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AM Radio is dying

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K6JHU said:
I find it hard to find one on the air to do the comparison. Issue with AM HD is not with fidelity or audio quality or noise rejection (of which all three are more than adequate for AM HD listenability). Issue is with station owners not wanting to install the exciter, or pay for the license, or make changes to the antenna system, or rewire a mono audio chain for stereo.
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I'm sure there are some of those examples, but 20 years ago, many iHeart, Entercom/Audacy, and Cumulus AM stations installed HD. After that, companies like Harris, became GatesAir, stopped making AM transmission products including AM-HD gear. Shortly after, Broadcast Electronics stopped supporting the original AM-HD exciters. Nautel stopped supporting their original AM-HD gear, but offered the ability in their new AM transmitters as an expensive option.
During the aforementioned timeline, complaints from ajacent and cochannel to AM HD stations continued to complain at the Commission, and stations and groups also received nagging complaints from neighboring stations about sideband noise from HD.
Around this time some stations pulled the plug on AM HD, while others waited until their legacy AM HD exciters finally died from failed hard drives.
At the end of the day, any AM-HD juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
 
And then there's Denver.

Five AM HD stations on the air: four from Crawford, one from Pillar of Fire. Only one Crawford station (KLVZ) and Pillar of Fire (KPOF) play music. There's likely to be a sixth station soon when KVCU in Boulder gets its new transmitter on the air; at least, that's what its FCC filings have indicated. Its STA for reduced power on its aux (main got hit by lightning) is running out soon; of course, that could always be extended. Until recently, these were all AM-only operations save for FM translators. (Pillar now has two full-power FMs.)

AM HD frequency response is good; the usual AM electrical noises are nonexistent. However, in hybrid mode, data compression rates are severe. I believe the bitrate is 32 kbps with some kind of derivative of AAC but I'd have to check. The "metallic toilet swirl" effect is very much in evidence, especially for voice programming. Music doesn't sound so great either. I've noticed this both in my car radio and my Sangean home units. I'm not terribly sensitive to digital artifacts in music but I can sure hear it on KLVZ and KPOF. Both those stations also have FM translators; so do two other Crawford stations. I suppose they could go MA3 at any time but have chosen not to do so, probably not wanting to give up metro coverage.

But I hear digital artifacts on iHeart's FM stations here as well, something akin to a metallic ringing, especially for voices. I feel this makes their stations unlistenable. Possibly they don't care about how this sounds since they push the iHeart app every chance they get and you're likely to get digital artifacts there in any event.

I have heard no on-air promotion of AM HD here.

I refer to it as a neat party trick; it doesn't change the fact that there's one truly viable AM station here and that's KOA, which absolutely would not benefit from HD on AM.
 
There’s a “hobby” station (I call it that because it has very limited imaging and no commercials; owner’s playlist pretty much), WPCI in Greenville, SC that is in AM HD. It sounds okay, but a very mediocre analog FM sounds a lot better for music.

 
Oldbones said:
He's an idiot. AM doesn't "transmit noise" any more than FM, Sirius or Spotify do. Yes, AM reception has gotten progressively noisier over the years, but that's not the station's fault.
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Those of us that have owned both AMs and FMs know that the AM audio is subject to noise and far less "quality sounding". To the listener, that means it sounds bad, noisy.
 
101tm said:
There’s a “hobby” station (I call it that because it has very limited imaging and no commercials; owner’s playlist pretty much), WPCI in Greenville, SC that is in AM HD. It sounds okay, but a very mediocre analog FM sounds a lot better for music.

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It's really hard to discern the audio quality from a video like this, filmed on a phone pointing in the vague direction of a car radio display (where the speakers are in the sides of the car).
 
Meanwhile in Hamilton -- yes, the same Hamilton where CHML just shut down due to "headwinds" -- a new format has debuted on crosstown 50kw AM station CKOC. It is...(drum roll)...70s & 80s Classic Hits, with live jocks even.

1150 CKOC

Superhits of the 70s and 80s
www.1150ckoc.com www.1150ckoc.com

This, along with CKWW 580 in Windsor which is airing the same format, is among the stations that were sold off by Bell to a variety of local operators a while back. I think most people expected a foreign language format because the new owner, Neeti Ray, has a history of running brokered South Asian programming. I had completely forgotten about it until just now when I saw someone in my socials mention it had signed on, and I see Lance has a piece on RadioInsight now as well.

Anyway, there you go. A couple AM music sign-ons in 2024.

