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AM future

H

hypwr

An article in the latest "Radio Guide" ponders whether AM radio will survive. The author suggests that AM should convert to full-channel digital ala TV. It may work. However, most everyone watches TV and therefore went along with the switchover. I fear that most listeners would say screw it, I'm not buying a new radio when I have other sources such as FM, Ipod, streaming, etc.

Any thoughts on this?

Then there's the problem with digital IBOC crap not working well at night on AM.
 
Absolutely, it's dead in the water. The only thing that will save AM at this point is to get it out of its current spectrum.

Anything changing the modulation scheme -- full-digital IBOC, DRM, analog NBFM, analog SSBSC, whatever -- will leave stations stuck with greatly reduced nighttime coverage, either due to the need to greatly reduce power to avoid interfering with other stations -- or due to interference from other stations, when stations refuse to reduce power at night... Sure, with digital you won't have noisy, interference-laden nighttime signals -- you'll have no signals at all. At my location 30 miles outside Nashville, if everything AM converted to digital modulation, at night I'd be able to listen to WSM. The rest of the AM dial would be completely empty.

Any change that forces listeners to buy new radios to continue listening to AM will only speed the failure of the service. As you suggest, quite simply, nobody is going to spend $$ just to get AM.
 
Since it is becoming less commercially viable by the day, it seems the ideal place to satisfy all
of the pent-up demand that is allegedly out there for community and micro-broadcasting.

It would all have to be at fairly low power and non-directional to keep operator costs down.
A giant graveyard if you will. Probably still fewer interference problems than they're having with
IBOC though.
 
AM to me will be around for many decades, but the strong "ownerships" will survive. I will miss the small-owner station formats. And just like the early days of FM when a sales person sold commercials for the AM you got FM as an added bonus or incentive, that's whats going to happen now just doing a role reversal. take a look at streaming audio, they want you to believe its the "next best thing" well it isn't its almost stagnant in growth
18 services in the U.S., including Pandora, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Napster, Slacker and iHeartRadio. The active reach (a metric Nielsen did not define) of all 18 services was 10.2% in April 2011, unchanged since November 2010, Spotifi is not included in this sample. I don't see a big jump with that either

AM can survive (thanks Gloria Gaynor) and no not changing its spectrum location, look at it this way, you can crap in one bowl and move it to a dinner plate with all the garnishments sure it looks better but what you still have is a plate full of crap.
What AM needs is content and yes we need to go back to the days of the power-jocks where you listened not to the music but what the "talent" was going to do. Music you can get anywhere I have a USB thumb-drive in my car that has 16k songs, lets see a station with 400 songs in rotation beat that.

I think it would be great to listen to a powerful AM station that's jock driven, add some music, and lets relax the NRSC rules to give AM more audio bandwidth, stereo...no, HD.....no, a translator...yeah lol....NO. Let AM be its own domain and be the master of it as well
 
hypwr said:
What would LFA do to ruin it this time?
Click to expand...

You and I both know that L.F.A, was the base-coat over 20 years ago that covered the end of unique AM locally driven radio on a major AM power house, and Atlantic Star Communications or CapStar loved his style and adopted it and made it their own and made it a system wide rule, nothing will ever change my mind on this

When CapStar gave LFA total control when Osbourne sold it to "make them money any way he can" and when CS took over WKWK AM/FM to leave the AM call letters be I literally begged LFA if he has to change the format of WKWK-AM fine, but leave the call letters alone because those calls had a strong heritage. he looked at me and laughed told me to grow up

Hmmmmm, What L.F.A would do today if there was a resurgence in AM?.....

1) it would be populated with Brother Stair and the Overcomer Orchestra's Variety Hour

or

2) He would have FC throw a cart at the clock on the wall thinking that would stop the hands of time
 
And don't forget LFA took WWVA apart piece by piece. It took him a few years but he buried it, then come to think of it maybe it buried him. Btw FC is now a car salesman....appropriate no?
 
LFA Just didn't bury WWVA, He buried a whole town in the name of a yearly bonus
I thought FC or FK I think he spelt my last name with a K was working for Cabelia's after leaving Wal-Mart?
 
Your're right it was FK but you are a little behind.... Cabelas was two jobs back, he a cemetery monument selling job (I'm not kidding) after Cabelas and now at Jim Robinson Ford.
 
hypwr said:
An article in the latest "Radio Guide" ponders whether AM radio will survive. The author suggests that AM should convert to full-channel digital ala TV. It may work. However, most everyone watches TV and therefore went along with the switchover. I fear that most listeners would say screw it, I'm not buying a new radio when I have other sources such as FM, Ipod, streaming, etc.

Any thoughts on this?

Then there's the problem with digital IBOC crap not working well at night on AM.
Click to expand...

I sure as heck hope not. I restored a beautiful 1930s wood table top set a few years ago. I would hate for it to become non-functional, especially after all of the trouble I spending finding the right tubes for it.
 
Never fear. If AM dies, I will construct an FM to AM converter box for you at no charge. You can then pick up your fav FMs and tune your old radio to a conelrad frequency and listen to all the stations in your area.

By the way, does your set have a "magic eye" tube for tuning? What brand is it...Philco, Atwater Kent, etc.?
 
>>Any change that forces listeners to buy new radios to continue listening to AM will only speed the failure of the service. As you suggest, quite simply, nobody is going to spend $$ just to get AM.

