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1260 Going Country Gold

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DavidEduardo said:
Elsewhere, AM is disappearing. In Quito, Ecuador there were 40 AM stations when I put my first on one the air in 1964. Now, there are about 12 that are still on the air regularly, and half of those are cultural or religious. San Salvador had about 30 AM stations, and now there are around 10, all either government or religious.

Mexico's legislative body declared that AM was dead and proceeded to allow for lesser second adjacent channel FM separation so that about 80% of existing AMs could move to FM. In a couple of Mexican states, all the existing AMs moved to FM (some AM channels were relicensed, particularly to cultural groups or to rural locations where one of the hundred or so indigenous languages and dialects is spoken).
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What do you mean by cultural in the examples above? I understand religious groups seeking every venue to reach people no matter how few. But which cultural groups would find AM of interest to them still?
Even Cuba has moved most listening to FM, but they keep the nearly 200 AMs on the air to block foreign stations from being heard.
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How effective are they at that? Assuming there were no jamming, are any of the southern or especially Floridian AMs physically able to get their signals that far across the water into Cuba during the daytime, or do Cubans only hear us via skywave after sunset?
While the Hispanic Spanish dominant audience in each market is generally of one single region with a similar dialect, Asians come from many nations, each with one or more languages. That makes it hard to build a big enough audience to justify a full FM signal. Still, when one group is concentrated in a smaller area, we see Class A FMs serving them, such as the Vietnamese language station in Santa Ana, CA.
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There's another one near me on 104.7 in Walnut, California. But I have never been sure what's going on with it. Half the time I pass by their frequency, they are broadcasting dead air -- including right now.

Thanks for the run-down on the AM situation down south.
 
yeoldeschool said:
What do you mean by cultural in the examples above? I understand religious groups seeking every venue to reach people no matter how few. But which cultural groups would find AM of interest to them still?
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I meant owners that are non-profit and non-government owned that are dedicated to serving specific groups with special, unique or identifying cultures, such as those who speak the roughly 120 indigenous languages in Mexico or even Spanish speakers of that heritage who preserve the cultures of those indigenous groups. Mexico has severe limitations on religious stations, so we don't have the profusion of that kind of non-profit operation that we see in the U.S., but they do have many serving ethnocultural "special interest" groups.

Many of those groups are in more isolated highly rural and often distant or mountainous regions of Mexico, where AM is able to reach those communities, often in river valleys or "desert oasis" settings where terrain or distance prevents FM from covering wide areas.
yeoldeschool said:
How effective are they at that? Assuming there were no jamming, are any of the southern or especially Floridian AMs physically able to get their signals that far across the water into Cuba during the daytime, or do Cubans only hear us via skywave after sunset?
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Cuba jams and has jammed stations it found offensive. 1140 in Miami was the first to be jammed extensively, along with Radio Swan / Radio Americas 1165 which was on Swan Island, a joint Honduran / US island. Then, as they appeared, Radio Martí, 710 in Miami and a number of the U.S. clear channel. stations the VOA rented overnight time on in the 60's to broadcast to Cuba.

If not jammed by local signals in Cuba (which is 800 miles wide) a number of Miami stations are totally listenable in the north coast region of central Cuba, including La Habana. Those range from 560, 610, 670, 710, 790 and others in Miami even to ones like 620 and 970 from the Tampa Bay market. And little WKWF on 1600 used to be heard in La Habana before Castro came to power.
 
michael hagerty said:
I think we're dealing with a typo. David was referring to Argentina. Probably should have read "South America" instead of "Europe".
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I don't really think that it's a typo. David has called Argentina "the southernmost European nation" multiple times, for example to explain the success of a rock radio format in the country. But if AM radio is dead anywhere, it's in Europe.
 
DavidEduardo said:
The only country in all Latin America where AM is still significantly strong is Argentina [...].
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Brazil is another Latin American country that still has a lot of AM stations. Recently, I listened through a KiwiSDR that is based in the state of São Paulo, and the amount of nighttime signal activity on the AM spectrum is similar to what we hear in the United States.
 
yeoldeschool said:
Edit: around the time of his popularization, many considered Brooks to be a line of demarcation between "real" and "modern" country. There are still threads about this everywhere, if anyone is curious why I used his name above as some sort of classifier.
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I would semi-agree with that statement. For me, the 90s were Classic Country. I detected a big shift in country music styles at the beginning of that decade, when 80s rock/pop suddenly became mostly grunge/hip-hop. This really drove me (and probably others) into the arms of a new generation of country artists like Garth, Susy Boguss, Kathy Mattea, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Clint Black and Shania Twain. They had much less of the twangy sound, guitar riffs usually heard in rock bands, and lyrics that explored complex issues instead of just glorifying drinking, guns and pickup trucks.
 
