It’s officially branded as “Radio for the South of Miami.” And, it offers a wide variety of Spanish Adult Contemporary music from a 50,000-watt Class C2 facility licensed to Key Largo, with a broadcast tower just north of town across Manatee Bay along U.S. 1.
A sibling to “Actualidad Radio,” a Spanish-language spoken word AM with a signal stretching from the Upper Florida Keys to the Palm Beaches, WURN-FM‘s coverage is much more limited, barely reaching Coral Gables while focusing on cities including Cutler Bay, Homestead and Florida City and the Miami-Dade County neighborhood of Kendall.
Soon, WURN and its “Exitos,” featuring El Show de Chiquibaby in the 1-3pm slot following a two-hour sports talk program, will reach more of Miami-Dade County. And, the station’s owners have GeoBroadcast Solutions to thank.
As Actualidad Media Group, WURN-FM’s owner sees it, “Exitos 107.1” will “substantially improve its broadcast signal and audience reach into the Miami market” through the deployment of a MaxxCasting system from GBS. It is due to arrive in late Spring 2023.
To accomplish the signal boost for WURN, which is on the same frequency as W296AW “Yo! 107.1” in Palm Beach County, to the north, and iHeartMedia’s Class C2 WCKT-FM “Cat Country” in Lehigh Acres, Fla., serving Naples and Fort Myers, MaxxCasting is installing a one-node single-frequency network (SFN) with an HD Radio system.
Once up and running, GBS believes this will provide the station with “an interference-free transmission and more robust contour to help it extend to an additional 784,000 potential listeners, roughly 142% more than its current reach.”
As show below, this will help “Exitos 107.1” further reach South Dade’s Hispanic audiences with fare that offers an alternative to signal-adjacent WAMR “Amor 107.5,” the longtime Spanish Contemporary FM owned by TelevisaUnivision.
“Exitos” was launched in July 2014. In exploring potential solutions to reach a larger Miami-area audience, Actualidad President Adib Eden and VP/GM Jose Zerpa traveled to the Northeast, to see how MaxxCasting was successfully implemented at Educational Media Foundation’s WKVB-FM 107.3 in Westborough, Mass., formerly WAAF. To boost its Boston-area signal, a trio of boosters were put in place — including one at 1,300 watts. Also using MaxxCasting: WXLO-FM 104.5 in Fitchburg, Mass., a Cumulus Media Adult Contemporary station also using three boosters to help it achieve Boston-market status with listeners and advertisers.
Eden commented, “We have been impressed with what MaxxCasting has done for other stations and are eager to implement the system at WURN as part of our investments to improve and increase the reach of the station.”
Zerpa noted that “Exitos” had recently built a new tower and installed an improved transmitter. But, that still didn’t resolve the matter of better-reaching Miami-Dade County’s growing Western suburbs and key areas including Dadeland.
As is the case in the Boston market and in other areas where MaxxCasting is in place, MaxxCasting combines radio and cellular technology with patented designs that enable FM broadcasters to enhance their signals with the deployment of a strategically located cluster of low to the ground, highly directionalized synchronized booster sites.
In the case of WURN-FM, Miami’s famously flat terrain can also give coverage in-vehicle to “Exitos” well into Coral Gables, Hialeah and Medley — other key areas where the station can gain audience and ad dollars.
“WURN’s present signal extends greatly off the shores of Florida’s east coast,” observed Paul Littleton, Chief Technology Officer at GeoBroadcast Solutions. “The new MaxxCasting system will help the station reach a larger part of the service area that presently does not have clear access to its signal.”
