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Flip to Christmas Music

davideduardo said:
The FCC initially had a system aproved that could have had AM stereo on in 1978. But one of the non-approved system owners filed legal papers and held it back for roughly 4 years. Then, the FCC just told us to do whatever we wanted and chose no system.

Even 1979 was kind of late. By then, over half of all listening was to FM and about two-thirds of music listening had left AM.
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What I always said about that is the losing party who filed that challenge lost even bigger. The combination of the legal bills and the length of time the decision was held back killed any chance they had to both win the battle and capitalize on it. I'm sure they thought it would either be settled quickly, that the other systems would cave, and AM would be dominant forever. None of that was the case.

Remember always to be careful what you wish for. You might just get it.
 
All I know is I had a Pioneer AM Stereo/FM Stereo that I bought and installed in my car and I ALWAYS thought the AM Stereo signal sounded far superior than the FM. It just sounded like it had a far wider stereo separation and audio quality was much better....even at night. WHK sounded fantastic with it when they had their oldies format going on.
 
I found a paragraph in Broadcasting for April 25, 1983 which summed up pretty well why not setting a standard doomed the whole concept of AM stereo for the masses. In their coverage of that year's NAB convention on new industry products being introduced:

Because the FCC declined to pick a national standard, choosing instead to leave the selection to the marketplace, AM stereo has been slow in coming. Even though there are 80 to 90 stations now broadcasting in stereo with one of the four systems (mostly Kahn or Harris), receiver manufacturers have been reluctant to market radios designed to decode one system in the absence of a standard. The manufacture of any single-system receiver would entail a certain amount of risk.

So the ill-conceived battle to overturn the original decision stalled the process of stations adopting AM stereo, and when the FCC finally threw their hands up and said "you decide" the receiver manufacturers refused to second guess what system would come off as the winner.
 
K.M. Richards said:
So the ill-conceived battle to overturn the original decision stalled the process of stations adopting AM stereo, and when the FCC finally threw their hands up and said "you decide" the receiver manufacturers refused to second guess what system would come off as the winner.
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The other part of this was the electronics industry, as we knew it, was leaving the US. By the late 70s, everything was being made in Japan or Mexico. After that it went to Korea and eventually China. The US manufacturers were licensing their brands to foreign companies. Those foreign companies weren't just making radio for the US, but for the world. Everything had to be adaptable to a world market. The AM stereo people were all US people. We're kind of in that situation now. Electronics manufacturers have all but given up making radios. To them, it's a fringe market, no real profit. So you go to CES and you don't see any radios on display.
 
Yabadabado1 said:
And if you"ve never seen it before: The Official AM STEREO Web Site
Not sure if it's still being updated but still interesting to look at.
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The link for "Stations" is dead.

Our own frequent poster Kevtronics is the webmaster of that site. In another location, he links to the Wikipedia listing.
 
davideduardo said:
The link for "Stations" is dead.

Our own frequent poster Kevtronics is the webmaster of that site. In another location, he links to the Wikipedia listing.
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Dang! I thought that there were two in Ohio still broadcasting AM stereo but that's been a few years since I checked. I think we may be able to blame Clear Channel [iheart] for their demise. I believe that when they went on their initial "destruction of local radio" splurge [otherwise known as buying up almost anything that put out a radio signal that contained advertising] for turning off the AM Stereo signal as soon as the sale of the station to them closed. And I thought that "Kevtronics" name on the site sounded familiar. I joked before about blaming Alzheimer's but since I was recently diagnosed with the beginnings of it, may have been why I couldn't place it. [I was gonna say, you'll know when it's getting bad when I start posting gibberish but then I thought......"Wait a minute.....how they gonna tell the difference from NOW?"
 
I'm also hearing multiple versions of Frosty the Snowman, Winter Wonderland and Rudoloh the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

It seems like these stations are shying away from playing songs by rock-n-roll artists and going with pop artists like Dean Martin, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, etc.
 
TheBigA said:
Those are the ones that likely test best for their target audiences. These all Christmas stations are usually AC stations that aim mainly at women. Playing rock music isn't what they want to hear.
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Even back in the late 70s/early 80s, when I was programming one of the earliest AC stations, this was well-known and although I never did 24/7 Christmas music (the most I did was 7:00pm on the 24th to 7:00pm on the 25th, after slowly ramping up the number of songs per hour within the regular format over the first part of the month).

I remember that "Pretty Paper" by Roy Orbison was one song we used to get calls for, but we also played "I Believe In Father Christmas" by Greg Lake and "Please Come Home For Christmas" by the Eagles ... softer songs by two well-known rock acts.
 
TheBigA said:
Those are the ones that likely test best for their target audiences. These all Christmas stations are usually AC stations that aim mainly at women. Playing rock music isn't what they want to hear.
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So they would rather hear badly composed modern pop music sung by over-hyped untalented artists?

Lite rock is fine for me. I don't like hard rock.
 
snowdog88 said:
So they would rather hear badly composed modern pop music sung by over-hyped untalented artists?
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If that's what the research shows, then apparently so.

Your question is more a harsh criticism of those listeners' tastes than it is an actual question.
 
Yabadabado1 said:
All I know is I had a Pioneer AM Stereo/FM Stereo that I bought and installed in my car and I ALWAYS thought the AM Stereo signal sounded far superior than the FM. It just sounded like it had a far wider stereo separation and audio quality was much better....even at night. WHK sounded fantastic with it when they had their oldies format going on.
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As I recall, WHK used the C-Quam Motorola AM stereo syatem when they were 14K oldies and it did work, but it was dropped when they changed to an all talk business news format in 1988.
We had a 2001 Mercury that tuned AM stereo, though by that time I only heard a few Canadian music stations broadcasting AM stereo but they disappeared with the concurrent moving of most music to FM.
 
I'm gonna miss hearing these songs after today. 😂

Actually, some which are not Christmas-related could still be played, such as Frosty the Snowman, Winter Wonderland, Sleigh Ride, Let it Snow...
 


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