Ok. Great. It was about a dollar minutes ago, so I am glad to catch you during the sale. Let's keep AM radio forever. Let the environmental people worry about the waste of electricity sending out a signal few want. I give up. If you have time please review all the splendid programming that I am missing. Perhaps if it is as good in reality as it is in your imagination, I will invest the penny to put AM in my gas powered vehicle.
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Saving AM Radio
- Thread starter BruceB
- Start date
The only programming mandate is that AM radio must make its signal available to government emergency officials if they need it.
Otherwise it's freedom of speech.
Well I'm sure the government giving emergency information over all those staticky signals will be even more enticing to listen too than whatever is on now in the background of the noise and interference.. Will the government call potential listeners to tell them that emergency information will be on the AM band or will we be left to find it ourselves assuming every FM full power and translator, every TV, every phone, and every computer in the world fails. Because unless every FM, full power and translator, every TV, every phone, and every computer in the world fails, only 12 people will be lookin for the magic government cures on AM. So once again I throw it to the environmental types...shouldn't it be turned off and the electricity saved? AM radio in today's environment is 99 percent useless. You can love it. You can force everyone to have it in every car, you can talk about it's magical powers in the event of that future emergency, but you as a broadcaster know that it will be useless. Government response from a remote location will have as little information as the $14 dollar an hour local host, assuming you can find someone to sit at the station during an emergency. I'm going back into the bunker now.
Excellent. You work for one of the few that is getting a signal out over the static. Congratulations.
Once again, this has nothing to do with listening. It is a manufacturer mandate for the car companies. They will be informed.
Listeners have freedom of choice to listen to whatever they want.
I've DX'd your AM station, high up on the staticky AM band, here in Austin TX on my Grundig Yachtboy, several times at night.
Visited your station's webpage.
It's great local radio and practices/programs even "big city stations" (which your community neighbors) should also do.
Years ago, while visiting my late father's and mother's home in my hometown, as they hadn't awakened, I turned on the radio boombox next to the bed in the guestroom. It was tuned into the local full-service AM, KVGB-1590.
The morning show was full of local news, info, school meals info, sports teams, birthdays, etc., along with state and national news, sports, farm and ag info, reports on the oil and gas economy. Basically, it was info you'd see in the local daily newspaper.
Was so impressed with that and wished some stations in the big markets I've lived in could do something similar.
Not the minutia of a local school lunch menus, of course, but something -- instead of politics and celeb news -- that draws the community toward the station and its hosts.
Once again, it's not just the cost of adding AM to the vehicle, it's what's involved in making it usable. That means surpressing interface and also dealing with customers who complain about the lousy performance, although those numbers are no doubt declining.
That's why it's a manufacturer mandate. They're responsible for the products they sell. As far as audio is concerned, we have another thread about that.
Please, this is a 100% political comment and not about radio or TV.
While I question some of the stats, Nielsen shows that over 30% of all persons hear AM each week, and the average across all markets is about 10% of actual listening. That is not "nobody".
The biggest issue is that most markets have outgrown all or all but one or two of their AMs. The disadvantage most such stations have today is that there are a dozen or more full coverage commercial FMs in the larger markets, while there are few if any well-covering AM stations.
There is plenty of news, talk and spots programming available, some of it good, so of it polarizing, but it is there. And if you are Hispanic in smaller markets or speak one of the many Asian languages or even Kreyol in Florida, Farsi in LA or Russian in NYC, you are going to like AM. And there is a large percentage of Americans who still believe in God and enjoy "preaching and teaching" or gospel music.
AM may not be for you, but for many it is valuable and even a lifeline.
It's a band that, in general, has gained a "rep" for hosting angry white men (mostly), dollar-a-holler preachers and foreign language broadcasts (nothing wrong with the latter).
I recall how city and business leaders in Kansas City would cringe when Rush Limbaugh, before he went national, also had a "rep," and not a good one, which they felt reflected poorly on the city.
Art Bell warned us "all politics, all the time" radio wasn't going to cut it.
I think corporate radio owners who hitched their wagons to this narrow and hyper-partisan "my way or the highway" type of programming -- to the near exclusion of any other kind of shows that might appeal to "moderates" or non-conservative Repubs. (Repubs. are in no way are a majority of Americans) -- deserve their fate of declining ratings. They own the rep the crummy and intellectually indefensible band possesses.
Am not worried about the obsolete band's demise. Like a lot of problems with radio, AM's death was self-inflicted.
I recall how city and business leaders in Kansas City would cringe when Rush Limbaugh, before he went national, also had a "rep," and not a good one, which they felt reflected poorly on the city.
Art Bell warned us "all politics, all the time" radio wasn't going to cut it.
I think corporate radio owners who hitched their wagons to this narrow and hyper-partisan "my way or the highway" type of programming -- to the near exclusion of any other kind of shows that might appeal to "moderates" or non-conservative Repubs. (Repubs. are in no way are a majority of Americans) -- deserve their fate of declining ratings. They own the rep the crummy and intellectually indefensible band possesses.
Am not worried about the obsolete band's demise. Like a lot of problems with radio, AM's death was self-inflicted.
