Tom Leykis' online show outdrawing Limbaugh and Hannity in Los Angeles

[Avid Listener]

What you are describing is typical of AM/FM combos with a daytime AM. The FCC 1967 order that forced larger market combos to cease simulcasting did not apply in some special cases, and among them was the FM simulcasting of a daytime AM.

This was not an AM daytimer. Both AM and FM were on the air 24/7.

As for the technical details, I am both ignorant and apathetic. I don't know, and I don't care. Whatever technical wizardry is done by the guys wearing pocket protectors doesn't mean diddlysquat to me. I turn the radio on. I tune in a station. I listen. If if sounds good, good. If it sounds like crap, it's AM.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

As for the technical details, I am both ignorant and apathetic. I don't know, and I don't care. Whatever technical wizardry is done by the guys wearing pocket protectors doesn't mean diddlysquat to me. I turn the radio on. I tune in a station. I listen. If if sounds good, good. If it sounds like crap, it's AM.

Some people are hybrids. They don't wear the pocket protector even they have the "hear head gene" but they are also artistic and/or sales oriented and don't want to advertise the vices by displaying the pocket protector.

This is part of what made radio of years gone by appealing to some people. There were a lot of stations where being a person with multiple-talents was an advantage... in some cases there were small town stations and some metro specialty stations that could only exist if they had at least one person with the personality defect of being able to do a little bit of everything. And the economic balance between the hourly cost of talentented person vs the cost of buying reeady made hardware gave the curious, the inventive, the experimentive person a place to "fly all their glags."

Today, it is hard to find anyone who can justify the time to gather parts and assemble experimental hardware ideas. And because few people do it, it is hard for those of us who have the fever flowing in our veins to find a store that will stock and make available the components and parts we need. Thus, today whether if was hardward for you at home to carry a set of Podcasts in your pocket while you go for the morning walk, or hardware to rewire and entire radio station, buy proven, feature rich factory built items rules the day.

In today's radio, you have to pick a specialty that they can't make in a factory and get good at it. Sales. Engineering supervision and exectution (now soldering), raw talent as in personality, Talk, News or voice-over and production. And since today we have companies that own many, many stations, they can afford specialists for each of these tasks and spread the talent over multiple stations, thus making the market for the folks really good at what they do.... if it is one of the in-demand specialties in radio.

I hang out in forums with the guys who "wear the pocket protectors". Some of them still take today's off the shelf audio processing devices and either make some modifications, or if you are a large enough customer, you go to the manufacturers of the really good audio processors and work with them to produce four dozen or six dozen of their audio devices on a special factory run to meet your needs.

And this is part of what just showed up in this thread. It is a thrill for some people to walk into a station that has a unique sound, find the engineer, pat him on the back and get him to open up and brag about his special "witches brew" for better audi. But radio is not about creating a business where people get a good feeling from meeting the wizard in charge. Radio is all about putting a sound out there that gathers listeners by the truckload who couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation about band-pass filters, delay and decay circuits and side-chaining.

[That's why I sleep an extra hour two nights a week. Two extra hours to dream about dinking and tinkering.]

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

P.S. We're talking about listeners as well in the early history of radio. Radio might have been a still-born industry had it not been for the folks who became LISTENERS because they liked the smell of solder and the idea of combining components of technology to turn in those invisible waves in their houses and waves that sneaked in from hundreds of miles away. The "pocket protector crowd" existed on both the sending and receiving crowd in early radio. And maybe pocket-protector station staff knew how to create programming that would be loved by the pocket-protector listener.

 

[davideduardo]

The simulcasting rule applied only to stations in the (then) top 50 markets

Not true. It affected all simulcast FMs in markets of 100,000 or more. Your "Top 50" statement is wrong.

There were just 1400 FMs on the air in 1966, and the decision affected more than half of them. Of course, quite a few AM and FM combos were already separated, and thus had to do nothing to comply with the 12/31/66 end of simulcast rule.

