Analog TV Is Alive. It’s Radio.
A couple of weeks ago I was scanning the FM band as I made my short commute from my far-north Chicago neighborhood to WNUR in Evanston for a station meeting. At the bottom end of the dial I encountered a fading station playing a steady stream of smooth jazz with no DJ. I’d never heard the station before and I pretty much know every noncommercial station on the north side of Chicago and north shore ‘burbs. My first assumption was that it was a pirate station, perhaps run by a disaffected smooth jazz fan in protest of the recent loss of format stalwart WNUA.
WLFM 87.7FM & Channel 6
Still listening to the station on the way home I heard commercials, but still no station ID, leaving me more confused. Listening a bit longer at home gave no more clues, so the internet I did search. I quickly learned that the station at 87.7 FM is not a radio station, but actually TV channel 6, WLFM-LP. And I was right that the broadcast was a direct reaction to the shuttering of WNUA.
You see, analog TV channel 6 bumps right up against the bottom of the FM radio dial. TV sound is also frequency modulated, just like radio, so the sound for channel 6 can be heard at the very bottom of the dial. But, you might be thinking, “didn’t analog TV go away on June 12? Wouldn’t that kill WLFM?” Well, if you’re talking about a full-power station on channel 6, you’d be right. But WLFM is a low-power TV station (LPTV) and the digital changeover didn’t happen for LPTV.
