The AM Forum

Anyone remember when....AM B'cast was so popular? The promos and commercials sent to the station on carts or tape sounded so bright. The EQ was purposely set for a boosted high-end to FORCE out the brightest sound possible.
Probably before the days of fancy multiband processors and limiters. The older TX units fought hard to get even close to 7kc audio freqs. AM radios in the house and car weren't so stingy. They had a nice I.F. bandpass.
AM broadcast was, at one time, 50-15kc audio...before the NRSC and FCCes got into the mix.

Fred

Yeah and six year old ears didn't hurt either.  Listened to Texaco? Symphony on Sat. Nights on what I found out later was a consol with PP 6F6's. 

Looking at QS1R screens here in central xx, leads me to believe that at least a couple of BC stations are still operating wide band..   ...no one around to listen let alone complain. ;D

As the FCC added stations they started stepping on each other with all their bright audio.  People started to complain and radio manufacturers narrowed the IF passbands, causing them to sound duller, causing stations to boost the high frequency EQ, causing more interference and complaints, causing further narrowing IF's and I think you can guess the rest.  Actually the NRSC mask and pre-emphasis was a step back towards decent audio.  It gave receiver manufacturers an AM standard just like FM and limits so stations wouldn't step on each other.  Too bad few radios were ever made to take advantage of those standards. 

Scott Todd

And now the digital hash trash like 710 WOR spews makes them way over 20 kc wide. , killing adjacent  (what used to be ) clear channel stations above and below them.  They even get into 690 and 680 kc around here in their main east coverage lobe. 

When I worked at WEEI in 1970, the transmitter site had an elevated walkway at the front of the building, with exterior doors at each end.

One of the senior engineers told me that during the 1930's, the transmitter site was open for visits by the public on weekends. He said that on Sundays, there was a continuous line of people passing by on the catwalk for most of the day. They went to the site just to see the transmitter in operation.

Bill, W1AC

Did some early morning before daylight driving several times in the desert SW this winter..listening to AM...Stations from Calif to Texas...British Columbia  to Mexico all coming in.....Most were hashed by an adjacent station...Music was poor and most of the talk stations  sound like telephone..Only a couple that were in the clear had audio that was decent.....All on the GM supplied Bose radio in my Silverado....I don't think that the  GM/Bose is too good either.

Either XM or my Ipod is pretty much all I listen to in the car or truck anymore and I do miss the interesting mix of AM broadcast stations.  I remember in the middle 1970s listening to WLS 890 out of Chicago while growing up on the MS gulf coast and in the winter time it would put in a beautiful signal long before sunset.  My SX-62A spent a lot of time tuned there.  But there sure isn't much now.  I have never seen "honey boo boo" but I think I wouldn't find that (or any other trash reality TV show) any worse than AM talk radio of any flavor.  It used to be fun listening to the different medium/small market AM stations during cross country trips but those are pretty much all talk now also.

Warren Buffett has been bullish on local newspapers and perhaps some of the small market AM stations with a local flair will survive and provide some local spice in the AM BCB wasteland.

The AM stations that are the most interesting and are generally the strongest are the local 1 kw stuff in middle America....You have to be in range to hear this stuff....Montana and The Dakotas have quite a few of what used to be the Mom and POp stations...The ones that tell the local rodeo results and give grain and cattle prices and then give you a country tune before the local news,,,The national news and weather is all canned and repeated/updated 3 or 4 times a day..I listen to this stuff in the truck when I'm out that way in the spring .....Interesting .....  and about the only other thing that comes in on an AM  truck radio besides the 3 letter AM giants with the hashhhhhhhh

Listening to the Grand Ol Opre on WSM, 650, Nashville right now, 8:30 PM or so.
Can't say much for the K3's fidelity.
"The Riders in the Sky" coyboys and yodelling.  Funky...

Middle 1960's - from Philadelphia suburbs, listening to WWVA 1170? Wheeling West Virginia at night; gen-u-wine bluegrass and other hillbilly music. bible beating, etc, a different world from mine for sure.  Mail in $x fer yer plastic dashboard Jesus.

"The Mighty 1190" KLIF; WBAP 820; KFJZ 1270; all of the 1960s and 70s.  Whether on a tabletop-, car-, or pocket transistor radio, the sound was great. ;)

You were all much younger then and your ears worked better. AM sounds just as bright today.