But around 200+ FMs in medium, large and major markets had to stop full simulcasts, even after the FCC granted waivers for daytimers and some special situations (WHOM in New York being an example).

and only limited simulcasting to 50 per cent.

Very, very few "reduced" the hours. When they cut back, they went all he way and did new formats.

Many stations did not have engineering and equipment as fancy as described above.

Oh, yes they did. No station in 1967 would be without at least the Audimax / Volumax package (AM and FM versions separate for the Volumax)... or the equivalent in function... and many had additional gear, such as EQ. The peak limiter was pretty much a requirement to avoid over-modulation violations, and the AGC at the studio end prevented over-modulating the microwave or saturating to distortion the phone line.

By the mid-70's, multiband processing was the norm in competitive situations and there was a wide range of gear available for both AM's and FM's specific requirements. Only the very smallest, unprofitable stations did not stay up with the newest gear.

 

[Wimmmex]

[/i]and only limited simulcasting to 50 per cent. [/i]


Very, very few "reduced" the hours. When they cut back, they went all he way and did new formats.

Again, there's that definitive Eduardo over-reach.

Many stations DID reduced hours.....and did the 6A-6P /6P-6A switch off.

Eduardo, you keep taking some experience of your own and want to re-write history....then state it as definitive.

 

[davideduardo]

This was not an AM daytimer. Both AM and FM were on the air 24/7.

Then they were in very small markets, where the simulcast rule did not apply.

As for the technical details, I am both ignorant and apathetic. I don't know, and I don't care.

You need to decide. When it came to video and audio recording, you cared... right down to the kind of camera and the interface. When it comes to things you know nothing about, you conveniently do not care.

Whatever technical wizardry is done by the guys wearing pocket protectors doesn't mean diddlysquat to me. I turn the radio on. I tune in a station. I listen. If if sounds good, good. If it sounds like crap, it's AM.

Whatever. You are applying your personal criteria to a whole industry in which you do not participate and where you don't understand the realities.

 

[Avid Listener]

Some people are hybrids. They don't wear the pocket protector even they have the "hear head gene" but they are also artistic and/or sales oriented and don't want to advertise the vices by displaying the pocket protector.

It was just a figure of speech. I know that the technical guys keep things running. I know that some techies can double in sales or even on-air. It really doesn't matter.

You need to decide. When it came to video and audio recording, you cared... right down to the kind of camera and the interface. When it comes to things you know nothing about, you conveniently do not care.

I decided a long time ago. When it matters, I care. When it doesn't, I don't. When someone made a bogus statement about a requirement for an expensive studio being needed for a simple talk show, I cared enough to refute the bogus statement. I mentioned one or two piece of brand name equipment I knew about because I used some of them myself for hobby level work. But, as I pointed out earlier, on an ordinary table top or dashboard mounted AM radio, no amount of fancy-schmancy equipment or processing at the transmitter end will make the finished product emerging from the speakers sound like anything but crap. You can't polish a turd.

 

[FredLeonard]

You can't polish a turd.

An old expression that refers to a product known as "Shinola" comes to mind.

 

[JeffM]

But, as I pointed out earlier, on an ordinary table top or dashboard mounted AM radio, no amount of fancy-schmancy equipment or processing at the transmitter end will make the finished product emerging from the speakers sound like anything but crap. You can't polish a turd.

You owe it to yourself to listen to an old radio if you can find one that works. Those RCA, Zenith, Philco*, etc. consoles, and even some of the table models of those days, made AM sound rich and mellow. (So it's monaural, so what? FM was too back then...) The guys who designed those sets (especially at RCA) learned from motion-picture sound, how to turn what would now be called the limitations of optical film recording into brilliant sound powerful enough to fill a large theatre. And they put that to work to make AM sound its very best.

Those radios even had tuners designed to pull in distant signals clearly. Ever look at the preset buttons on an old set? Not for no reason were they marked with the call letters of stations hundreds of miles away. Yeah, modern radios are schlocky. I wake up to a Timex clock radio. Because it's a Timex, it's a reliable clock; but because Timex is a watch company that could care less about radio, it sounds lousy, AM or FM.

