Not sure if this is the main source, but Edison Research found that 99% of homes had at least one radio hooked up in 1999, but only about 2/3 had at least one operable radio in 2020. If people were still buying radios, one wouldn’t expect much of a decline, let alone that substantial of one. Also, the survey found that each house had roughly three radios working in 1999 and only about one installed in 2020.
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AM Radio is dying
- Thread starter Ronnie Milsoup
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Not sure if this is the main source, but Edison Research found that 99% of homes had at least one radio hooked up in 1999, but only about 2/3 had at least one operable radio in 2020. If people were still buying radios, one wouldn’t expect much of a decline, let alone that substantial of one. Also, the survey found that each house had roughly three radios working in 1999 and only about one installed in 2020.
The Consumer Products Association used to publish details of what electronics were selling the prior year. It used to break out TV's portable radios, "stereo systems", etc. In the 80's they stopped breaking out the types of products instead rolling them up into 'personal electronics'.
Deterioration in specifically radio sales has been noted with the closing of consumer electronics stores and even before that, it became increasingly difficult to find typical radios including clock and portable. Aftermarket car stereos have been in decline as modern vehicle entertainment systems are tightly integrated into the vehicle data network (CAN Bus). It's become difficult if not impossible to replace the radio in a car ten year old or newer.
Smartphone sales have almost completely overwhelmed all other consumer electronics, including TV's and radios.
Anecdotally, tally your family and neighbors and ask them what their interest is in buying new traditional radios. Better yet, ask your average neighbor or their kids if under 50, when the last time they considered the purchase of a new AM/FM radio.
I'm not sure about a reserved segment, but educational stations WNYE New York and WBEZ Chicago were on the air in 1942.
My own evidence of this happened in late 1978 in San Juan. There were a dozen FMs, and all together they had about a 12 share of audience. The top one had a 4 share, and it was "Beautiful Music" and partner to my 13 share AC, WQII.
On December 29 at 7:31 PM I switched the FM to all salsa as WZNT, "Z-93". The first survey started 23 days later. WZNT debuted at 21.5. Two months later, 31.5. By June, the FM band had over half of all listening as several other stations began more pop oriented formats.
180 days and FM went from a 12 share to over 50. As soon as there were widely popular formats, "everyone" moved to FM.
(And, unlike most mainland US markets, the AMs in San Juan were for the most part 5kw fulltime and above, There were 7 or 8 with 10 kw and one with 50 kw so the band did not lose because of signal issues. it was just "popular formats sound better")
Totally agree. Nobody is going to go out to buy a new radio to hear stations they know nothing or little about. And if we wait for everyone to get a car with the extended band on the radio, that will take a quarter century
(Yes, I know. some original equipment radios can be software converted for the new band. How many will go to a dealer and pay to have that done?)
The theme song for this idea is the 90's dance hit, "Castles in the Sky".
Or the recent country hit, "Wishful Drinking."
You and I may have started a new concept on RadioDiscussions: use a song to qualify a statement!
Robert Douglas
Banned
You're right, there is no AM here. If I want to listen to KFAY, I just say "Alexa, play news talk 1030". The radio will not pick it up reliably. This is purely a skywave town for AM. The ground conductivity must be horrendous. Losing 790 KURM meant no more listenable signals at all here in Northern Benton County.
But, I live in two metros, splitting my time about half and half. In San Antonio the situation is the opposite - maybe 30 AMs, all with something interesting going on. Even iHeart flagship WOAI has no need for a translator or presence on FM HD. There is almost no power line noise in the city.
But every home and office and store has wall warts and computers and other electronic stuff making AM strictly an in-car opportunity. And AM sound sucks, even for talk. Most people under 50 can't put up' with it.
And only a couple of San Antonio AMs cover the whole market day and night. Every other one is at the high end of the dial or too directional at night to cover the 8-county metro area. Most don't even have full daytime coverage.
550 has night nulls, but fairly good. 1200 is good. 680 is highly night directional and misses areas. From there onwards it is downhill for AM coverage.
Robert Douglas
Banned
David, grab an AM radio and go sit somewhere in San Antonio. You will find that your weird wall wart theory is bullxxxx.
That is not a theory. It is true in nearly every home with "new" technology, starting will wallwarts.
This is not just true in San Antonio. It is true in Buenos Aires, where 100 kw on 710 directionalized at downtown was not enough to overcome man made noise 20 years ago. Same in Liverpool or Bilao or Capetown or Metro Manila.
So, you're the person who still listens to KFAY 1030! 😉 Even 30 years ago, it wasn't much of anyone's first choice for news. KURM always did a much better job of covering local and national news, and Cumulus gutted KFAY almost entirely during the Great Recession. KFAY hasn't had much to offer for a long time.
AM has always been a wasteland there. At the time KHOG proposed moving to 1030 and operating 24 hours, the area only had one AM operating after sunset, and it was on 1340 and maxed out at 250 watts at nighttime. Seems like KURM, which was late to the game and started out a daytimer, used a similar argument to go 24 hours, and I believe it was running 24/7 before KHOG. FM wasn't much better. KEZA 107.9 signed on in the early to mid 80's, and it was the first Class C FM licensed to Fayetteville. The only other Class C FM in the area at the time was KMCK, which has been a Class C the longest. The others were either Class A's that upgraded in the early 90's or sign-ons in the early 90's. I think KKIX and KUAF were the first to upgrade.
