950 kHz from Barrie, 1390 kHz from Ajax and 1470 kHz from Welland. Figure 1 The outer (black) contour is the official day coverage of CFYI. The inner contour is the official night coverage of CFYI. DAY NIGHT 4. RULES AND AGREEMENTS Industry Canada’s main regulatory document pertaining to AM broadcasting is Broadcast Procedures and Rules 2 (BPR2), supplemented by general provisions in BPR 1. However, most of the technical criteria to be met by AM applications are found in the 1984 bilateral agreement between Canada and the USA which is referenced in BPR 2. With propagation being much more complex in the AM band than in the VHF and UHF bands used by FM and TV broadcasting, separation distance tables are impractical and protection from interference is obtained using protected contours and ratios. There are two propagation modes in AM broadcasting, groundwave, where the signal travels along the surface of the earth and attenuation varies with the type of terrain, and skywave, where the signal is reflected off the ionosphere.