* (The real Philco, not the present-day impostor.)

 

[Avid Listener]

You owe it to yourself to listen to an old radio if you can find one that works. Those RCA, Zenith, Philco*, etc. consoles, and even some of the table models of those days, made AM sound rich and mellow. (So it's monaural, so what? FM was too back then...) The guys who designed those sets (especially at RCA) learned from motion-picture sound, how to turn what would now be called the limitations of optical film recording into brilliant sound powerful enough to fill a large theatre. And they put that to work to make AM sound its very best.

Those radios even had tuners designed to pull in distant signals clearly. Ever look at the preset buttons on an old set? Not for no reason were they marked with the call letters of stations hundreds of miles away. Yeah, modern radios are schlocky. I wake up to a Timex clock radio. Because it's a Timex, it's a reliable clock; but because Timex is a watch company that could care less about radio, it sounds lousy, AM or FM.

* (The real Philco, not the present-day impostor.)

I'm aware that radio sets in the olden days had better fidelity. However, I do not live in the olden days. I live in the present. The radios I have available to me now, in the present, are the radios of the present. And right now, today, May 23rd, 2014, all of the radios I have heard in the past few years that were tuned to AM stations sounded like crap.

I've also heard recordings of old programs from the Golden Age of radio. When played on a good quality sound system, even though they were mono, the recordings of shows like The Shadow, Fibber McGee and Mollie, The Bickersons, etc., did sound better off of cassettes or CDs than anything I've heard over the AM airwaves in as long as I can remember.

 

[TheBigA]

I've also heard recordings of old programs from the Golden Age of radio.

The official ones came from the original transcription disc pre-air. So you're not hearing the air signal, but the studio recording.

 

[Avid Listener]

The official ones came from the original transcription disc pre-air. So you're not hearing the air signal, but the studio recording.

Exactly! The source material had very good quality. What removed the quality was sending it over the airwaves through Amplitude Modulation.

Duh!

 

[willdav713]

You keep going back to that. There was a one-time incident 20 years ago, to which you only know one side of the story. You make it sound like he was this wife-batterer.

Stop.

Men should never strike a lady.
Rather it be 10 years, 5 years ago, 2 years ago, or 50 years ago.

 

[willdav713]

I remember KITY 92.9 in Stereo Multiplex being all the rage in San Antonio in the early 80's. I wonder what those FM radio stations sounded like in the mid 70's on a Pioneer QRX-949A Quadraphonic Receiver with optional MPX Filter, and Dolby NR box hooked up to it. That sucker had 8 speaker outputs!

Also you might add the fact that most FM stations back then played elevator music.
"Beautiful Music on KRBE 104Mhz."

 

[willdav713]

Yes and no. During its heyday, AM music radio sounded good. FM at that time (late 1960's until the early to mid 1970's, probably depending on market) sounded dull and sterile, although it delivered higher fidelity. The announcers sounded like they either were half asleep or in another room. It wasn't until FM stations began to play Top 40 music that they began to add processing to the programming to give it a fuller sound.

I remember KITY 92.9 in Stereo Multiplex being all the rage in San Antonio in the early 80's. I wonder what those FM radio stations sounded like in the mid 70's on a Pioneer QRX-949A Quadraphonic Receiver with optional MPX Filter, and Dolby NR box hooked up to it. That sucker had 8 speaker outputs!

Also you might add the fact that most FM stations back then played elevator music.
"Beautiful Music on KRBE 104Mhz."

Sorry didn't mean to double post but forgot to use the reply with quote.

 

[boombox4]

"The late 60's" was precisely when variety exploded on FM, with hundreds and hundreds of previously simulcast FMs commencing independent programming starting in January 1967. Immediately we had progressive rockers popping up all over the US.... and within a year or two we had everything from Drake-Chennault's "Hit Parade" format to the first FM oldies stations and even Spanish language stations. It took a few more years for Top 40's to proliferate on FM, but they were there in force by the very early 70's (and a few legal AM FM simulcasts put Top 40 on big FMs in places like Washington, DC, where WPGC fired up improved facilities in the same month as the moon landing.).