Our local WBLQ 1230 AM 1 KW 24/7 in Westerly  RI is this type of station...morning talk  mixed with classic rock and old top 40s content, sports flashes focused mainly on local HS results, the day's activities at the local senior center, interviews with local civic leaders on what's going on in and around the area, birthday and anniversary announcements, call in giveaway promotions, etc. Local  coverage of HS sports games, and live broadcasts of town meetings at night. On weekend's there's a Saturday morning sports talk call in show hosted by a gang of local characters, one of whom is an orthopedist in town (the Doc) who buzzard on on both Boston teams and the locals.  Also an excellent oldies show using old 60s style station IDs and jingles.  Sunday morning Italian classics themed show (the town has a big Italian population) heavy on Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, and old Pat Cooper comedy bits, and an excellent jazz brunch program. And something that goes way back in small town radio programming, an over the air reading of children's stories..when was the last time you heard one of those, about 1940?

Their audio quality is excellent, blows away most of the local FM stations with their overcompressed, overmodulated, and overboosted low ends.  Like most stations these days, they have an internet live stream going as well.

  Yea, the so called "good ole days". Spending my entire life in the Trenton, NJ area, I was in the middle of the AM station market. Being I was just about midway between the NY and Philly stations.
  I still listen around the AM stations for some music from  the late 50's and 60's, not much around. But I did find a station in Toronto, AM 740, that plays a pretty good mix.

Chuck...wa2onk

http://ktla.com/2013/02/27/historic-khj-radio-tower-demolished-jim-castillo-reports/#axzz2MCzQrcbV

 :'(

I did my part listening to them, KGB, and KCBQ.

73DG

It was the GM AM radio in a company Silverado (1980's??) that let me hear the nice C-QUAM AM stereo. It was very nice audio and I could hear stereo separation. It was a station received by skywave. The stereo would drop out in deep fades and was not objectionable.
And I'll even toot my horn for HD AM radio!!!
It's awesome!! AM is better suited for HD than FM (multipath kills it). But our broadcast system ALWAYS has to be compatible!! The new digital radio shudda been assigned a different band, instead of the present debacle.

Fred

If you are lucky enough to have a small AM station still providing locally produced content, and programming things the way they used to be done, be sure to tell them you are out there listening, and pay attention to the sponsors and give them your business.  When you do that be sure to tell the sponsor you heard about them on the local radio station.  It all sounds silly and contrived but often listeners never provide any feedback (except to bitch about something) and the station and sponsors have no idea who is listening.  for a little commercial station this is a matter of survival as they can't afford to pay arbitron for rating research.  

It blows my mind that so many folks would rather get their "radio" via internet streams.   I find that mode a pain in the ass--it is complex and unreliable compared to simply firing up a broadcast receiver and letting it play.  As more suckers forgo a simple and reliable mode of reception in favor of the internet, radio stations will continue to barely hang on.  I predict an eventual funding model where they have a mix of paid sponsors and listener contributions to keep them going.   That will work if they provide unique local content that listeners want to hear.

As with many things, real radio won't be missed by these jackasses until it has been forced into death.   When they're paying $100/month for internet and it craps out in the middle of a disaster or their HD crashes, or their PC gets hacked and they turn on the old broadcast rx and hear nothing they'll piss and moan but it will be too late.

rob

When I was a kid growing up on a cattle ranch...I had a crystal set and a pc of wire strung from my upstairs bedroom out to a cottonwood tree in the field...I could get quite a few of the west coast 3 letter stations...One favorite was KGO san francisco....I would listen to the "Ira Blue Show"..live from a nite club  down town..Wolf Man Jack  from XERB   was always loud ...then he moved across the border to Chula Vista, Calif and he was still loud....KSL in Salt lake, KGA in Spokane...We had the old Zenith Console in the kitchen with SW, MW, and BC bands....I would sneak out of bed at night and go down to the kitchen and close the door..(ranch house kitchens all had doors in those days)  Put the volume on low and put my ear up against the speaker and spin the dial...Opened up my world a little bit.....Bought my first Radio with SW bands from the Lafayette Radio Catalog....It was an 8 transistor battery powered job that worked really well if I hung it on the wall opposite where the fuse box/ meter was on the house...

