AM OR NOT AM

[Jay Walker]

Agree. This breed of person is dying off.

Since the late 1920s the only people interested in DX were elderly men and 13 year old boys, and fairly anti-social ones at that. That's it. Nobody else was interested. This is why radio stations, even those clear channel monsters like KGO and KNBR don't try to sell their out-of-market audience. It's not significant.

Speaking as a former anti-social 13 year old who has not MW Dx'd for years I'd like to point out some exceptions to your nighttime sales statement. Yes there were some stations who went out of their way to sell the Class A signal for out of market/state/region. KOMA, concert and record spots for the western US and north west plains states. KAAY with Beaker Street to all of the central US. WWL and the Charlie Douglas Road Gang. WBAP with your Midnight Cowboy Bill Mack. All before satellite syndication, and internet. These are a few of the easy ones. KSL, WHO, WSM and others do come to mind...

 

[radiocph]

Agree. This breed of person is dying off. I received Z100 on clear as day in Sacramento, CA last night... on my iPhone.

Being someone that used to DX, I get the nostalgia, it's just lost it's appeal to me.

Sometimes I'll play around with a radio (usually in the car) at night, to see what I can hear. I don't recall hearing much all that exotic lately, though.

However, internet radio just doesn't do it for me. It's fun to listen to programs sometimes, and most of the shortwave stations (that still exist) have migrated to Internet streaming now. But the challenge is gone.

DXing:Internet Radio::Going Fishing:ining at a fancy seafood restaurant

 

[TheBigA]

All before satellite syndication, and internet. These are a few of the easy ones. KSL, WHO, WSM and others do come to mind...

You may be right about then, but I don't think any of them do it now.

 

[semoochie]

In the 1970s, KGO had a 26 share at night in Portland! They even had Portland advertisers. That's 650 miles.

 

[davideduardo]

Since the late 1920s the only people interested in DX were elderly men and 13 year old boys, and fairly anti-social ones at that. That's it. Nobody else was interested. This is why radio stations, even those clear channel monsters like KGO and KNBR don't try to sell their out-of-market audience. It's not significant.

In sort of reverse order....

KGO and KNBR don't sell out of market audience because there is no one to buy it.

In the 20's and 30's and much of the 40's, there were few stations (around 800 on the air at the close of the 30's) and half the listeners in America were DXers.

Take Traverse City, MI. The market, in 1940, had no stations. In 1960, it had one with an FM simulcast. Today, the market has 42 stations. In the 40's, folks listened to WBBM and WGN and WJR and WLS... and WSM and WCCO and many others. In other words, everyone DXed. And if you lived in most of the counties surrounding Traverse City, you had no listenable night signal short of Detroit and Chicago.

Through the early 50's, stations advertised in Broadcasting and Sponsor and Radio Daily talking about mail pull from dozens of states and hundreds of counties. WLW was "the Nation's Station" well into the 40's, even after dropping power by 90%.

Somewhere in the 50's (and not the 20's) agencies started to buy local markets, following the TV model... since TV did not have added night skywave coverage.

And, also in the 50's, radio's prime time changed from nights to daytime due, again, to TV. The huge nighttime shows and network extravaganzas were swept away by video.

DXers, who listened to distant stations not just for entertainment but for the sport or challenge, were far too numerous to count well into the 60's. While hard core DXers with Hammulunds and Nationals and such were far fewer, nearly everyone got a thrill out of hearing a baseball game from St Louis or a barn dance from Wheeling... and many discovered it was fun to hear distant voices. Since the bands were relatively clear, logging a 250 watt graveyarder from California in Ohio was possible even in the 60's... and teens in Raton NM heard the latest songs from KOMA and those in Caribou, ME heard them on WKBW.

DXing severely declined going into the 70s because the channels were so congested and noise levels increased.

Oh, and I was an AM DXer... a 13 year old one... 2300 stations, 87 countries, all states and provinces... and not terribly anti-social; I edited my school paper, worked part time at a radio station, did record hops, ran on the track team and wrote poems for poetry magazines and called stations in Mexico to request songs. DXing opened my world... on April 15th, 1961 I played for the school current affairs club a recording of Radio Americas from Swan Island encouraging all of Cuba to join in the Bay of Pigs invasion and to free themselves from communism... a recording I had made the night before!