Interesting fact from bostonradio.org's Boston radio timeline:
1949:
>>Although the economy in general and radio in particular are doing quite well, many FM stations are in the red with no end in sight. The relocation of the FM band rendered most of the existing receiver base obsolete, and with many new AM stations taking to the air, there is little incentive for consumers to purchase expensive new FM tuners. As a result, new FM stations nationwide—some even licensed to deep-pocketed owners—begin to go off the air. In Boston, WBMS-FM (104.1) is the first, after just two years of operation.

http://bostonradio.org/timeline/timeline-40s

Who would have thought then that eventually FM would become the dominant band, with
many AM stations switching to or simulcasting on FM to grab younger listeners.

>>Any change that forces listeners to buy new radios to continue listening to AM will only speed the failure of the service. As you suggest, quite simply, nobody is going to spend $$ just to get AM.

AM could well continue as analog broadcasting and you could have stuff like ethnic, pirate stations, religious, whatever, with most of the action taking place on FM. But will the time come
when manufacturers pretty much do FM only radios? (Or, AM goes all digital...?) I don't know if there are any car stereos
that don't offer AM...though mp3 players stick to FM only, generally. (And those portable
HD radios offer FM only but some AM stations show up as HD2s and HD3s, such as WBZ and
WXKS in Boston)
But if AM went all digital it could indeed make those old analog radios as inoperable as the
old non-digital TV sets without cable, sat., or a converter. Some might have to pay extra to
get a radio with AM as well as FM...? Who knows.

Remember FM converters for car radios...?
http://www.antiqueradio.com/images/Aug06-Listen-Fig1.jpg
 
And, of course, there was the infamous move of FM from the low band to the present band. That messed things up for many years. I remember when some radios offered both bands since some stations used both for a few years.
 
raccoonradio said:
>>Any change that forces listeners to buy new radios to continue listening to AM will only speed the failure of the service. As you suggest, quite simply, nobody is going to spend $$ just to get AM.

Interesting fact from bostonradio.org's Boston radio timeline:
1949:
>>Although the economy in general and radio in particular are doing quite well, many FM stations are in the red with no end in sight. The relocation of the FM band rendered most of the existing receiver base obsolete, and with many new AM stations taking to the air, there is little incentive for consumers to purchase expensive new FM tuners. As a result, new FM stations nationwide—some even licensed to deep-pocketed owners—begin to go off the air. In Boston, WBMS-FM (104.1) is the first, after just two years of operation.

http://bostonradio.org/timeline/timeline-40s

Who would have thought then that eventually FM would become the dominant band, with many AM stations switching to or simulcasting on FM to grab younger listeners.
Click to expand...

In 1949, television barely existed outside of a few cities, and comedy/drama programming still had a few years to go on AM. FM had little real programming - Classical music & jazz can't sustain several stations in a given city. Receiver technology (still tubes) was expensive as well, until transistors were developed that could work at VHF and above.

FM didn't take off until (1) stereo was authorized in 1961, (2) the receivers got cheaper and better (solid-state), and (3) the first rock stations appeared, both in the late 1960s. But when it did, it was the beginning of the end for AM. The noise problems go back decades, between static, power-line noise, fluorescent lighting, and TV horizontal sweep circuits beginning in the 1940s. FM doesn't have that problem. Add computer noise, even more fluorescent lighting (CFLs), crappy receivers, and the like, and you can kiss AM goodbye.

Going 100% digital won't work. Complex phase modulation schemes won't work well where the ionosphere is involved. Besides, receivers don't exist and who'd buy them? Even moving the AM spectrum to VHF like the late-1930s Apex stations were - say (for the sake of argument) to 54-60 MHz, but with 20 or 40 kHz spacing between stations - is a non-starter. Receivers would be cheap to manufacture, but who'd buy them?
 
KeithE4 said:
FM didn't take off until (1) stereo was authorized in 1961, (2) the receivers got cheaper and better (solid-state)?
Click to expand...

I used to have one of the early FM tube receivers from the 1940's. It had some literature with it that led me to
believe it had been made not long after the shift into the modern FM band. Late 40's perhaps. Keeping it tuned
on the station you wanted was a real adventure. It drifted like a sonfoagun.
 
hypwr said:
Never fear. If AM dies, I will construct an FM to AM converter box for you at no charge. You can then pick up your fav FMs and tune your old radio to a conelrad frequency and listen to all the stations in your area.

By the way, does your set have a "magic eye" tube for tuning? What brand is it...Philco, Atwater Kent, etc.?
Click to expand...

It's an RCA/Victor. No magic eye, just a light above the dial. I never heard of a magic eye, had to look it up. Sounds neat.
 
hypwr said:
Never fear. If AM dies, I will construct an FM to AM converter box for you at no charge. You can then pick up your fav FMs and tune your old radio to a conelrad frequency and listen to all the stations in your area.

By the way, does your set have a "magic eye" tube for tuning? What brand is it...Philco, Atwater Kent, etc.?
Click to expand...

ahh....bringing back memories of the old FM Converter. Installed one in my '71 Pontiac at a precise
location and angle that would kneecap me most of the time when I went for the gas pedal.

Learning a lesson from this my buddy never installed one on the dash of his Monte Carlo. He just
laid it on the floor with about 4 ft. of cable so that we could all pass it around the passenger cabin and
fight over what station to listen to.
 
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