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Saving AM Radio

kfbkfb said:
What devices for "elsewhere"?


Kirk Bayne
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All the stuff MOST people are getting information from now. If every cell tower, every FM station and every hard phone line is taken out by weather, God, a UFO, or the terrorist, and every local police car with a speaker is sideline with flat tires, it will be mostly over and only the strongest will survive, the gene pool will be culled and no one will be discussing AM radio any more. Those with AM radio will do exactly what the 50,000 watt automated station 200 miles away tells them to do and will contribute to toys for tots just as the voice tracked message urged. They'll be as dead as the people without AM radio at the hands of the UFO and their Martian death rays. Geez
 
DavidEduardo said:
That's not my point. As it is, week in and week out, over 30% of U.S. adults use AM radio.

There are lots of stations that did not file for translators and who have bad AM facilities or are in markets that today can't support a station.

Any daytimer is going to be unprofitable as a commercial general market station. A few may survive doing religious or ethnic programming, but even those are in jeopardy if they don't have a translator.

Most of the former Class IV stations in metro areas (1230, 11240, 1340, 1400, 1450, 1490) just can't cover enough without high noise levels. A few of those in small markets can make it, but that is a category that is nearly hopeless: high dial positions and low power.

Many regional channel stations licensed or allocated after WW II are so directional that their markets have outgrown them. And even some of the more powerful stations are also so directional as to not cover their metro area day and night.

Example: Cleveland, Ohio. One AM station fully covers the whole market. The others: 850 so directional it misses parts of the market, particularly at night; same goes for 50 KW 1220. 1260, 1300 and 1420 are so directional they miss big parts of the market. 1490 is a (former) Class IV and does not even cover well the Black community it used to serve when I went to work there when I was 13. And 1540, a daytimer, turned in its license.

But that one good station does well in ratings and bills well. So if you look at the viable stations, they still can make money for quite a few years.
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I agree with you that many Americans still listen to AM radio. The people here who don't listen to AM say no one listens to AM anymore because they don't .
They remind me of a friend of mine who says no one likes The Beatles because he doesn't.
Just for fun, I asked the Gen Z couple that live next door to me if they ever listen to AM radio. Both said they do sometimes. She for traffic updates on 700WLW, he for Xavier Basketball games on the same.
According to some here they must be lying because "young people have never heard of AM radio".
 
b-turner said:
Hyrum, you're a great writer but a bit too demeaning in your comments. Do you write for a living?
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No. I'm just a sarcastic guy answering absurdity with absurdity. Like making fun of people who are hysterical that AM radio must be saved. In the grand scheme if it dies, the spectrum won't be missed and the advertisers who spend money on the more successful operations will get to help prolong the life of FM. I make fun of the hysterics of those who fear that when something bad happens, no one will know to run and hide unless AM radio broadcasts the warning. And I am amused when I say AM will be dead in two years and a bunch of people correct me as if I have a countdown clock. Sometimes it gives me a headache that makes my head explode. Watch this space for commenters to correct me that my head did not actually explode so therefore I am incorrect.
 
Hyrum said:
All the stuff MOST people are getting information from now. If every cell tower, every FM station and every hard phone line is taken out by weather, God, a UFO, or the terrorist, and every local police car with a speaker is sideline with flat tires, it will be mostly over and only the strongest will survive, the gene pool will be culled and no one will be discussing AM radio any more. Those with AM radio will do exactly what the 50,000 watt automated station 200 miles away tells them to do and will contribute to toys for tots just as the voice tracked message urged. They'll be as dead as the people without AM radio at the hands of the UFO and their Martian death rays. Geez
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That 50 kw station is likely part of the government reinforced emergency system and will use content provided by the involved government aid and relief agencies.
 
As I have mentioned in several posts in this thread (probably), if a cell phone doesn't detect a cell signal, it could display "try AM radio" with an icon to tap for more info on where to find an AM radio and how to operate an AM radio.

I'm pro-AM radio (for emergency use) due to the laws of physics - it's a happy accident that our tech from 100 years ago (mainly the carrier frequency range for AM radio) means the signal carries 100s of miles from the AM transmitter.

The (emergency use) AM radio station would/should transmit food safety info (only drink bottled water, don't eat food that hasn't been refrigerated for several hours...that type of survival info that the average person may not know).

note: it doesn't have to be a 24/7 omni 50kW AM, a "daytimer" could also be given FCC permission to stay on at 50kW omni at night for the duration of the emergency.


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
note: it doesn't have to be a 24/7 omni 50kW AM, a "daytimer" could also be given FCC permission to stay on at 50kW omni at night for the duration of the emergency.
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Note that a daytimer that does not operate with 50 kw can't just "turn it up" without months of work and a couple of hundred thou in cash.
 
Re: 50kW daytimer (I recommend adding a [FCC - emergency use only] manual switch to override any automatic nighttime power reduction and/or directional signal systems).

WHB 810 AM would be an example here in KC, I think WHB should have a manual override so they could stay 50kW at night (other USA AMs at 810 would be ordered off the air for the duration).