 

[crainbebo]

Yep, it's unfortunate for the congestion to happen. Look at the East Coast! Outside of the big 50kw clear channels (WCBS, WABC, KYW, etc.), the dial is so jammed up that every regional channel sounds like a messy, west coast graveyard channel. And those graveyard channels themselves! Even worse than out here in Western Washington. You're lucky to pull an ID out on the East Coast on 1400.

But I still enjoy the feeling of DXing-and not anti-social at all. I mean who listens to stations in UT and CO anymore in WA? Probably no one except for the "i (insert here)" listeners...

-crainbebo

 

[Goldilocks94941]

I still find DXing Am signals has a lot more to offer in the Eastern and Central US than on the West Coast. I just find there's scant little content of any interest on most of the stations, anymore, save maybe the traffic reports on WCBS while you're driving on the quiet scenic Blue Ridge Parkway.
I grew up listening to Larry Glick's maserful overnight, and later on, evening talk show on WBZ Boston, whose directional signal put a convincing signal into Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia. Minor fades from time to time with something in Spanish trying to eek in (a station with a jingle based on the "nah nah na nah nah" melody of snotty little kids). But the skywave would recover within a couple of minutes, and they would be Larry with the sounds of exotic Boston and his listeners from around town and around the country, who were also listening long distance.
Another purpose for clean AM skywave signals is for long distance night driving. Having to switch and search frequencies for the content you want every hour on a long distance drive is annoying, and distracting. Probably a factor in why truckers switch to Satellite radio.
I also think it was good to hear big city radio at night when you worked in a small market - just to hear what the "big guys" were like, and to inspire you to be a better broadcaster - and maybe borrow a few things you hear now and then, too.

 

[Jay Walker]

All before satellite syndication, and internet. These are a few of the easy ones. KSL, WHO, WSM and others do come to mind...

You may be right about then, but I don't think any of them do it now.

Agreed.
However I'll stand by my previous remarks for the previous era. I remember KOMA airing ads for concerts at "The National Guard Armory In Minot N.D" for third tier traveling rock bands in the day. The many Nashville record shops, "Cindy Lou's" etc on WLAC and many other southern US Class A's.

It would have taken years for me to discover Fog Hat or "Firesign Theatre" if not for KAAY's Beaker Street with Beaker Theatre. Clyde Clifford is still fondly remembered in the central US for exposing many to Album Rock on KAAY after midnight.

While I was not of the caliber of MW DXer like David, and many others I recognize from the DX portion of this forum, I in searching for entertainment on MW for something other than the "Monkees" did fall into the habit of that usage of radio.

My first real DX from Kansas was PJB "Trans World Radio From the island of Bonaire in the Lesser Antilles" lurking under XELO.
XELO soon to become the legendary XEROK "X-ROK 80 The Sun City Streaker" which also made a point selling that massive 150,000w night time signal well into the 70's.

But that was many years ago.

Yet I even now will still reach up and grab the knobs on one of the Hammerlunds, Nationals, or Kenwoods, scattered throughout the house and every now and again checkout what's around...

Jay Walker

 

[DavidKaye]

KGO and KNBR don't sell out of market audience because there is no one to buy it.

Bob Crane, of course, was the exception with his C Crane radios, but then again, I've seen his customers at trade shows. They're mostly retired folks, and not a lot of them. He's selling to people who want to hear AM stations, but even he has gone to doing national buys on hourly newscasts rather than clear channel buys.

In the 20's and 30's and much of the 40's, there were few stations (around 800 on the air at the close of the 30's) and half the listeners in America were DXers.

I'm finding it hard to believe there were that many DXers in the way we know DX today. Sure, there might be people in 20 states listening to the WLS Barn Dance or the WSM Grand Ole Opry, but by the 1940s there was network radio available in every major metro and in most 2nd tier towns as well.

True, people might have DXed for special programs, but I doubt that many people in SF specifically tried to get WBZ in Boston or WCCO in Minneapolis for their QSL cards.

