Radio 730 / 105.3 WJTO

WJTO 730 AM is an Adult Standards/Oldies station licensed to Bath, Maine. WJTO is owned by Bob Bittner Broadcasting and is a sister station to Cambridge, Massachusetts' WJIB.

Both WJIB and WJTO are what used to be called "Daytimers", broadcasting only during daylight hours. Back in the 1980's, the Federal Communications Commission authorized what we call "flea power" at night for almost all AM daytime stations. Such flea power offers much less coverage than the daytime power, as you may have noticed. The reason for the existence of "daytimers" is that the radio dial was pretty much full by 1945. Since radio signals travel much further at night than during the day, very few new stations could be squeezed onto the AM dial, 540 to 1600 without interfering with older more powerful existing stations. Someone came up with the idea that if new stations were on the air daytime only, then new ones would fit. Therefore there was a large amount of new daytime-only stations in the USA between 1945 and 1960, of which WJIB and WJTO were two of those. - Signal strength at night varies by atmospheric conditions. Some nights WJIB or WJTO may come in clear, and other nights, they may have interference from the two Canadian stations on 740 and 730, which are old-timers having been on those same frequencies since the 1920's.

This is why the power goes down at sunset, and rises again at sunrise.... which in the dead of winter, makes for a short high-power broadcast day, and in the summer, a longer one. The FCC has specific monthly times that such stations must change power each month. Two examples for WJIB: January is 7:15 AM and 4:30 PM; June 5:15 AM and 8:15 PM.