LinoNYC said:
Amid all the gloating over what is probably a temporary setback which BTW affects only night operation on one select group of stations there seems to be a mass denial over what is actually happening to AM radio in the USA and most other countries for that matter...All of the Am's have looming demographic problems.
No one's denying that AM stations in general have severe and increasing demographic problems. No one can reasonably expect that a medium whose average user is over 50, and which is adding precious few users in the lower age brackets, is going to survive for very long. However, the solution is NOT to make those stations harder to receive and subject them to more interference.
On an engineering remailer I subscribe to, it was posted that on Monday night (before Citadel engineering's directive came down), WJR had their HD off and WABC had theirs on...and there were multiple reports of interference
within WJR's nighttime interference-free contour from WABC's HD carriers. Reports like this are, unfortunately, the whole ball game. Reduce the digital carrier levels to the point where they won't spill into first adjacents, and you kill whatever chance you had of obtaining even marginal coverage within your own NIF contour.
But, here we are, having a techincal discussion about all of this. The average listener won't care about the engineering aspects. All he'll know is that there's a strange and annoying noise in what used to be a reasonably clear signal. He may or may not complain to the station, but if it goes on for too long he'll be gone. Further erosion of AM's core demo is also not what it needs right now.