Through the early 50's, stations advertised in Broadcasting and Sponsor and Radio Daily talking about mail pull from dozens of states and hundreds of counties. WLW was "the Nation's Station" well into the 40's, even after dropping power by 90%.

The ads in those trades were aimed at advertisers, but I don't think they represented true listening. Looking them over they talked about a particular station or group's reach and nothing about the programming. I'm just having my doubts that people in the 1940s listened to stations because they were distant; they listened because of specific programs. But DXers aren't like that. They don't care about the programs; they listen because of the distance.

And, also in the 50's, radio's prime time changed from nights to daytime due, again, to TV. The huge nighttime shows and network extravaganzas were swept away by video.

But that didn't sweep DX away, it swept away all radio listening. Within a matter of just 3 or 4 years, network radio audiences dropped like rocks, whether the SF listener had been listening to KFI or locally to KGO. The networks dropped the West Coast delays, substituted recorded programs for live ones, got rid of orchestras, everything to save money.

DXers, who listened to distant stations not just for entertainment but for the sport or challenge, were far too numerous to count well into the 60's. While hard core DXers with Hammulunds and Nationals and such were far fewer, nearly everyone got a thrill out of hearing a baseball game from St Louis or a barn dance from Wheeling... and many discovered it was fun to hear distant voices.

I think there's a difference in terminology here. I'm talking about DX as we talk about it today. Sure, we on the West Coast listened to Wolfman Jack on XERB and the thrill that he was coming from Mexico made it even more magical. But what caused people to listen to XERB in the first place? It wasn't because the station was in Mexico; it was because Wolfman was playing R&B tunes that people couldn't hear elsewhere. And Wolfman had a distinctive delivery.

 

[briancraig]

People in small towns and wherever local AM signals were hard to receive at night (like some suburban areas) listened to out of market stations regularly until the rise of FM in the late 70s.

WLS was the top 40 station at night for many places in the Midwest and South. By the 1970s there may have been no sales value in those listeners but they were there.

WLAC in Nashville was the R&B station at night for most Southern markets in the 1960s and all of their ads at night were geared to the out of town listeners.

 

[alok]

Agree. This breed of person is dying off.

No, DXing hasn't been a mainstream activity since the 1920s when radio was a hobby much the way cars are today. In the 1920s there were radio magazines that taught people how to wind coils and DX across the country. But as companies began to manufacture radios and they became cheaper the radio hobby pretty much became extinct.

Since the late 1920s the only people interested in DX were elderly men and 13 year old boys, and fairly anti-social ones at that. That's it. Nobody else was interested. This is why radio stations, even those clear channel monsters like KGO and KNBR don't try to sell their out-of-market audience. It's not significant.

David,David,David . . .

Do you have your Dr. Phil hat on ?

DXing is a hobby still and there are all sorts of people doing it ,they are not the people you say they are . . . do you have any other hobbies David beside hanging out here on radio-info.com ?
If you don't think DXing is still a fun hobby check out on the Internet the INTERNATIONAL RADIO CLUB OF AMERICA and the NATIONAL RADIO CLUB ,AM DXers at their best.
Nice people too.


Al

 

[TheBigA]

People in small towns and wherever local AM signals were hard to receive at night (like some suburban areas) listened to out of market stations regularly until the rise of FM in the late 70s.

Not by choice, but by regulation. In 1980, the FCC voted to eliminate the former "clear channel" rules on high powered AM stations. The move was to increase localization, so stations would focus on their city of license, rather than program (and advertise) to a wider geographic area. This was couple with an increase in the number of licenses for more radio stations in small towns, so residents had their own stations instead of listening to big city stations hundreds of miles away. Unfortunately the geometric increase in the number of stations diluted the audience size per station, and therefore the profitability of these radio stations. That's led to the current situation. Too many stations, too little money.

 

[davideduardo]

.
XELO soon to become the legendary XEROK "X-ROK 80 The Sun City Streaker" which also made a point selling that massive 150,000w night time signal well into the 70's. .

