The AM Forum

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/us/a-quest-to-save-am-radio-before-its-lost-in-the-static.html

May have to copy and paste into ur browser.

73, Bob K9ING

Interesting article. I hope the lone Ranger at the FCC can make some headway.
Sad thing about the Sat-fed stations is, we had a major power failure in our city. The local AM's were still on the air spewing their SAT feed and not a word mentioned about the situation. There apparently weren't any bodies there. Both stations are co-located in the same building. All automated, even switch over to generator power.
One day I walked in and there were people there and the offices were staffed. I even caught the chief engineer and he said that the two stations were gaining listeners and they were beginning to have live talent back on the air. The Marcellus-Shale project is pumping a little energy into the local economies.
Waiting for those Royalty checks to start rolling in..............hi!
Fred

Like many other business sectors a lot of AM radio stations have focused upon the fairly easy task of being efficient (i.e. mass market feed instead of local content) while ignoring the equally if not more important need to be effective and relevant.  A model based upon holding onto local listeners while generating advertising revenue and using mass produced entertainment feed isn't going to compete well against internet and XM/Sirius and all of the personal media options which have national content without all of the filler promotion.  The only three AM stations I listen to anymore are WBBM Chicago for a quick shot of news on the drive into the office, WIRL out of Peoria which has a great selection of 50s and 60s music and it is all locally produced with relevant news and information, and WSM Nashville when I need good audio to test an AM receiver and their content is generally interesting.  These are three more AM stations than any of my colleagues listen to and I doubt if any of my students have ever listened to any AM station outside of 670 "The Score" out of Chicago for sports.

Local newspapers have gone the same direction with mostly national feed and a few poorly written local stories that appear to have been written by someone speaking English as a second language and edited by a careless kindergarten student.  At least some are unintentionally funny as is the layout since recently they have been using one of the syndicated "answers to car repair questions" columns as the lead article in their opinion section.  I was tempted to sign up for an online comment account just to post that as a conservative my opinion is that someone with an out-of-balance tire probably got it from being a bleeding heart left wing liberal and they should move to California with the rest of the out-of-balance tire people.  I am sure with the local crowd in this county I would get a lot of supporting comments :)

Tons of links to AM and some FM stations going dark for many reasons.
Here is one from a legal aspect.

http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2009/07/articles/general-fcc/broadcast-stations-going-dark-issues-to-think-about/?nomobile=1 (http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2009/07/articles/general-fcc/broadcast-stations-going-dark-issues-to-think-about/?nomobile=1)

Locally, I see WPDX, a daytime 1kw AM has gone dark since 2012.

...sigh, that was the only station I received we'll on my Knight kit crystal set as a boy.
"Cherokee Sue" and her country singing retinue.

The blame for the demise of local radio stations lies squarely at the feet of the owners and management.  As station groups get larger and more centralized, the concept of serving the local community is diminished.  Sure, cut out local news and get rid of the on-air staff.  Plug in a satellite feed, take the money and run.  Funny thing, after a few years, there won't be much money to run with.  The only AM station I listen to these days is CFZM, AM 740 in Toronto. They program as if they actually respect their listeners.

Over the last twenty years I have seen radio go from lots of small owners to large corporate owners that are only concerned with one thing, how to make more money. The have to pay off the massive debt they ran up in the nineties buying up all the radio properties and with the economy in the tank and many no longer listening to radio the revenue streams have dropped down to a half or a third of what they were making ten years ago. When you need more money things like bringing in satellite programing and cutting cost everywhere appeals to the managers, they can generate short term increases in the bottom line by cutting people and not paying for things like cutting grass at the transmitter sites or other maintenance, but this may all just be me being bitter and not accepting the “New” economic reality.
May have seen this here first, don’t remember but this web site is the best representation of where radio is today:

http://www.krud.com/

AMBC has it place. I like listening to talk radio but more like to listen to sports on it. Reminds me when I was a kid listening the Cubs and the W. Sox.  Then there was WLS and WCFL and listening to R&R.  When my parents moved to CT and I could hear both those stations on my little portable I felt like I never left Chicago.