Your timeline is off by 7 or 8 years!

I said "depending on the market".

What I mentioned is how it the stations' processing sounded in my market. We first had a Top 40 station here on FM in 1977. The FM progressive or album rock stations didn't really update their sound here until the early 70's. I'm sure things progressed earlier in other parts of the country.

 

[boombox4]

It was just a figure of speech. I know that the technical guys keep things running. I know that some techies can double in sales or even on-air. It really doesn't matter.

I decided a long time ago. When it matters, I care. When it doesn't, I don't. When someone made a bogus statement about a requirement for an expensive studio being needed for a simple talk show, I cared enough to refute the bogus statement. I mentioned one or two piece of brand name equipment I knew about because I used some of them myself for hobby level work. But, as I pointed out earlier, on an ordinary table top or dashboard mounted AM radio, no amount of fancy-schmancy equipment or processing at the transmitter end will make the finished product emerging from the speakers sound like anything but crap. You can't polish a turd.

There's more to putting together a radio show than just a getting a microphone and a computer program -- whether to get the show on the air, or online.

A few years ago I worked for a company that had several network delivered radio shows. They started a new show which was based out of another state. For this show they built an entire studio -- with professional mixing board, expensive Sennheiser (or similar) microphones, high grade processing equipment, etc., when they could have gotten away with cheaper equipment and probably have gotten similar enough audio results.

My employers were not morons. They weren't in the habit of throwing away their money on a studio unless they figured there was a darned good reason to fund the building of one.

I'm pretty sure one of the reasons they had an entire studio built was because the studio would present a professional image -- not just to people in the industry, including potential guests -- but also to potential advertisers.

I don't think the economics of a show wanting to attract advertisers has changed all that much since then. Talk shows want to attract advertisers. The studio is part of the presentation. And the higher quality sound you get, the better, whether it's coming from a tinny 'tabletop' radio, "dashboard mounted AM radio" (haven't seen one installed in a car in over 35 years), tinny clock radio, a high fidelity stereo system, or computer speakers.

 

[JeffM]

I'm aware that radio sets in the olden days had better fidelity. However, I do not live in the olden days. I live in the present. The radios I have available to me now, in the present, are the radios of the present. And right now, today, May 23rd, 2014, all of the radios I have heard in the past few years that were tuned to AM stations sounded like crap.

Shouldn't your "beef" then be with the manufacturers of today's receivers, rather than with the broadcasters?

 

[Avid Listener]

And the higher quality sound you get, the better, whether it's coming from a tinny 'tabletop' radio, "dashboard mounted AM radio" (haven't seen one installed in a car in over 35 years), tinny clock radio, a high fidelity stereo system, or computer speakers.

That's strange. I haven't seen a car radio that didn't include the AM band. Has anyone seen a car radio that didn't include the AM band?

Shouldn't your "beef" then be with the manufacturers of today's receivers, rather than with the broadcasters?

Who said I have a "beef"? There's nothing being broadcast on the AM band that sound quality has much impact on, so why should I care whether or not anyone does anything to make it better? When it comes to AM radio, the content sucks and the sound quality sucks. Fix either one, and the other still sucks. So why bother fixing one if you aren't also going to fix the other as well?

 

[JeffM]

Who said I have a "beef"? There's nothing being broadcast on the AM band that sound quality has much impact on, so why should I care whether or not anyone does anything to make it better? When it comes to AM radio, the content sucks and the sound quality sucks. Fix either one, and the other still sucks. So why bother fixing one if you aren't also going to fix the other as well?

Weren't you just kvetching a little while ago that modern AM radios sound lousy? Oh, I keep forgetting, you never wrote anything you wrote, even when it's right there in front of your face.