A new station for Air America radio

[Varulven]

What is the possibility of Air America showing up on the expanded band of AM radio?
Is the FCC granting licenses on the expanded band?

I'm listening to Ed Schultz on the internet

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.557.html

RADIO WORLD: RW Opinion: Rethinking AM’s future
When the FM band moved in 1945 from 42–49 MHz to its 88–108 home, there was plenty of spectrum and public interest to justify creating an expanded new radio band. The idea of noise-free, high-fidelity radio held great promise for adding many stations and formats to better serve consumers. It took a while, but the mission was accomplished.

These conditions hardly exist today. The marketplace is heavy with hi-fi audio entertainment and information delivery systems. FM, satellite, iPods, MP3 players and the Internet have stolen much of AM radio’s potential audience. There is no public demand for another radio band to be created to “save” AM and added to the busy array of choices. Only AM stations with limited coverage areas that have lost audience would have any interest in advancing such a proposal.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

What is the possibility of Air America showing up on the expanded band of AM radio?
Is the FCC granting licenses on the expanded band?

I don't know the present status of that. There has never been a legitimate station on the expanded AM band in the Boston area except for the Logan Airport TIC at 1650, and maybe the old Allston-Brighton Free Radio when at first it briefly operated within Part 15 specifications before boosting power. There continues to be many ethnic pirates in that band, most if not all of which are running above Part 15 limits.

Legitimate expanded AM band stations that you may hear skipping up here at night include ethnics WWRU 1660 and WTTM 1680 in New Jersey, and satellite sports/talk WPTX 1690 in Maryland.

The other question is, who could afford to build an entire new station for Air America here, and could it possibly be viable?

 

[ciao99]

Liberal talk lives.....on WILD AM. You can hear Michael Eric Dyson and Al Sharpton's Keeping it Real.

 

[Neggy]

ya you can hear them right up until they shut down at sunset, then it's WBAL Baltimore loud and clear.

 

[ciao99]

Yes, we know that! Classic soul fans in Boston have been painfully aware of the limitations of WILD-AM's signal for decades. Now the liberal talk fans can feel our pain.....welcome to my world bro!

 

[raccoonradio]

It will be interesting to see what becomes of prog. talk in Boston--will some of these shows (one or two at most) pop up on a WRKO or a WTKK; will a station dare to switch to AAR/prog talk, or can a station be bought
(can a junior Senator and his beloved ketchup heiress bride pony up some dough for the cause?) There was an effort (yahoo group, etc.) started when Rumba took over.

The corporate owners in town: will they bite? Entercom, Greater Media, CBS, Salem (oh, not exactly compatible
with Salem's politics/religion: could you picture WEZE Prog Talk 590? 950 or 1150? naah...) Would CC consider
putting it back on 1430 once 1200 boosts its power?
Or could an effort be made to buy daytimer WILD or WWZN (fulltime but has trouble in certain areas)...Boston area also has some smaller stations where some shows or even the whole libtalk network could air, but would
it work?)

And while Clear/Cheap Channel is being lambasted now for dumping the format, I'd wonder if AAR Boston would have existed at all had it not been for them. Yes, low/no promotion, weak signals at night, no local hosts,
but it did get on for just over 2 years. Would it have aired had it not been for CC? (And yes, maybe they
wanted to shoo away the idea of Dems voting to bring back the Fairness Doctrine...)

btw just put on the WABC stream out of curiosity--DePetro is to be filling in for Gambling.

 

[raccoonradio]

for some reason WABC's stream is 5 minutes behind real time? 11:06 am heard at 11:11...DePetro is talking about James Brown. (Rumors have it he'll wind up at WHJJ--maybe 9-noon?12-3?)