I wonder, Does Tom hanks listen to AM radio?
Tom Hanks visited a SE Portland typewriter shop, and added a rare find to his collection
Type Space owner Antony Valoppi bonded with Tom Hanks over their passion for typewriters.
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Ford Reconsiders, Now Keeping AM Radio
- Thread starter DavidEduardo
- Start date
www.oregonlive.com
Same happened in the great Puerto Rican hurricane where only WKAQ AM 580 was left on the air.
I was driving home earlier this evening, and I heard this news about Ford keeping AM radios while listening to KCBS on AM radio.
While it's probably only "temporary," the fact is that unless/until somebody can create or improve some other service that is genuinely better as far as coverage, and move all the civil defense/public safety stations to that, then we can start talking about retiring AM.
But until then, old though it may be, it's still necessary in the US.
As I've said, Europe can transfer more quickly and efficiently because the populations are more tightly packed and the place is just plain smaller in general, so the limitations in coverage that affect FM and digital modes (DAB) are less important.
c
While it's probably only "temporary," the fact is that unless/until somebody can create or improve some other service that is genuinely better as far as coverage, and move all the civil defense/public safety stations to that, then we can start talking about retiring AM.
But until then, old though it may be, it's still necessary in the US.
As I've said, Europe can transfer more quickly and efficiently because the populations are more tightly packed and the place is just plain smaller in general, so the limitations in coverage that affect FM and digital modes (DAB) are less important.
c
AM should be the home of all news, news and talk, (local or national) sports, political talk, and ethnic formats.
Uh, isn't AM pretty much home to all those things already?
I wouldn't mind seeing at least a minor effort to bring some kind of music back to AM, but for that to succeed, better quality standards for receivers and tuners need to exist, and I doubt if that will happen (it was already tried once – AMAX and C-QUAM – and we all know what became of those efforts...).
Yes, but some of the bigger stations (KNBR in SF, for instance), also simulcast on FM, so losing their AM audience probably wouldn't hurt those ones very much.
But the smaller AM stations (particularly those that don't have an FM simulcast and/or internet stream) are pretty much doomed if they lose even part of their audience, given how unprofitable radio has become, especially in recent years.
c
Why? In most markets, there are not enough (if any) AM stations with adequate market coverage to do this.
News has been moving to FM in markets like Chicago, New York, LA and San Francisco. Sports teams want to be on an FM, not AM.
As to ethnic formats, do you think African Americans and Hispanics deserve only to be served on AM?
In fact, as to Hispanics, the largest Spanish speaking country, Mexico, in recent years has tried to eliminate about 80% or more of all AM stations because they consider the band to no longer be viable except for reaching remote and inaccessible areas with indigenous populations..
No. News is moving to FM in most markets that have all-news stations. Sports teams don't want AM affiliates any more. Ethnic groups like Blacks and Hispanics would really protest if their services were moved to AM.
KNX, WINS, WBBM, KCBS, etc. are news stations that are divorcing themselves from AM by only positioning with the FM dial position.
It's nothing compared to how unprofitable radio was after Docket 80-90 and prior to consolidation.
By Ethnic, I don't mean the Spanish-speaking folk. There's like Caribbean and Haitian stations that are also on the AM dial. Miami for example.
And I only say that because there's not much room for FM dials without avoiding interference. If you try to move everyone to the FM dial, there just won't be room for the others left out.
But, except for English and Spanish, Kreyòl is about the only significant language of the Caribbean. French is spoken in to West Indies Provinces of Frances, but those folks are French Citizens and if they migrate, they go to "Mother France". And then there is a tiny Papiemento group in the ABC Islands, but they tend not to migrate as they have a rather decent economy.
There just are not enough Kreyòl speakers yet to warrant an FM. At some point, it may be justifiable, too
Back in the 2000s, where I grew up, "multi-cultural" AMs and LPFMs were all the rage. There was an hour in Urdu, a couple of hours in Polish, the Punjabi show, and so on. It was a Tower of Babel on the air, every ethnic group or minority language had its couple of hours on the air each day or each week.
