True is small low revenue markets. But the owner of KABC in LA has been trying for years to sell it, and nobody wants to pay any kind of decent price for it.
Palm Springs is a market with horribly low revenue and too many stations. There is not a single AM that covers the whole market, either. So AMs are only of value to allow for getting a translator.
I had a couple of very successful stations in the mid and later 60's and there is nothing about them that I would want to repeat today.
What's the "compelling content" that's going to get people buying AM radios to hear? What if sports betting is it?
News programming, talk programming, sports. It sports betting content is compelling, then more power to them. At least it kept the AM band around.
Don't forget coverage. In most larger markets, only one or two AMs have full day and night coverage. In some, like Phoenix, there are no stations that cover it all. In total, there are about 180 AMs in the top 100 markets that cover at least 80% of the market day and night.
AM is limited to a 10 kHz bandwidth, and subject to noise. AMs sound deficient if not terrible compared to FM and most streams.
That’s a fair point, however, sometimes the opposite is true. In some markets, there are areas where FM sounds terrible due to terrain issues. From my personal experience, AM has always worked fine and I’ve never thought twice about listening to AM.
That would certainly help, but they still lag behind KIRO in putting together compelling talk content.
I stand corrected. I didn't realize how effecient modern medium wave transmitters are. e.g. specs say Nautel MW50 uses 55kw unmodulated, 85kw fully modulated, so 55 * 24 * 30 = 39600 * price which indeed would be in the $8000 range.
Every week or so a couple of those little stations turn in their license.
I have very bad luck listening to AM where I live (SF Mission/Bernal area). There is so much RF noise, from everything from solar inverters to electric cars to computers. I have heard the reason Teslas don't have AM is because it was too hard to keep the noise from the car systems out (and that doesn't surprise me at all).
But it was a heritage AM with heritage calls. Just as KTAR in PHX moved talk to FM and does sports on 620 AM.
Many can probably make more selling their real estate and scrapping the sticks.
Since my stereo fried a couple years ago all my music listening is either a couple HD2s or YouTube, mostly YouTube. You just search for the song or piece of music you want to hear, and bring it up. The sound on most of the songs I've heard is superb. I don't have YT collate something for me, I seek it out and play it. Just as I would do with my CDs. Look for it, pull it out, put it in the player.... The online equivalent. Fairly simple.
It is true, the noise floor is a problem for AM. For this reason, I don’t see a very bright future at all for many AM stations. I think the graveyard band needs to close up shop at this point. Usually the big signals (clear channel, or other strong signals) can overcome much of the interference.
If we’re also considering international examples, some of the multicultural stations that have launched on the AM band have also been a success. A signal on 600 in Vancouver is a good example.
Yes. You can find everything musical on YT from symphonies to pop to classic rock to rap to blues, even old school blues from Robert Johnson. You can find live shows from Woodstock 1969 to Woodstock '94 and '99 to Wacken (rock) to Wembley to TV clips of the Beatles and everything else in between. A lot of it in stereo, or as higher quality mono than you probably heard on the TV speaker when you were growing up.
It's an AM-FM simulcast. 97.3. Same thing that keeps KCBS and KNBR in San Francisco looking solid.