Fred, I did a lot of development work on that radio in the day.  One of the most objectionable artifacts was a phenomenon we called "platform motion".  This was caused by skywave and multipath signals fooling the C-QUAM decoder and causing the stereo effect to move from left to right and back again, just like like the musicians were on a rotating merry-go-round.  Pretty much unavoidable unless you could force the decoder to mono based on signal strength --- always a difficult design balance.

We are still getting a version of that with our display piece at the museum.  People ooo and ahh at the chrome and glass, and it's even better when someone lights off the filaments and the motor-driven interlock timer counts down before the relays activate.  It's on 1885Kc now instead of 1240Kc.

They love hearing the story of the transmitter rescue from a little station in Florida about ten years ago.

You can even see where the "station clock" used to sit, hooked over the edge of the front door.

Being a teenager in the middle- to late 1960's, there was virtually no FM except for a few "elevator music" stations. Our night time listening was WLS and WCFL from Chicago,WKYC out of Cleveland,and CKLW out of Windsor, ON as well as XELO and XERF. Daytime we had WVOK from Birmingham about 100 miles away. WSM was what we woke up to.Real entertainment. I joked with someone the other day that I had early warning radar in case that 'honey boo boo family" ever traveled out of central GA toward southern TN that I would have ample time to get my 12 ga. Ithaca loaded up with double-aught buckshot.Great memories!! Now on weekends and in the mornings going to work, it is KMOX.
                                        Joe W4AAB

There is a one KW AM station located in Sherman TX, KJIM, that plays big band during the week.  Sunday morning at 10 AM they do a show called "The Lucky B Ranch"  it is locally produced and nothing but old, no very old, country music no one has heard since the early 50s or before, songs like Bob Wills version of Ida Red and such.  During the hour they will have cowboy poets and other stories of the West and it is sponsored by local businesses that do their own commercials.  They have a decent analog sound and stations on either adjacent frequency do not spew that trash so the station sounds good on my 9 Kc filter.

The station competes with a number of big stations out of the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex.  I listen to the station when I am not on the air and enjoy it because they use local talent for a number of shows.  In a recent survey the station was number 2 with the 45-64 audience and I am pleased people found the station and patronize it especially in a big market.  What is hard to believe is the number of stations that have migrated to Mexican programming in the Southwest.  One of the old line stations in OKC that began broadcasting in about 1925 is now Mexican and there are a lot like that.  Many stations that play music all subscribe to the satellite feed and it is so non personal.  What a shame.

Oh Man....

CKLW  800..Changed Radio forever.

WJR...the Detroit clear channel powerhouse.  Listened to WJR from all over the East coast while in the Navy..very comforting..a piece of Home.

KU8L

Even our PBS station went from classical music, jazz, Prairie Home Companion to talk radio.   I listen to the internet for music now.    In the old days nothing sounded better than my father's 1955 Pontiac radio with push-pull 6V6 audio tuned to 770 Kc (before KHz) in New York City.

The pushbuttons on my Capehart Panamuse read from left to right;
WLW, WOR, WABC, Dial, WMMN, WBLK, WQXR

Ah, those were the days...   The two, second from last, were local, Fairmont and Clarksburg, WVa. The rest you all will instantly recognize.

The FM band is from 42 to 50 MCS.

Two 12 in. speakers, Steve, ... don't need no young ears.   8)

When in Alaska in the summer time, I listen to KDLG  AM out of Dillingham ,Alaska...I think they are 1 or 2 KW... It is a PBS station with all of the usual PBS programming as well as some locally produced programming aimed at the large Alaska  Native population...They have the story lady that reads stories in Yupik language...She also does a once a day short show that teaches "3 new words in Yupik"..They have a noon time show called the" messenger" where people can call in and send out a message to friends/relatives in the bush who don't have access to phone or radio communications...some people even send letters to the station so they can get their message broadcast..Lots of Happy birthday and happy anniversary messages going out on the "messenger"..KDLG is the only AM station that I can receive in the daytime in Naknek...Naknek has an FM bible station (KAKN) that is located about a mile from my house....I seldom listen altho they sometimes come in on the toaster.

This has me asking the question as to whom, they are playing this programing too?

I am 71 and this would be the type of music my mother and father would have enjoyed. If they were alive today my mother would be 94 and my father would be 100.

I am not saying I don't enjoy some of that stuff but it makes me wonder how the salesmen sell this programing to the advertiser? Anyone here ever listen to Easily Listening Rap?   

