Aging talk hosts, listeners; AM dying

[DanStrassberg]

Is there an answer to this epidemic of man made noise?

In theory, yes. In practice, no. The answer would be to enforce the limitations on spurious radiation from all of the consumer electronic devices in the hands of the public as well as some devices that are not in the hands of the public (traffic lights are a frequently mentioned example). The problem is that the cost of such an enforcement program is believed to be so great that, economically, the program would be completely out of the question. Since I know of no attempt to actually try enforcing the regulations, there appears to be no hard evidence of the cost of enforcement. Without evidence, the cost may be greatly overstated, but who knows?

 

[thirdendorsed]

AM has been slowly dying for close to 45 years - almost half of its 92 years of existence

go back up and read this posting again, it is a very well stated review of the history of AM radio that deals with reality, rather than personalities as some self-styled historians seem to prefer.

I would add only that at the local level, the demise of AM and the rise of FM was influence by demographic changes. The two-car family meant traveling more to shop. Downtowns became less attractive shopping destinations. The guy who had the local Am station made his money on his signal reaching a small geographic area and getting them into the downtown stores.

But mobility gave rise to regional shopping centers. The guy with the AM with hyper-local programming found that the FM he applied for as a lark could be turned into a regional music station with less emphasis on the intensely local approach that he needed on his AM to drive audiences to the downtown merchants. FM afterthoughts in Lowell, Lawrence, Framingham, Waltham, Haverhill, Manchester, Woonsocket and other New England cities became regional, not local. As the shoppers migrated from downtowns to the malls, they began to prosper with national advertising dollars.

The decline of local AM radio and the decline of downtown in New England cities is inexorably tied