Present day however, AMBC has taken a beating not only from format changes due to times but technology.  The interference is horrendous.  The FCC hasn't had enforcement effort when it comes to interference. Part 15 devices and any other device that can spew noise should have been contained.  The FCC should have seen in advance that proliferation of many cheap interference makers should have been contained at the get go. Mr. Pai may be pushing a chain but I'll back him to clean the FCC mess up. It's long over due.  They have regulations that need to be enforced.

Interference from IBOC and the yearly fees didn't help either. I know there may be several members here cringing at my statement, but there were other approaches. I have heard AM HD radio and it is fantastic. The only sport-talk station that had HD, cut it off recently. There is less fading and drop-outs in AM-HD compared to FM-HD and the multi-path issues. Shudda re-assigned the AM band to the retired VHF-TV band for the High definition audio
The "Expanded Band" was expanded foolishness. Another waste of an owner's money. 10KW stereo day and night. BUT can you really hear just one station on any of the assigned freqs? Typically you'll receive two to three stations all hetrodyning within 20 hz of each other. And the Airport wireless parking transmitters and Roadway hazard warning transmitters on 1630 or 1640 are nothing but craziness in the Expanded Waste-Band.

First there was TV, then FM, the satellite, cable and then the Internet. AM would be getting a smaller slice of the pie no matter what owners and management did. Radio and TV of all types (including cable) are losing market share or listener/viewership to online media.

The world has changed.

Yes, but is it just me or has interesting content waned on all broadcast media? TV shows I want to watch, almost none. Radio stations I want to listen to three, one for the ball games, one college station for jazz (KCSM) and one public station for news. I know I'm old and grumpy but my kids who aren't don't bother either. My daughter just moved and declined to get cable service. What's on? AM radio: ranters; FM radio: oldies; TV stupid reality shows. Tanning wars.

I think I better go work on a radio and cheer up.

There is no retired VHF TV band. It's still in use by digital television broadcasters.

Just visited an R.F. channel 4  10KW DTV transmitter site last month.

I believe one reason for the decline of the broadcasting business is the MBA cult that gained traction in the 80s when big station groups were assembled.  The theory was that a "professional" manager could run anything equally well - donut shop, casket factory, or radio station.  Station staffs in many cases found themselves working  for managers with no experience or training in broadcasting,  its traditions, and with no local roots.  When a local station is drained of its personality and soul, it will die on the vine.

The only time I listen to AM radio is when I'm on the highway roads and want to hear the latest in road repairs, congestion, etc. and occasionally tune down to the low end and listen for any lightning crashes. Other then that, the rest of the band is a waste for entertainment. FM radio in the car is fine for me and my HD FM radios at home keep me entertained all day long. And with 400 plus channels on the cable, I can be entertained any which way I want. For amateur radio entertainment, 75 meters is always loaded with that.

You can get real or near real time traffic on the Web and some GPS systems. Some cars now have this built in. Doesn't matter who is running an AM radio station, it can't provide this sort of service. AM listenership has been sliding since the late 60s or early 70s. The hand writing has been on the wall for decades. The Web was the nail in the coffin.

http://posttrib.suntimes.com/opinions/22519239-474/time-to-amp-up-the-fight-to-save-am-radio.html

For some silly reason, I am not allowed to delete my own topics...  ::)


I just noticed a similar link/topic was posted 10 days or so ago.

So mods can delete this topic if you desire....

Just added it to the existing thread, Bruce. It has a new/different article that might be of interest to readers. TNX for posting it.

I think you hit it.  If there was something compelling on any of these media, the technology wouldn't be an issue.  Even the ubiquitous AM radio in cars is on the way out in favor of the homogeneity and cheap Viagra ads on Sirius/XM.    On AM SWBC -- aside from China, Cuba, and Australia you get mostly people SHOUTING about politics or religion or black helicopters, and sometimes all three at once.  In any case, the big business corporate "chain" mentality has destroyed AM radio and "dining" (a term I use loosely when it comes to most eateries) and the hardware store business and small town main streets and a long list of other things in much the same way.

A ham friend sent me this scan last night.  Long gone are the days when the AM BCB inspired murderous passion.

The second article disturbes me more.
Viva Le USA ! --  I hope.