Uh, no.
Now Alan Hovhaness, yes.

Apocalypse of the Animals

           --or--

Apocalypse of AM BC

73DG

Ah yes, "the big 8 ---- C-K-L-W"  And WJR with J.P. McCarthy in the morning.  And of course, Wally Phillips on WGN.  Some years back one of the WGN 'personalities' said, " This is WGN - 'the house that Wally built' ".  "Nothing compares these days, I'm afraid.  Guess I'm revealing my age...

Mid 1950's:  Local daylight KW on 1250.  Still here but also now has FM side.  Believe W9TKK [SK] was chief engineer then.  Call-in music requests, serials [Dragnet, Lone Ranger, etc].  Late 50's:  Then was on Indiana side of Louisville, KY.  WAKY 790, local rock-and-roll.  Early 60's:  Moved back to 1250 AM but they didn't play the rock-and-roll so went to WJPS.  They were onmidirectional daytime and east-west directional at night, so WLS, Chicago, 890 at night.  Clear channel rock-and-roll.  Home of the Dick Biondi show sponsored by Grand Spaulding Dodge.  And can't forget WBOW in [their words] "sin city of the Wabash Valley". Still listen to AM when there is something to listen to, like around holidays, on my 1951 Westinghouse AM/FM [no ALC].  Good days to remember.

Dick Biondi was a wild guy. Said a lot of risque things, if I remember. The stations skipping in at night into Washington DC always had a better sound than the locals. The big 50k watters. Nice full sound. Washington DC was mostly 5 kw stations and the night time patterns made them un-listenable at night.
There is a member here who was engineer of WEAM 1390...can't remember call or name. They sounded the best. We had a WPGC 1580...10 kw and they beat the living hell out of a song with processing. Supposedly a secret how they did that. Roberta Flack's "The First Time" really really sucked when played on WPGC. Pumping audio and feedback from something. They were using carts at that time.
Fred

For me, AM broadcast was about staying up late at night with a radio by my bed listening to Jean Shepherd (K2ORS) on WOR from NYC spinning tales about Flick and Schwartz and the heady days of youth. It wasn't the audio quality that kept me riveted to the radio (and made getting up for school the next day difficult). It was what Shep had to say and the way he said it. There's no EQ curve that can make you blindly stare at a radio and see a whole world grown out of someones experiences and imagination.

If perception is reality then I too grew up in those stories -- an inseparable part of my youth. They're as much mine now as they were Sheps.

EXCELSIOR, You Fathead!

www.flicklives.com/music/bahn_frei_theme_with_shep.mp3

Kevin, AIO.

Just worked K2ORS/ AM mobile this afternoon on 75...Warren, ex NY2H, another Shep fan who managed to get Shep's old call assigned to him as a vanity call.

I used to listen to Shep in may little JN WN2ZPS shack in our attic on my Scott SLRM..found out about from some ham friends in HS, we would all listen to him just about every night, including Saturdays when he did live shows from the Limelight in Greenwich Village.

I would say they try to have a little something for everyone, the Italian classics are on only on Sunday mornings for a few hours, followed by the jazz brunch, later in the day there's the 60s style oldies show, and a Grateful Dead Show on Tuesday nights late.  Its a refreshing change from the plethora of bird feed FM stations where everything is just canned music and no local content.  I would say they are trying to reach an older audience, 50 and up.  I have no idea what their market surveys say, but i know the station is very popular with people in the over 50 demographic in the area.  Not much point in trying to have a format to reach the kids, none of them listen to the radio anymore anyhow, unless its Pandora or Sirius XM over their smart phones..

What, no polka music on Saturday or Sunday. That was and still is very popular on some small town station in certain parts of the country.

I've worked Warren a few times on 1885 and 1890.  

Dick Biondi a few years ago, had a time slot on one of the oldies rock FMs in Chicago.  Not sure if he is still on the radio or not.  Around 5 to 10 years ago Larry Lujack and Tom Edwards (a.k.a. Little Tommy) brought back their sketches etc. on an oldies rock station on 1690 here.  It was really cool listening to them.  They were doing Animal Stories, Celebrity Worship and the Cheap Trashy Showbiz report weekday mornings from New Mexico and California retirement.  They were just as good as they were back in the 70s.  Then the station changed format to guess what, talk radio, and that was the end of Uncle Lar and Little Tommy.