Ground conductivity is pretty bad there, but KFAY has had other challenges, too. When that three tower array went up in the early to mid 80's, it was an isolated area. The car dealership and the Sam's Club weren't there. That dealership has expanded in phases, and each one has encroached further toward the tower site. The Fulbright interchange has also been redesigned multiple times. (I'm told Calipari's house is just to the northwest of that interchange, BTW.) I can't remember if the bypass had been built when the towers went up, but, when 1030 was proposed at that site, it wasn't there yet. I-49 was US 71, and what's now the Fulbright was the original US 71. US 71 dropped you onto College where the Fulbright ends today, and that section of College and north became US 71 while the part south that took you into Fayetteville was US 71-B. If you were going to Springdale, you had to drive up College and Thompson starting at roughly the Northwest Arkansas Mall. You could stay on it and go to Rogers, Bentonville, and Bella Vista. It was stop and go driving all the way up to Missouri. What's now I-49 was built in phases with construction on the part from the Fulbright to Sunset Ave beginning in the early to mid 80's. Most of the rest of it continued going up throughout the decade and into the 90's, though the Bella Vista bypass just went up within the last 10 years. The southern leg toward Ft. Smith went up during the 1990's.
What's happened to KFAY has been a problem for a lot of other AM's, too. Unlike FM's, AM tower sites require a lot of land. Even if it just has one tower, it has to have an extensive grounding system. When those stations were built, they were built where the land was cheap. Today, much of that land is no longer cheap. As that land has become more desirable, businesses and builders have been acquiring that land and putting in businesses or homes. Each new parcel of land that encroaches on it is a potential problem for the station. Those rare situations where the land is still cheap have also had to deal with encroachment. That encroachment has typically been residential, and it's usually housing for lower income people. I've heard horror stories about engineers having to drive out to tower sites in dangerous neighborhoods. Plus, all AM stations have to worry about copper thieves trying to deal the grounding system. A station where I interned saw some copper thieves fry themselves in an effort to steal its grounding system.
Ground conductivity is good in San Antonio. Signals, in general, seem to travel really well around there. Having said that, most of the AM's there were still designed for an area that was much smaller and less populated than it is today. Most of the AM's either cut their power too low or beam their signals straight into the Gulf of Mexico after dark. KKYX is west of the city and can still hit the bulk of the population, but, while you can hear it all the way down I-37 to Corpus Christi at night, you can't hear it much past Kerrville after dark on the I-10 run. KTSA is much the same after dark. It's a great signal to the southeast but doesn't go too far northwest. With much of the area's growth being in Comal and Kendall Counties, AM misses out on more and more of the population every day.
Yeah, David, I don't know how people can possibly argue that the typical indoor noise floor has not increased dramatically over the past few decades, unless perhaps they haven't bought a new piece of consumer electronics or lightbulb in like 20 years.
But don't just take our word for it, here's a great study from 2016 by Wisconsin Public Radio's Director of Engineering, Steve Johnston: https://www.wd8das.net/nab-paper.pdf
And it's not just wall warts. LED lights are another huge RF noise generator. These have become more common in homes over the past decade, and they've had a big impact at my house. We had our kitchen remodeled, and got some under cabinet LED lights installed. When these lights are turned on, they almost wipe out the AM broadcast band on any nearby radio -- reception of marginal AM signals is erased, and even strong signals (for example, 10KW signal 12 miles away) have an annoying loud hum in the background.
As both a ham and fan of radio/DX, I wish it wasn't so, but it is.
I remember during Superstorm Sandy in 2012, radio stations got calls from people saying they were listening to the radio in their car while it was parked in their driveway or garage, because they didn't have a radio in their home.
One AM station with several FM translators asked each caller which frequency they were listening to, and about 30% were listening to the AM signal.
“Vchimpanzee to the white courtesy phone.”
I haven't really tried to pick up AM in the house lately but I can say the local station that once had Rush Limbaugh sounds fine on my clock radio.
There is another clock radio that I bought when the other one quit working, and there is a thread that mentions this, but it wouldn't pick up any AM stations regardless of where it was and didn't do a much better job with FM. But the older clock radio mysteriously started working again. I just turn it off immediately when it wakes me up because I don't want to hear anything that early.
The one station I listen to on a radio I bought after seeing it in ad on this site is FM, but it has "Wait! Wait!" on NPR. The signal is sometimes fuzzy so I have to adjust the antenna. I listen to that in the kitchen while my lunch is on the stove and my laundry is drying. If I listen on the computer, I have a tendency to get distracted.
As it happens, a longtime friend, a former engineer and station owner and onetime Denver resident, sent me an email yesterday after he returned home from a trip to central Kansas. He took a Potomac Instruments FIM along with him - once an engineer, always an engineer - and reported the following:
FM's getting to be almost as bad, though that's due to the proliferation of move-ins, translators, and dinky-doodle LPFMs. Radio's been crapified, and that's even before we get into the business and programming issues. Where's Herbert Hoover when you need him?
This hits the nail on the head, and why I've raised the flag of concern on this site about how adding more translators and LPFM's, or Lord help us, allowing most AM stations full class FM status by shoehorning them all in. All this does is what happened to the AM band even before all the noise floor increases, by cramming more stations onto the band. Most large to medium markets are already saturated with radio stations all chasing rapidly diminishing dollars. Then assume that 50% of the potential audience nationwide has been gradually moving to streaming. Next, remove 60% of the potential ad revenue and we're talking about a stuffed FM band all bludgeoning each other over what amounts to pennies found under sofa cushions.
None of it is sustainable.
"We could use a man like Herbert Hoover again!"
"Boy, the way Glenn Miller played.""We could use a man like Herbert Hoover again!"
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