Ah, do I note another Bruce Miller Earle fan? ;D

 

[davideduardo]

I'm finding it hard to believe there were that many DXers in the way we know DX today. Sure, there might be people in 20 states listening to the WLS Barn Dance or the WSM Grand Ole Opry, but by the 1940s there was network radio available in every major metro and in most 2nd tier towns as well.

The early DX magazines like Radex (1925-1942) showed both the distance aspect and the "find a program aspect" and even featured stars from radio shows on the covers.

Most smaller markets had few stations. Look at Arizona in 1945... 9 stations in the entire state. For much of the population, it was necessary to seek out distant stations (and "DX" originated as a code abbreviation for "distance") to hear any variety. If you were in Prescott, you had to DX the Phoenix network affiliates for CBS and Mutual shows, and if you were in Sedona or Flagstaff or Kingman or Williams or Wilcox, you had no local stations at all.

If you were in the Palm Springs / Indio / Brawley / Blythe / Brawley / Victorville area, CBS, NBC and ABC listed LA stations as their primary affiliates. There were no local stations in 1945.

True, people might have DXed for special programs, but I doubt that many people in SF specifically tried to get WBZ in Boston or WCCO in Minneapolis for their QSL cards.

DXing was not about getting verifications. It was originally about hearing radio at all in much of the US and about having more than one or two choices in a great deal more of the country. Keep in mind that the move from a rural to an urban population majority did not really happen until well after W.W. II, so a majority of listeners had to DX to enjoy radio.

DXers who collected veries (the AM equivalent of shortwave QSL's) and counted states heard were a small faction of the DX community. Most DXers were simply avid seekers of program variety. Of course, in the top 20 or 30 markets, there was some degree of local choice, but it was far more limited.

And, as rock 'n roll developed, the first voices for such music were all in larger markets. Owners in smaller markets did not think the audience was big enough (and in most cases, smaller markets had no station or only one or two) for rock 'n roll. So the youth and young adults of smaller towns and cities had to DX KOMA or WLS or WABC or any of the other big Top 40 stations... which is why there were ads on KOMA for movie openings in Ruidoso NM and Jamestown, SD and shows in Lamar, CO and Scottsbluff, NE. Kids were DXers, and they knew how to find their music even if no station closer than 500 to 1000 miles away played it.

Through the early 50's, stations advertised in Broadcasting and Sponsor and Radio Daily talking about mail pull from dozens of states and hundreds of counties. WLW was "the Nation's Station" well into the 40's, even after dropping power by 90%.

The ads in those trades were aimed at advertisers, but I don't think they represented true listening. Looking them over they talked about a particular station or group's reach and nothing about the programming. I'm just having my doubts that people in the 1940s listened to stations because they were distant; they listened because of specific programs. But DXers aren't like that. They don't care about the programs; they listen because of the distance.

You are talking about DX today. Back in the 30's and 40's and 50's, it was something one did to find a kind of programs or music that was not available locally.

And many ads quantified mail pull... and it could be seen that stations like WSM pulled thousands of letters for a promotion or offer from states 1000 miles away or more. Folks were looking for what was not available... specific kinds of music, like gospel and r&b and rock 'n roll and even country before country was cool in many places.

And, also in the 50's, radio's prime time changed from nights to daytime due, again, to TV. The huge nighttime shows and network extravaganzas were swept away by video.

But that didn't sweep DX away, it swept away all radio listening. Within a matter of just 3 or 4 years, network radio audiences dropped like rocks, whether the SF listener had been listening to KFI or locally to KGO. The networks dropped the West Coast delays, substituted recorded programs for live ones, got rid of orchestras, everything to save money.

But The Audience was not swept away. Just the audience for a specific kind of programming... that which was done better on TV for those who had a set in markets that had channels. Remember, NBC began its net in the late 40's, but soon after the FCC froze new stations until the allocations system could be redone, which took until '53. TV grew relatively slowly until the end of the freeze, and then it expanded faster... but it still took a decade to really finish off network drama and variety shows.

And in the process, radio reformatted into music sources thanks to the end of the AFM /Petrillo stranglehold on the playing of recorded music at the beginning of the 50's. Radio audiences changed the way they used radio, but the amount of time spent listening to radio did not decline. It's somewhat hard to calculate time spent listening from older ratings and compare it to later data with different methods of tabulation, but the 50's started with 21 hours of radio usage per person, and that level seems to have been the norm thereafter, and well into the 90's in fact.

