AM radio problems and fixes

[johnbasalla]

There are so few stations that can be heard 24/7 with quality sound, per market. Nighttime is bad time. I'm in the Western part of the Cleveland, Ohio market and at night only 2 of the 7 AM stations can be heard clearly at my house. WHK AM1420, WKNR AM850 and the Disney Channel station at 1260AM are hampered by cross-talk from other stations from who knows where. Only the two 50,000 watt facilities are loud and clear.

There is something to be said for the big watt stations, as they have the coverage necessary to serve. It was "insane", and says something, that I heard "The Savage Nation" on WRVA 1140AM beaming in from another state in better sound quality then from my then local affiliate. Yet, I don't want to see communities lose their voice/stations if they are successful and serving. So it's a tough call on what to do. As marginal AM's sign off, the FCC should aggressively grant power increases and/or pattern shifts toward non-directional when they can.

Would things have been better for business if AM Stereo was successful and now standard?

 

[WPPCProductions]

The deal with am is have a Iboc shut down time at night, have it off between 6pm to 6am and 6am to 6pm day time to run the noise generator only.am will be so much better.or have it done with the sunrise,sunset rule.

 

[w9wi]

There are so few stations that can be heard 24/7 with quality sound, per market. Nighttime is bad time. I'm in the Western part of the Cleveland, Ohio market and at night only 2 of the 7 AM stations can be heard clearly at my house. WHK AM1420, WKNR AM850 and the Disney Channel station at 1260AM are hampered by cross-talk from other stations from who knows where. Only the two 50,000 watt facilities are loud and clear.

There is something to be said for the big watt stations, as they have the coverage necessary to serve. It was "insane", and says something, that I heard "The Savage Nation" on WRVA 1140AM beaming in from another state in better sound quality then from my then local affiliate. Yet, I don't want to see communities lose their voice/stations if they are successful and serving. So it's a tough call on what to do. As marginal AM's sign off, the FCC should aggressively grant power increases and/or pattern shifts toward non-directional when they can.

Would things have been better for business if AM Stereo was successful and now standard?

IMHO, no. AM stereo was an interesting idea but it was the solution to the wrong problem.

I don't think there *is* a politically-possible solution to AM's issues. There are, simply, far too many stations shoehorned into the band. The fix is to revoke 80% of AM licenses & then shuffle the remaining 20% around among the available channels, let them run up the power & let out the patterns. Then, come through with an army of inspectors to shut down all the crap out there that's in serious violation of Part 15 for unintentionally radiating enough RF to wipe out a 50kw station 30 miles away.

Obviously, neither part of this solution is going to happen.

Interesting to note that in many markets, the only AM stations that are successful today are the ones that predate WW2. A LOT of the massive expansion we're dealing with today happened in the first 5-8 years after the war.