All XDS Stations Must Re-Point Dish to New Satellite by June!

AMC-8 is at its end-of-life.  For decades, radio stations in North America have been served by multiple satellites located at the same orbital position of 139 degrees West.  However, nothing lasts forever, and the current satellite in that spot, AMC-8 is just about done with its lifespan.  All the major radio carriers including Westwood One's XDS are moving together to a new satellite, at a new position: AMC-18, located at 105 degrees West.

That means you need to re-point your station's dish as soon as possible.  Fortunately, you have a few months to get it done.  According to the press release from Westwood One, their old carrier will remain active on AMC-8 until June 30th, 2017.  Their new carrier on AMC-18 went online on February 1st.  Now's the time to talk to engineering.

While the change is a pain, it's for the best.  The new position at 105 degrees West in the sky is easier to see from the ground, as it's higher up from the horizon than 139 degrees West.  This means that the signal is less likely to be blocked by trees or buildings and that there's a lower chance of rain fade.  The affected networks have launched an informational website here.

New Affiliates

Welcome to stations in Milwaukee, WI & Salem, NH.   With the demise of iHeartMedia's longtime progressive talker WXXM-FM in Madison after the election, their local afternoon show, "The Devil's Advocates" needed a new home, so they bought an AM station in Milwaukee!  Their WRRD-AM flipped formats to news-talk from sports on February 1st with Free Talk Live anchoring seven-nights-per-week, live!  We also recently welcomed WCCM-AM in Salem, NH as our newest live weekend affiliate.  As always, you can see our full list of over 160 radio affiliates here.

 

New Promos

Several fresh :60 and :30 promos available for download!   Below are a fresh batch of promos in :30 and :60 flavors.  Each has several seconds of music bed on the end onto which you can tag your local showtimes for FTL.  In addition to these brand new promos, we have dozens more evergreen promos that you can listen to and download here on our program director's site.  Here are the new ones:

Business Property
:60
:30

Spoilers
:60
:30

Homophobe
:60
:30

Politicians
:60
:30

Lemmings
:60
:30

Paid Killers
:60
:30

Soldiers
:60
:30

 

Quote from an Industry Pro

"FTL is a breath of fresh air that makes you think hard about other options to solving and discussing issues of today...you may not always agree, but it's riveting radio--they tackle topics many will not even touch!" - John McKay, PD KFLD-AM