I think there's a difference in terminology here. I'm talking about DX as we talk about it today.

The problem today is that there is no armchair level comfortable listening to distant signals today due to band crowding and noise. So fewer people listen for any reason to distant stations.

 

[Jay Walker]

.
XELO soon to become the legendary XEROK "X-ROK 80 The Sun City Streaker" which also made a point selling that massive 150,000w night time signal well into the 70's. .

Ah, do I note another Bruce Miller Earle fan? ;D

As a transplanted Texan by choice, I've worked with most of those guys who played with that monster in Juarez. John Long was the one who lit a fire under that blowtorch and kept it lit for a while. As a last gasp Top 40 AM in El Paso it was a unique and entertaining example of pre Z-100 flame throwing balls to the wall radio...on Memorex no less I guess they could not get around the Brinkley law and do a Telco line or STL..

Bruce Miller Earle was one of the lucky ones who did shows live across the river at the transmitter site after Long left.

Sitting in that small studio by the transmitter building watching birds explode when they landed on the open feeder line feeding 150,000 watts to the antenna was a special treat.

Now that WAS RADIO ;D

Here's a taste: http://airchexx.com/2005/01/10/quickcheck-xerok-x-rock-80-1973-437-scoped/

We now return you to your current topic.

 

[Goldilocks94941]

I remember hearing XEROX at night years ago when I lived in Albuquerque. Much like with CKLW where I grew up, it put out a commanding signal on 800 that you couldn't miss when dialing around for something interesting to listen to on a drive back to town. But unlike CKLW, it's daytime population was pretty small; it was that skywave that made it something to notice. Presentation was a bit "over the top," but they really knew how to use that signal and made it sound clean, clear, and confident. It was the kind of signal that might make you smile when you landed on it while driving across the desert.

As for the link to an aircheck in the prior posting, it seems to want me to "sign up" for RealPlayer to listen. I've made that mistake before, and will never use RealPlayer again if I can help it (the damn thing takes over my settings even when I tell it not to.) Are there any links to XEROX audio that are in the mp3 or .wma formats?

 

[Jay Walker]

I remember hearing XEROX at night years ago when I lived in Albuquerque. Much like with CKLW where I grew up, it put out a commanding signal on 800 that you couldn't miss when dialing around for something interesting to listen to on a drive back to town. But unlike CKLW, it's daytime population was pretty small; it was that skywave that made it something to notice. Presentation was a bit "over the top," but they really knew how to use that signal and made it sound clean, clear, and confident. It was the kind of signal that might make you smile when you landed on it while driving across the desert.

As for the link to an aircheck in the prior posting, it seems to want me to "sign up" for RealPlayer to listen. I've made that mistake before, and will never use RealPlayer again if I can help it (the damn thing takes over my settings even when I tell it not to.) Are there any links to XEROX audio that are in the mp3 or .wma formats?

X-ROK wasn't bad considering it was all taped 24 hours in advance and aired the next day. Tapes were couriered across the border daily.

About a free link for an aircheck , none that I know of. Uncle Ricky's excellent site has tons, but it is a subscription site.
Sorry...

Jay Walker

 

[ABQRADIO]

Agreed, Real Player is a really, really bad thing to put on your computer. Here is the solution: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This XEROK aircheck is fabulous. I have played the last few seconds again and again - that spanish-language ID with the background efx really brings back some great memories.

 

[LKellerIII]

Agreed, Real Player is a really, really bad thing to put on your computer. Here is the solution: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This XEROK aircheck is fabulous. I have played the last few seconds again and again - that spanish-language ID with the background efx really brings back some great memories.

Funny. I've never heard X-ROK, but I similarly recall the Spanish language station ID for XEPRS:

"Equis - ay - pay -airay -essay, Rosarita, Baja California"
Jingle: "Ten-ninety, Soul Express."

The afternoon DJ was Tom Reed, "the Master Blaster."

 

[semoochie]

...followed by,(jingle)"XPRS Los Angeles".