Agreed that there are some niche programming. Yet in many cases especially with the group owners they hold on to AM stations for reasons I don't understand, perhaps to eliminate perspective competitor from owning it. Smaller markets where the group owners swooped in have little to no effort put in to the AM. If group ownership was restricted to 12, as it was in the past, local owners would have provided real competition and choice. Yes, programming is expensive and a number of the AMs would have bellied up, but the ones that survived would be much stronger than the mess we have today. Even if we turned off all the noise producing appliances, the owners are not taking care of transmission and ground systems and the signals make listening painful to hear even quality programming over the nosie. Then came the translators. Whu don't we have legislation to remove the feeder stations and allow the translators to become the host station? I don't dislike AM. I dislike what it has become. It has no real future and to keep it on life support when there are so many alternatives seems like a waste to me. There are no formats or communities which will go unserved, either through FM or another source if AM vanished, or was reduced in number so the survivors could have a power level that makes them listenable more than five miles for the tower. The mere number of stations may be the reason they are neglected. In my area, WWLE is on some days and off other days. It's become an amusement to tune in and see if it's there. The translator is barely audible four miles from the tower. The station is a daytime, but I regularly hear the translator on the air overnight (when I drive by the tower site) broadcasting a dead carrier. Even a quarter mile from the site the carrier gets interference from WDST. The lack of attention to AM by the operators is evident just about everywhere. The groups that you mention who will like AM for niche programming do and will, and if there were no AM they would find those programs elsewhere.
If group ownership was restricted to 12, radio as we know it would have died 20 years ago. Local owners could see their market share was shrinking in the late 80s. That's why the heritage owners like NBC and GE sold out then. The reason radio was able to do what it did in the 60s and 70s was because it had no competition. There best place for music was the radio. The minute radio had competition from international streaming services like Spotify, the listeners started to go away. What was the competition they provided? The ability for music lovers to hear their favorite songs without interruption. No commercials, and no announcers. That's what's hurting broadcast radio now. Broadcast radio can't do that. The local transmitter thing is way more expensive that a national service on the internet. But when you have a local emergency, like a plane crash or wildfires, there's nothing like local radio. That's why radio needs to be in the car along with all of the other options.
Exactly. The fires in LA proved that, once again, radio is often the last thing remaining when the disaster knocks everything else offline (power, internet, POTS lines (where customers still use them) and cell phone facilities are almost always compromised significantly, and over the past decade (whew!), I've seen this every time there is a wildfire disaster, even relatively minor ones if it hits in the wrong place at the wrong time). LA got especially lucky, as not every place are their good stations like KNX and KFI that still have at least some live and local reporting and the resources to maintain it.
That said, it's unfortunate that the quality of most non-emergency AM programming has deteriorated so badly, so it does seem like (and, oftentimes, is) a waste of resources to keep AM stumbling around like some sort of undead zombie. However, there are many places where Traveler's Info Stations and other small, local or regional stations are still on AM (there are a handful on FM TISes I think, and many commercial AMs have translators), and they still provide valuable service to their respective communities. But what good are they if nobody can hear them? That's the point of this bill, at least from the Democrat's perspectives, with the recognition that most listening is in cars. That the far right talkers get to keep their relatively small, but devoted audience is merely a beneficial side effect.
If anything, they should amend it to include FM too, with Tesla's recent act of sabotage (disabling, presumably permanently, the FM and satellite radios in their cars' infotainment systems).
c
The poster said, "... hopefully FEMA would keep the cell towers charged." I merely offered a statement of fact to correct a misunderstanding. It was not intended as political.
It's not FEMA's responsibility to do that (it's up to the wireless companies to maintain their systems and keep their backups, if any, functional).
c
It competed against the other independently owned stations for advertising dollars. I'm not saying it could be sustained forever, but I am saying it would not have quickly devolved into the lifeless automated jukebox, nationally syndicated talk about nothing and news at 2pm, that was recorded by the group newsroom at 10am. The huge price paid by the Cheap Channels of the time caused cost cutting that devalued the product. The local guys may not have hung on forever, but I don't see it getting as bad as it got.
I would state that people who wanted just music, minus 20 minutes of commercials would have found their old 8 tracks or something. There was a local entertainment value to even the music stations at one time. You need more than music to hold them because, as I've said before, if you listen to a jukebox that provides nothing more than 40 minutes of tunes, and 20 minutes of commercials, you're doing it wrong. I applauded those smart enough to go to Spotify.
Then they should turn it off or find a different programming element to make people want to listen to them for the music and the entertainment value. You're telling me that people want something else and radio can't provide it, but people should still listen to radio because, um, ah, well, it's radio.
A couple of things. First, there is NOBODY at the local station to cover the local emergency. (or the local newspaper if it is Gannet) I might also suggest that if you spend 14 percent of your day in the car and 86 percent elsewhere, the government might serve you better by forcing you to acquire and carry with you a radio, rather than legislate one be built into your car. Of course I think the government should back out of the issue and let you decided if you want to carry a radio or buy a car for it's super sounds system with optional AM radio.
Why would you care if AM is mandated in cars? No one is, or would be forcing you to use it, any more than they're forcing you to use the FM radio in the soundsystem or any of the other apps. I don't have a new car but I have absolutely no use for Bluetooth or car systems that can spy on you. But if you buy a new car, that's what you get -- apps that many of us don't need, but they're packaged in there anyway. So if the law passes, deal with it.
Agreed that cellphones can work in emergencies, true -- at least until their towers and installations light up like fireworks and burn down like they did in LA earlier this month. Satellite radio is OK except lousy in local emergencies and it's expensive. No system of information dissemination is 100% error proof, AM, FM, Cell system, or otherwise.
That's likely a big reason.
They keep the AMs going on automation. And, as you stated, provide lifeless, dull programming.