Sometimes those stations up at the high end of the band get out on skywave in the daytime, in winter.

WMT on 600 over in Cedar Rapids Iowa plays a lot of big band music from the 40s and 50s on Sundays.  With the Iowa ground conductivity, 5 KW and the low dial spot they just about cover the whole state and almost make it all the way over to where I am.  They're solid in the western side of N. Illinois but around here they get wiped out by digital garbage from Milwaukee's WTMJ on 620 which idiotically runs IBOC. 

I have as fact two stories, in which two stations running IBOC switched it off and no one, I mean no one, complained or mentioned it at all.  After about a week they discovered it had been accidentally switched off and they turned it back on.  There are no IBOC sets out there.  No one is listening with anything except analog. 

That's right..the folks that live out there have analog and they're sticking with it..

Around here, that's on another small town local, WICH 1310 up in Norwich - here's their Sunday morning schedule -

5:30 – 6:00 AM    Italian Hour
6:00 AM – 7:00 PM    Touch of Grey
7:00 AM – 7:10 AM    Music
7:10 AM – 7:35 AM    Dialog
7:35 AM – 8:00 AM    Beulah Land Church
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM    Polka
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM    Mass from St. Pat’s
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM    Dick Pillar Show

The Dick Pillar show is probably also polka - he is the leader of a local polka band.

The Rev. R. W. Schambach was a big player on WWVA in the mid to late 1960s, Tom, remember him?  He had one of the best storytelling, Bible-beatin' presentations I had ever heard.  You could ignore the Scripture part and still get a good "tell" out of him.

I remember him from the old WKBW sitting on the back porch with my girlfriend. I wuz about 16 then when everything seemed like magic. I wuz also the smartest man on the planet in them days too ;D ;D ;D

I think night time radio died when they took Joey Reynolds  off  WOR a few years ago. It was said that many times when he had his show on for the local NYC audience, they switched on the old tube 50 KW transmitter just for him as he thought it sounded better? Now all we have for nation wide is Coast to Coast AM otherwise know as Spooks and Coots!


Yes, your are correct, probably won't be too much longer before all terrestrial radio goes away unless its reinvented?

How about the "studio bands" in days of yore. In Philadelphia WIP, KYW and WCAU each had orchestras that played a half or full hour in the morning and again in the afternoon. WCAU had a one-hour live  show in their auditorium every Saturday afternoon with their band and usually a guest who was leader of whatever national big band was then playing at the Earl Theatre. It was all enough to make me build a 3-stage TRF with luscious Miller coils in 3" shield cans to feed my 2A3 P-P amp. Later, after James C. Petrillo got such good raises for all the muscians and most of them were out of work, WIBG ran a remote from the "Click" nightclub as well as a Mummers band every weekday night. Back then WCAU broadcast classical music on both weekend afternoons; imagine that on AM!

Then at night you had your choice of big band pickups from around the country via skip even if they did suffer from selective fading - that was part of the thrill of BC DX.

Oh well.

Bob - NE

Live music of many varieties was quite common in the past on radio. It still happens now and then, but it's usually a special event or a band doing the rounds for an upcoming concert. One of the few remaining regular shows is the Grand Old Opry on WSM.

Paul might relate to WUST in the old days. They would air their Gospel music live from an auditorium in the same building as the studios and TX...That sick Collins 20V...and there was a Collins 300G in that mix? Before the move to WEAM's TX site and World Radio.

I grew up in Sioux City,Iowa. Our locals then were KTRI and KSCJ. I recall that there was a local live show on from one of the restaurants where they would go around and chat with local folks. There was also a guy who worked for the post office who was on every morning. Buffalo Bob or Bill, and he would sing and play his guitar. I think he was on about 6 A.M. At noon there was polka music, usually featuring The Six Fat Dutchman. Night time would bring in WSM, WHO, WBAP, XERF, WLS, and the teenagers favorite KOMA that played the 50's rock stuff. Some good memories...Little daytime stations were all around in the small towns too...plus Omaha.

1991.
Of course !
You, me and Steve, maybe Derb too, inspected the old movie theater that WUST occupied. The transmitters were up in the film projection room, above the balcony level, with coax feeding a single tower on the roof of the place. Kevin, WB4AIO, has commented on here before about his time as Chief Engineer of WUST (and WEAM that you also mentioned, Fred).

