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AM Radio is dying

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There are always going to be 'outlier' AM stations that buck the trend but in general. AM is close to dying and radio in general is not is good shape when we look back a couple of decades. With so many advertising dollars gone and so many listening choices, radio today is not in a good place.

I must say when we speak of a certain product (ie: call letters) that programming may be available on more than one platform (over the air, online and such). So, to say a station is dying, may not be correct as many of it's over the air listeners have migrated to the other ways to listen to the station. In a nutshell, the radio is only a device for listening, just as is the phone, laptop, and so on. We need to combine all listening platforms to determine the health of an over the air signal.

As for me, I sell for a high on the AM dial station with a translator. We are doing quite well financially and our ratings are staggering. Let's just say more than 1 person for every 1.5 households listen to the station. This is a small market and part of our strength is a strong sense of community in the area. They rely on us as a local connection to the greater community. Even the younger demos (high school forward) listen at times to stay connected to the community. So, yes, they know about radio and yes, they listen. It helps that the owner is an incredible programmer and well connected to have major market caliber talent on the station. The dial is not vacant here. There are 50 choices on the AM and FM dial, most being from the #4 radio market (recently beat San Francisco for #4). It helps that the local cable company has us on their system and we have an app plus online on our website. And our listeners that go to out of town football games that can be 80 miles away do listen to the game on their phones. Not just the player's parents are willing to drive the miles and miles to support their hometown team.
 
b-turner said:
So, to say a station is dying, may not be correct as many of it's over the air listeners have migrated to the other ways to listen to the station. In a nutshell, the radio is only a device for listening, just as is the phone, laptop, and so on. We need to combine all listening platforms to determine the health of an over the air signal.
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The problem is that the money follows the audience. The audience is abandoning traditional real time media across the board. That means local TV stations are also in trouble. Cable channels are in trouble. At some point, everything will be individual streams with individual subscriptions and monthly bills, and free over-the-air broadcasting will be all religion or ethnic. It won't go away, because spectrum won't disappear. But the way it gets used will change. And when it goes away, as it did in NY with WCBS, lots of people will be upset and blame the radio companies. But the people stopped listening a long time ago, and when that happened, the money that kept those stations alive also disappeared.

Meanwhile, the phone companies and tech companies are getting richer, because the people who used to listen to radio are now using phones and the internet. So instead of the big impersonal radio companies, you have the big impersonal tech companies. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
 
Radio is going online for sure but the stations are surviving because of this. They are simply moving away from the device called a radio because radio follows the people. Likewise, the cable TV and over the air TV are doing the same.

The one thing I have to wonder is the percentage of the population that doesn't go online. Great internet and cell service is not everywhere and some people just have little use for a smart phone or computer. As that number diminishes, are there enough people to support traditional media?
 
yeoldeschool said:
For a station with no analog FM simulcast, getting a 14.1 is mind boggling. How is this happening? Do people in Milwaukee just hate music?
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When WTMJ subscribed they were around a 7 to 8+, WTMJ has a fm translator with decent coverage but most likely Milwaukee is approaching a 20 share listening to AM/streaming.
 
b-turner said:
Radio is going online for sure but the stations are surviving because of this. They are simply moving away from the device called a radio because radio follows the people.
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The electronics industry has deserted radio, and if they aren't making exciting devices that people want to buy, then people will stick with their phones. I'm as guilty as anyone, and I work in the radio business. I don't go anywhere without my phone. Don't expect radio programmers to defend transmitters and towers. They don't own the spectrum, they're just licensees. So moving radio online is OK for them. However, they're not completely giving up on broadcast, so it'll still be there for those who don't go online. Just as WFAN and WINS retain their AM signals, even though they each have FM simulcasts.
 
kfbkfb said:
An IC could be developed to include a noise blanker for AM
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As I have pointed out a couple of times previously in other threads, I own an "early adopter" electric car ... a 2015 Smart ED. It has the stock AM/FM/USB port radio in its dashboard and when I listen to AM I get no electrical interference noise in the audio. At all.

So apparently the engineers at Daimler-Benz had that issue resolved a decade ago. I therefore find the arguments from the present day automakers to be at best disingenuous and at worst outright falsehoods.

My experience proves that you are correct with the above statement, Kirk.
 
TheBigA said:
I'm as guilty as anyone, and I work in the radio business. I don't go anywhere without my phone.
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Nor do I, but I only stream non-local stations. My phone does have an app for FM radio but, as we all know by now, it doesn't work without a headphone wire plugged into the jack. Even if we had won that battle with more manufacturers, wireless earbuds have rendered that issue pretty much moot.
 