 
Theater of My Mind said:
Meanwhile in Hamilton -- yes, the same Hamilton where CHML just shut down due to "headwinds" -- a new format has debuted on crosstown 50kw AM station CKOC. It is...(drum roll)...70s & 80s Classic Hits, with live jocks even.
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But not all news, right? Tell me when another station picks up the news format.
 
CTListener said:
More likely because it has a few FM translators. As a stand-alone AM, WECK would be down in the ratings sub-basement with WWKB.
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But the point here is that WECK is successful in sales, despite older demos and an AM "base". That's because of what BigA said: a committed owner.
 
There is already a well established AM radio station playing that music in the region, CFZM Zoomer Radio 740. I believe Hamilton falls within that Toronto-based station's local coverage area. Even if you think some committed owner (like Moses Znaimer) might be able to make it playing that niche format on AM radio, the potential for a second similar startup station to thrive seems like it would be very challenging.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Do you believe a AM radio station playing 70s music will be a big success?
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TheBigA said:
It is in Buffalo because the owner is committed to the format.
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Also, in a larger market (Buffalo is #59, which is a far sight better than Grand Forks ND @ #243. or with even lower population and unrated) the effect of an aging audience in a harder-to-sell demo -- and the fact that your listeners are literally dying off, albeit slowly -- the format can still survive. Especially if its sales team is good at identifying business for which that demo is attractive, and selling them,

For a while, anyway.

CTListener said:
More likely because it has a few FM translators. As a stand-alone AM, WECK would be down in the ratings sub-basement with WWKB.
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I would agree with you if it were any other format than Oldies. That format still has AM listeners, especially at the upper end of the demo. Of course, we'll never know because of single-line reporting by Nielsen.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Those of us that have owned both AMs and FMs know that the AM audio is subject to noise and far less "quality sounding". To the listener, that means it sounds bad, noisy.
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If anything, AM radio is good at one thing....being a great lightning detector. The louder and crisper the static, the closer the bolt must be. And at night, you can really "hear" distant storms. One summer afternoon near Idyllwild, Ca, a bolt struck very close (within a 1/2 mile of my car) and the lightning static turned into a whistle type whine. Never heard that before!! It was an open frequency, no broadcast, probably 1610 or 530. Maybe for this reason, storm chasers use AM radio for a form of detection.
 
K.M. Richards said:
I would agree with you if it were any other format than Oldies. That format still has AM listeners, especially at the upper end of the demo. Of course, we'll never know because of single-line reporting by Nielsen.
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Then how do YOU know the older folks are still listening on AM in significant numbers? I'm 69 and have a choice of an AM or a translator for classic country and sports. I don't even have a preset for the AM signals.
 
CTListener said:
Then how do YOU know the older folks are still listening on AM in significant numbers? I'm 69 and have a choice of an AM or a translator for classic country and sports. I don't even have a preset for the AM signals.
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That does not mean every senior is like you or me. (I rarely listen to AM either.) But studies have shown that over-65s are the most likely to be heavy users of AM over FM. And I note that WECK's station logo gives the AM frequency in the exact same size font as the translators. I take that as an indication that they have significant AM listening.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Do you believe a AM radio station playing 70s music will be a big success? Or do you just feel that you have to reply to every post on this site and argue with everyone? By the way, CHML wasn't a "news format". It was news-TALK with a lot of syndicated programming.
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He may have been a little snarky, but his point is that people aren't investing in expensive programming, especially on AM.

As for whether or not a 70's/80's station on AM will be a success, it almost certainly won't be a big one. It probably has a better chance of getting decent numbers in Canada than it would being tried on AM in the US, but Canadian radio has struggled worse than US stations have at getting revenue for a long time. I get the impression the new owner is a rich person who is pursuing a fairly expensive hobby.
 
K.M. Richards said:
That does not mean every senior is like you or me. (I rarely listen to AM either.) But studies have shown that over-65s are the most likely to be heavy users of AM over FM. And I note that WECK's station logo gives the AM frequency in the exact same size font as the translators. I take that as an indication that they have significant AM listening.
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Or simply that they're just marketing it that way. Not familiar with either the station or the market, but from what I've read here the station's management is convinced that the AM is what everyone's listening to, whether it actually is or not.
As far as your first statement goes, one would think that members of this board would be MORE likely to listen to AM, if for no reason other than being a radio geek. Other than occasionally doing so myself, I don't know anyone who ever listens to AM. Maybe fans of right wing talk, but there aren't many of them in my social circle.
 
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