This was an old-style movie theater that had a stage in front of the projection screen, making it ideal for a church conversion with an altar. The gospel services and other revivals (with music!) were carried "live" to the community around Washington, DC.

(http://s3-media3.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/L95_EFxkkgs07kS1m1gaog/l.jpg)

The place is still there, no radio station, but it's a very popular nightspot called The 9:30 Club.

(http://s3-media4.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/kDXQlnD8arK34cEjqutcFw/l.jpg)

But when WUST was moving out,

We couldn't figure out how to extricate the transmitters without killing ourselves down those skinny concrete steps from the projection room to the balcony, let alone from the balcony to the ground level and out the door. So we gave up.

After the move, and years later, I found out the 300-G, a 1946 make (Ser. No. 33) went to a salvage outfit in Pennsylvania, then on to W8MAQ who did the tri-band conversion, and then to my place where it continues to play to this day.

Jim, who had an improved design in mind, accepted my Ser. No. 22 in trade and did the conversion all over again. That's how there are two 300-Gs on the air, tribanded.

By coincidence, the relocation of WUST (and power increase), was to Arlington, Va, and today is diplexed with the WEAM array that you listened to in the 1960s  & 70s.

Paul,

WWVA - I don't remember Rev. Schambach, just the bible-beating and bluegrass in general.  Not being a big bluegrass fan, the only name that comes to mind today for sounding like the female singers I heard then is Alison Krauss.

I can remember listing to 1520 WKBW (before they changed their call to WWKB) with Danny Neverith, Joey Reynolds and "Pierre Puck" and "Chicken Man" skits, from my house on Long Island in the late 1950's and early 1960's

Plus the R&R from WINS, WABC, WMCA and others from NYC.

I think that might be the program on Sunday nights just before their 'Out of the Blue' bluegrass program, which is tres boss.  ;D  They're one of the few power house stations still playing a lot of music. Haven't heard WWVA since their towers came down a couple years back. Another memorable station from my childhood. Used to hear them loud 'n proud into VT in August, during the afternoon hours.

Also miss WOWO from Ft Wayne. Seem to recall they got gobbled up and power-reduced or such. WCCO from MN would come in well at night. WKBW, WNEW(now WQEW and a Disney station), all kinds of stations from the past come to mind.

My freshman year in high school I recall stumbling across WPTR around 1540 on the dial, out of the Schenectady/Troy area. They had a nighttime jock who called himself Shotgun Johnny Ringo. Funny to think back on, because I can remember hearing other students in the hallways at school talking about the station, so AM radio was still big with kids in the 70s. Seems like the 80s is when it all changed. Maybe the old Buggles tune isn't too far off: Video Killed the Radio Star.

WKBW became my favorite as a steady signal and great sound. My hope on the Winter weekends was for cloudy nights, thinking that made a better receive. I would listen on my Dad's Philco Transitone with 2 car radio 6X9's hooked up to the output. Facing into the corner where my bed was located, created a nice bass response.

And Paul, I remember, from your pics, that huge old building. A continuous metal shield for a ground plane and in the center of the AM band?? 1200?? 1KW got out pretty well.
I was lusting for a Bcast TX at that time and the owners still thought their old boxes were assets and not willing to "give-away" anything. They revamped the entire station at the WEAM site. All new studios and the Nautel 20KW? It was awesome to see the AMPS meter swinging with the modulation.

As a kid listening to 930 AM WBEN in Buffalo NY late night from my listening QTH near Toronto Ontario,with a radio under my pillow.

The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre hosted by E.G. Marshall. Theatre of the mind at its best at the time for me. It was on nightly after 11pm, and the late sports report with Mr. Stan Barron, who was the colour man on the Buffalo Bills radio broadcasts along with Van Miller.

Al VE3AJM

As far as I know, the Grand Ole Opry is and always was on Saturday night. WSM does have something called the Opry Show on other nights of the week now.

Other stations had similar shows in the past like The Wheeling Jamboree on WWVA, The National Barn Dance on WLS, The Louisiana Hayride on KWKH and The Old Dominion Barn Dance on WRVA.