(anyway, I think some calculations should be done to find the minimum number of 50kW omni AMs needed to cover the USA [if the power is off, thereby reducing AM interference] and make sure those AMs are reinforced so they are up to the task)


Kirk Bayne
 
exdjted said:
And there is absolutely no way for anyone to quantify how many people actually listened to WWNC after the storm, or were even aware of the station unless they had been listeners in the past.
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The story I read mentioned WKSF, WQNS and WQNQ. I don't think it was stated how many listened to each station.
 
kfbkfb said:
As I have mentioned in several posts in this thread (probably), if a cell phone doesn't detect a cell signal, it could display "try AM radio" with an icon to tap for more info on where to find an AM radio and how to operate an AM radio.
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No. Just no. I'm not going to waste my time explaining why it wouldn't work, since others have explained why it wouldn't work multiple times.
 
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Kirk sputtered...

kfbkfb said:
Re: 50kW daytimer (I recommend adding a [FCC - emergency use only] manual switch to override any automatic nighttime power reduction and/or directional signal systems).
<...>
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As rare as hen's teeth, but I've actually got one of those here in my town - 50kw daytime omnidirectional station, owned by the state of Arizona (as the local university operates it...)

At 1550 on the AM dial. :cautious:

Even if it were to broadcast at night, it's not like that station is going to propagate as far as you think it is.

50kw stations, blasting away during a regional emergency, for example. Nope, not a good idea at all.
 
kwthom said:
Kirk sputtered...


As rare as hen's teeth, but I've actually got one of those here in my town - 50kw daytime omnidirectional station, owned by the state of Arizona (as the local university operates it...)

At 1550 on the AM dial. :cautious:

Even if it were to broadcast at night, it's not like that station is going to propagate as far as you think it is.

50kw stations, blasting away during a regional emergency, for example. Nope, not a good idea at all.
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Daytime, those 50 kw on 1550 get about as far as 1 kw on 550 would go. At night, those high on the band frequencies are just to jumbled with other signals to be useful.
 
TheBigA said:
There's no point in shutting down the AM. If they play music, they receive a discount in their streaming royalty. In order to subscribe to Nielsen, they have to broadcast on something. Streaming alone won't qualify, as the folks at KRTY discovered. They need Nielsen for advertising. People sometimes forget that advertising pays for radio.
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Those royalty rules can be changed, and Nielsen may well become obsolete. Not saying this will happen overnight but paridigm shifts often happen much sooner than expected.
 
Hyrum said:
I wish your friend with the expensive 100 foot antenna had checked the internet. He could have saved himself a lot of effort.
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This was in the 1990s, when music formats were more varied, and of more interest.
The tower was already there for fringe TV reception from Nebraska and Kansas City.

The point is it shows you how much trouble someone would go to receive programming from the larger markets, which was perceived to be better, or more interesting (ala oldies, smooth jazz).

Today, it's the opposite, as that type of music is mostly in the smaller markets that aren't ruled by Wall Street and marketing firms that overlook older adults.
 
kwthom said:
As rare as hen's teeth, but I've actually got one of those here in my town - 50kw daytime omnidirectional station, owned by the state of Arizona (as the local university operates it...)

At 1550 on the AM dial. :cautious:

Even if it were to broadcast at night, it's not like that station is going to propagate as far as you think it is.

50kw stations, blasting away during a regional emergency, for example. Nope, not a good idea at all.
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Of Tucson's two 50 kW daytimers, I pick up KDRI/830 like a local in NE Mesa (about 100 miles away), while KUAZ barely comes in at all.
 
Hyrum said:
No. I'm just a sarcastic guy
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Sarcasm is not an endearing quality when the discussion is trying to be positive. In my case, back on page 57, I was responding to the often-made assertion that AM radio has no chance because it can't be heard above the noise. Mine is a typical office, and the Sony is nothing special, and the AM works fine. The reason I listen to AM is the fact that I enjoy talk radio, and in this market, the talk radio, except for Sports radio and NPR, is on AM. As I read in the intervening pages of posts, I am apparently not alone - 80 million also listen to AM; a third of all adults listen at some point in a week. Radio needs every dime it can get, and unless these AM's are losing money (in which case they should be shut off), ownership groups and clusters should let them roll on. Blowing up an FM so that AM programming can be moved there is not an idea, but in many markets that is what would need to happen if there was an FCC or other group's focus to kill off AM because "no one can hear it above the noise".
exdjted said:
By the way, this argument about saving AM Radio is going to be revisited in about 20 years, except it will be titled "Saving RADIO".
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I agree but will tread lightly on this point, as I have almost got violent responses to my repeated calls for new format ideas. Unless someone who knows what they are talking about can tell me differently, I am pretty sure that the success that music radio on FM is having is borne mostly by older Millennials who grew up getting their music via radio. When those now 40 - 45 year olds start to age out of advertiser preferred demos, radio is going to be in a world of hurt unless something new has been nurtured and developed. It is going to be unique spoken word, I bet, and it is something that will take time and money to refine. Could it be tested on AM? Maybe, but there would have to be a sea-change in thinking among radio brass and advertisers. But the guy who posted that his Gen-Z neighbors were not allergic to listening to AM suggests to me WITH proper marketing (something radio knows how to do), an experiment that emphasizes the uniqueness of the program and the additional availability on a telephone App is something that the next generation might bite on. It will cost money, but doing nothing will be eventually also prove to be expensive.
 


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