TheBigA said:
And when it goes away, as it did in NY with WCBS, lots of people will be upset and blame the radio companies. But the people stopped listening a long time ago, and when that happened, the money that kept those stations alive also disappeared.
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Of course, try to use that as a response when they do complain, and they will summarily reject it.

What I don't think they see is that, as streams and the like become increasingly ubiquitous, that little icon that they use to skip the commercials will begin to be engineered out of apps during software upgrades. So on the one hand, they will have created by their own actions a modern-day telling of the Aesop's Fable about the goose that laid the golden egg.

INMSHO, we should be pushing back on any restrictions (sorry, SAG-AFTRA) that prevents a station's online stream from being identical, with the exact same commercial content as our on-air product. You can't tell me the agencies, advertisers, etc. wouldn't be happy with that. The migration began long ago and we need to do more than wring our hands and cry in despair.
 
K.M. Richards said:
What I don't think they see is that, as streams and the like become increasingly ubiquitous, that little icon that they use to skip the commercials will begin to be engineered out of apps during software upgrades. So on the one hand, they will have created by their own actions a modern-day telling of the Aesop's Fable about the goose that laid the golden egg.
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Absolutely. The same thing happened with FM and cable TV. In the early days, there were very few commercials. As they became more popular, the commercials increased. The more popular something becomes, the more it becomes commercialized.
 
K.M. Richards said:
As I have pointed out a couple of times previously in other threads, I own an "early adopter" electric car ... a 2015 Smart ED. It has the stock AM/FM/USB port radio in its dashboard and when I listen to AM I get no electrical interference noise in the audio. At all.

So apparently the engineers at Daimler-Benz had that issue resolved a decade ago. I therefore find the arguments from the present day automakers to be at best disingenuous and at worst outright falsehoods.

My experience proves that you are correct with the above statement, Kirk.
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A lot of cars had/have inline noise suppressors, or they can be added as an aftermarket part.
 
radiofan2023 said:
A lot of cars had/have inline noise suppressors, or they can be added as an aftermarket part.
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But mine came pre-engineered to filter electrical noise from the motors out of the AM reception. No aftermarket gadget required.

I am saying that when the auto industry says "they can't do it" they are either ignorant or lying.
 
radiofan2023 said:
A lot of cars had/have inline noise suppressors, or they can be added as an aftermarket part.
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I think my grandparents' car must have had one. Not only no interference, but almost no signal either. You had to be very close to the AM stations tower except for one 5000-watt station I remember hearing.
 
K.M. Richards said:
I am saying that when the auto industry says "they can't do it" they are either ignorant or lying.
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Of course they can do it. The fact of the matter is, they don't want to because they want to save that less than 1¢ per vehicle rolling off the assembly line, which adds up to tens of millions of dollars saved.

The disingenuousness of it is that it doesn't even cost that much. Head units both with and without AM/FM functionality contain the same exact circuits, and the antennae are wired up the same way on both so they can receive the other kinds of radio signals out there (WiFi, 4G/5G, satellite), and one only has to flip a single bit inside its firmware to activate the radio feature. The cost of flipping that bit is exactly zero (and if it isn't, it should be).

c
 
b-turner said:
Radio is going online for sure but the stations are surviving because of this. They are simply moving away from the device called a radio because radio follows the people. Likewise, the cable TV and over the air TV are doing the same.

The one thing I have to wonder is the percentage of the population that doesn't go online. Great internet and cell service is not everywhere and some people just have little use for a smart phone or computer. As that number diminishes, are there enough people to support traditional media?
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We could have the worst of both worlds. The phone companies will be able to name their price, while swaths of the country won't have broadband.....or radio stations.
 
gr8oldies said:
We could have the worst of both worlds. The phone companies will be able to name their price, while swaths of the country won't have broadband.....or radio stations.
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To some degree, that has already happened. In California, the wireline telephone services have been deregulated in terms of price for well over a couple of decades now. And their wireless and broadband rates were never regulated.
 
Todd Mitchell said:
So, then, *all* of radio is dying, is what you're saying? Seems to me WISN is at least going down swinging.
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I haven't read anyone claiming radio is dying, because other than Yahoo or MySpace, the industry isn't binary, on or off.
What David said is accurate, that radio has lost at least 70% of listening since the heydays.
 
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