That DX murder article was interesting.  But researching the story in a Miami newspaper indicates a different tale of events.  The wife grabbed the gun and she was the one who wanted to listen to DX.  Or at least, that's what he said.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ekAuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=a9gFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2980%2C3934863

I think its a lost cause.
I never listen to it, and no one I know listens to AM broadcast.

Even FM is is falling off as people listen to sat and mp3's.
Modern people can use the internet to find and watch all sorts of things, and it all cuts into broadcast.

I do not see any reason why the trend would not continue.

Its kind of amazing that you can listen to and watch whatever you want on a modern phone in seconds.
At one family get together, we were talking about Saturday Night Live, the needs more cow bell skit and my niece pulled up the video on her phone in about 8 seconds.

You can get any song, video, picture or information about anything in seconds, from almost anyplace, which is really amazing when you think about it.

 

Somewhat true. But there is little that is compelling on TV these days but it remains. It's more than the content that is the problem. The reality is that many of the shows that people characterize as shouting (even though most have never really listened to any of these shows) bring the largest number of listeners to AM.

I stopped listening to AM two years ago when WOSU (820 kc Columbus OH) gave way to another bible beater. AM is noise interrupted by commercials.

A major force that killed AM radio was crowding too many stations into the band, making reception largely a cacophony. Add to that the "solutions" of ultra-narrow receivers that sound like pure garbage even with a strong signal, and the presence of the IBOC buzzsaws, and the result is the current disaster.

If we had created a good-sized dedicated band for digital radio, and given all existing licensees access to it, many of these stations -- and much of their local programming, and revenue -- could have been saved.

With modern codecs, there would have been bandwidth galore with excellent quality -- plenty of room for rentable subchannels with niche formats, too. Restrictions -- like a pitiful 250 Watts, or restrictive antenna patterns, or daytime-only operation -- would have been a thing of the past. Every broadcaster would have had an essentially perfect full-quieting signal in his city of license. (And, as stations migrated to the new band, the remaining stations on the old bands would enjoy much less interference and better quality.)

But that is exactly what the big chains owned by the money-men did NOT want.

They wanted to preserve the inferiority of their competition's signals.

That is the real reason we have IBOC. It was a successful bid to PREVENT the emergence of a dedicated digital band -- to PREVENT the Mom and Pop and other non-chain stations from having an equal signal to the big boys.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies.

73,

Kevin, WB4AIO.

How is that different than most TV channels?   ;D

By using modern modulation techniques a SSB channel can support a raw data rate of 12800 bps and wider transmissions can support proportionally faster data rates. Trials have shown that color video at 15 frames per second can be streamed on HF in a bandwidth of just 18 kHz.

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?402279-80m-ham-radio-band-used-for-wideband-video-data

Seems to me, hi-fi audio would be a cinch.

To be 100% honest. I am surprised not to hear more unlicensed activity on the AMBC-X frequencies between 1620 and 1700. With the dimensioned FCC enforcement due to cutbacks, pirates could have a small field day. I'm not advocating unlicensed activity, yet know the characteristics of human nature. An acre or so of land to put up an effective antenna, and one is good to go!

Music on AM!

I just resurrected a pre-war Zenith, a big console with ten tubes, count em, 1,2,3 etc. I was amused when I turned it back on for the first time after the extensive repairs and initial checks were done and music started wafting through the room instead of talk radio or commercials. Not just music but rock and roll. The song started just as the filaments heated up. It sounded like '70's rock but I didn't recognize it. How could that be? Then they started singing in Hindi. I've since grown quite fond of this station as I align and finish up the radio, KLOK in San Jose, 50,000 watts. It seems to be all India all the time. They speak English more beautifully than we homegrown Americans do and they still play music on the radio.

Over the years population has moved to areas that are not covered well by the directional arrays of many stations.  The station's sales rep tries to sell air time to a prospective advertiser and the reply is "we can't pick up your station here".  Can the station be move or the pattern be changed?  Probably yes, but, tuff these days with the NIMBY attitude, cost, etc, etc... And, of course, there all kinds of competition for listeners now --- satellite, computer, you name it.