The Grand Ole Opry is still on every Saturday night. They are the true Legend of Country Music. For the story of rock-n-roll radio and the jocks who became legends, There is a book called" Pied Pipers of Rock and Roll". I am sure you can google it.
                                       Joe W4AAB

Rats in my room
I am bothered by those rats in my room;
I would rather have some gnats in my room
Instead of all those awful rats in my room.


klc

Who said or sang that....damn...I can't remember, but I think it was an AM jock.  Joey Reynolds maybe?  Or was it Frank Zappa?

I Googled "rats in my room" and found a video with that song by Joey Reynolds and Danny Neaverth.

Man, I was right..without Googling even...amazing what useless stuff one can pull out of the gray matter..of course I forgot to take to work what I was going to have for lunch not two minutes after coming up with Joey Reynolds!

Is Hybrid Digital foiding awoy?

http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/audio-digital-drives-listener-experience/

Interesting report from a non-profit research group on the trends in radio broadcasting and the broader category of "listenership."

Among the findings, stations dropping "HD Radio" transmission in 2012 outnumber those that signed up.

The report notes it is the first time that's happened since 2004, after Ibiquity launched "Hybrid Digital"  (putting a telemetry stream on top of existing AM & FM signals).

Each page/topic in the discussion has a hotlink for the numbers and methodology of the research.

No one wants to pay Ibiquity the monthly fee if there are no sets out there to decode the signal.  There are stations still running it but for other reasons (now we're into rumors  :o )

Deja vu all over again.


AM Stereo

huh uh, won't go away.
Gov uses it to transmit behaviour stats to _aliens. Shhhh.

maybee to advertize fud stamps.... ..

klc

I grew up in the Hartford - Connecticut market when WDRC battled WPOP for the youthful audience. I do remember a phase where I listened to WKBW in Buffalo at night to catch Joey Reynolds. My first AM DXing awareness happened when WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia came strapping in at night. The world must have been a bigger place back then because that seemed like quite an event to be able hear something that far away. It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood that was my age listened to AM radio back then.

I still catch a run of the news on 880 WCBS in NY each morning and will also catch Prairie Home Companion on 640 NPR now and then. At this point, very few people in my area have anything that will receive AM radio in their homes. During the big storm up here in October 2011 we lost power for 6 days and there was no cable, phone, or internet for 11 days. All the cell phone sites were dead. Except for their car radios, no one in the neighborhood had portable AM radios. It was very strange to watch kids walking around in the road waving their cell phones in the air trying to catch a signal. I passed out a few old portable AM radios to a few neighbors and it was their only source of news during that time. It was kind of a revelation that for all practical purposes, AM radio is dead with the <40 age demographic. Most have no clue about area AM programming and they could care less about HD radio on the AM or FM band. It will probably all just fade away due to lack of interest. The internet, cable, satellite television and wireless device technology are burying AM and FM broadcasting for all practical purposes.

Ah well, they all don't know what they missed...

Rob W1AEX

That would have been something to video and upload to youtube. The neighbors looking at this strange box that is called a portable radio and it talks to you.

Really, Fred !
I was thinking the same thing after Rob's post: "What'll they think of next!"

The imagery of kids waving their cellphones around looking for signal is poignant too.

ya Paul,
We are a weird generation of guys and gals who talk into a microphone and have these huge boxes with dials and meters, and wires all over the property hanging in trees, to talk to someone with static and distortion.
Maybe my son will see the excitement of it, so I can pass it on to him........dunno
Fred

" The imagery of kids waving their cellphones around looking for signal is poignant too. "

Kinda like ants waving their ants around....  (no pun intended)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmz1ECDbMSs



" Maybe my son will see the excitement of it, so I can pass it on to him........dunno "

Maybee try making an event out of it, specifically for him. How to do this, I dunno.

klc

How many BCB stations today do you think even know what a QSL card is or would spend the time to type out a letter of verification to a kid who sent a signal report and comments on their programming?

A few others I found. Still do BCB dxing, mostly with my HQ-129X, which is really great on the BCB.

WBT is Charolette, NC, KMOX is St. Louis, The others I posted I think you can see the QTH.

Our local station is KPIN, Pinedale, Wyoming but it's FM, oldies, country music, local programming and kids in Pinedale do the station ids.

Naw.  They use it to advertise free cell phones.  That way less people need broadcast radio access.

Wow! You have some nice QSLs from some classic clear channel stations Marty. Thanks for sharing.