Signal Geek said:
I would semi-agree with that statement. For me, the 90s were Classic Country. I detected a big shift in country music styles at the beginning of that decade, when 80s rock/pop suddenly became mostly grunge/hip-hop. This really drove me (and probably others) into the arms of a new generation of country artists like Garth, Susy Boguss, Kathy Mattea, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Clint Black and Shania Twain. They had much less of the twangy sound, guitar riffs usually heard in rock bands, and lyrics that explored complex issues
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That's actually a really great observation. I recall people in high school back then retreating away from the then-popular rock and pop stations when that sea change began hitting. Some of them actually got into classic rock. A corresponding sudden influx of rock and pop music-minded people into not only country listenership, but musicianship, could in deed have contributed to that shift in its sound.

I never went over to the country side. I ended up ditching KROQ (new wave/rock) and KPWR (dance/pop/crossover) for the "Arrow" classic rock format, which began appearing around the country in about 1993. My parents at the time only did '50s and '60s oldies, and never anything from the '70s. So for me, everything Arrow played was brand new, and it became my favored genre. In a way, the zoomers listening to "classic hits" today, "because that's when all the good music was made," are just repeating the same maneuver some of the people of my generation did at that time.
instead of just glorifying drinking, guns and pickup trucks.
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And divorce. And old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
 
michael hagerty said:
I think we're dealing with a typo. David was referring to Argentina. Probably should have read "South America" instead of "Europe".
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My reference was to the fact that culturally and economically, Argentina is much more like Europe than any part of Latin America. Even the language is unique.
 
Marcos_C said:
Brazil is another Latin American country that still has a lot of AM stations. Recently, I listened through a KiwiSDR that is based in the state of São Paulo, and the amount of nighttime signal activity on the AM spectrum is similar to what we hear in the United States.
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But AM is rather rapidly dying there, with loads of the former AMs being put on the Brazilian extended FM band that is much like the Japanese band.
 
michael hagerty said:
@DavidEduardo ?
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True about AM in Europe. But my reference to Argentina is intended to point out that it does not behave like Latin America in most things, including radio. But Argentina, probably to prevent the flight of currency, did not adopt DAB. Doing so would have meant importing hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese radios, which they did not want.

Interestingly, in Argentina there are two separate ratings reports: one is for AM and the other is for FM. Nearly all the talk is on AM, while the FMs are music based (but some have lots of format related talk). In Buenos Aires, there are no significant AMs playing music; there are a couple of high banc (1610-1700) stations in indigenous languages for Bolivian and Paraguayan immigrants, though).
 
yeoldeschool said:
I ended up ditching KROQ (new wave/rock) and KPWR (dance/pop/crossover) for the "Arrow" classic rock format, which began appearing around the country in about 1993. My parents at the time only did '50s and '60s oldies, and never anything from the '70s. So for me, everything Arrow played was brand new, and it became my favored genre. In a way, the zoomers listening to "classic hits" today, "because that's when all the good music was made," are just repeating the same maneuver some of the people of my generation did at that time.
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That's probably the most likely explanation for the phenomenon that I've ever heard.
 
Signal Geek said:
I would semi-agree with that statement. For me, the 90s were Classic Country. I detected a big shift in country music styles at the beginning of that decade, when 80s rock/pop suddenly became mostly grunge/hip-hop. This really drove me (and probably others) into the arms of a new generation of country artists like Garth, Susy Boguss, Kathy Mattea, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Clint Black and Shania Twain. They had much less of the twangy sound, guitar riffs usually heard in rock bands, and lyrics that explored complex issues instead of just glorifying drinking, guns and pickup trucks.
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I went through a similar Country phase in the 1990s for many of the same reasons. The styles of music on stations I had normally listened to had changed and no longer appealed to me. Country seemed to be going through a vibrant renaissance, with a level of sophistication it had previously lacked.

I drifted away from Country in the late 90s as the advent of Music Choice and Internet streaming gave me a much greater variety of musical options.
 
I’m noticing that the stream identifies as KMozart 1 / KKGO-HD2 and the calls for the FM translator - and seems to be focused on short pieces and more brief moments. They aren’t streaming KMozart 2, but I’m guessing that feed features more long form / complete pieces. Not in market so can’t check HD.
 
Here is a "how far will Saul go"?" question:

What are the chances that Saul will take the AM "formerly known as KGIL" to a full all-digital HD service?
 
DavidEduardo said:
Here is a "how far will Saul go"?" question:

What are the chances that Saul will take the AM "formerly known as KGIL" to a full all-digital HD service?
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I don't think it would be outside his thought process, since he also has the 98.3 translator.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Here is a "how far will Saul go"?" question:

What are the chances that Saul will take the AM "formerly known as KGIL" to a full all-digital HD service?
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Well, that was kind of what he was hinting at when he flipped it from Oldies to Classical. I would think there's a better business case for Classical all-digital than Country Gold.
 
michael hagerty said:
Well, that was kind of what he was hinting at when he flipped it from Oldies to Classical. I would think there's a better business case for Classical all-digital than Country Gold.
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I dunno´. I want to hear the crowd noises in "Low Places" in digital stereo!
 
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