You still hear them sometimes, but in 2023, speakers of those languages are far more likely to be tuned into stations broadcasting 24/7 in their language - either streaming stations from their "home" countries (e.g. RMF-FM streaming in the Polish deli), or dedicated local/national services serving that community in this country (e.g. Polish Radio London). The increased capacity brought about by DAB helped with the latter, but the ubiquity of streaming apps and smart speakers and good internet coverage meant that "tune to this AM frequency on a Tuesday between 7-9pm and we'll be speaking your language" just got outmoded.
You still hear them sometimes, but in 2023, speakers of those languages are far more likely to be tuned into stations broadcasting 24/7 in their language - either streaming stations from their "home" countries (e.g. RMF-FM streaming in the Polish deli), or dedicated local/national services serving that community in this country (e.g. Polish Radio London). The increased capacity brought about by DAB helped with the latter, but the ubiquity of streaming apps and smart speakers and good internet coverage meant that "tune to this AM frequency on a Tuesday between 7-9pm and we'll be speaking your language" just got outmoded.
Was there reception on cell phones? Or were the cell phone towers mostly inoperative? I think I remember readng that most people could not get cell phone service. I'm assuming that you're speaking of Hurricane Maria back in 2017.
At one point, there was about 98% outage of cell phones. The restoration in the San Juan metro was fairly quick... within 24 hours to about a week. "Out on the Island" (local vernacular for "the rest of PR") it could have been between 3 to 4 days to over 4 months.
PR is very rugged except for the narrow coastal belt around the Island (we capitalize "Island" as it is synonymous with "Puerto Rico") and the hilly and mountainous areas are very subject to flash flooding, landslides, washed out roads and the like during hurricanes.
The biggest issue was that electricity was very slow in returning, even in large parts of the San Juan metro. So many high voltage lines were down that there just were not enough people to work on everything, so it was all prioritized. Of course, cellular sites that had battery backup went down in a day or so, and then had to wait for electricity to return. Few sites had generators, and with roads out and few vehicles and gasoline shortages, too, the process of getting fuel was uncertain. And many cell towers came down, along with nearly all the TV towers (particularly the 3 major channels serving San Juan whose 1000 foot towers had survived for 60 years through many prior storms) were down, and most of the major FMs were down (a few kept spare antenna bays in the building and a post to put them on).
Yes, that hurricane. Puerto Rico depended on cellular more than the mainland as the landline infrastructure was and is deficient. I remember it would take several months sometimes to get an added line or two at a radio station.
In my home town, Cleveland, the first two profitable FMs in the earlier 60's were similar with mult-ethnic blocks all day long. Even where I worked Sunday mornings at AM WJMO around 1959 we had 6 hours of Italian, Greek, German, Polish, Hungarian, and others on Sunday morning. All were live, with large groups of people including live bands. Each brought me their particular food, and I discovered things such as nearly all Hungarian food at the time involved copious lard in the recipe.
My experience with Mexican immigrant audiences in over 3 decades is that once they left Mexico, and except for news that affected family still there, immigrants really had no interest in anything Mexican except for their hometown or region's soccer team.
That is somewhat true in the US, but in most immigrant groups I became familiar with in the US, the first choice was local media in their language. True for everything from Armenians to Persians to Mexicans and other Latin Americans.
Where there is interest in the "homeland" is among groups that did not willingly emigrate, such as Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and, during the violent years, Salvadorans and Colombians. They avidly followed news abut the home country as the adult migrants wanted to return and live that dream still.
And prisoners. You're not allowed to have a computer in your cell, but you can have a typewriter.
Only to keep them from going online and posting on Radiodiscussions.
The mainland U.S. has a much more robust cell/PCS infrastructure than an island territory that's literally, on an island. The advantage of a distributed communication system like a cellular approach is; you can lose a small geographic cluster and still have basic communication capability. Depending on the market size, broadcast relies on a single point of transmission.
I couldn't even begin to count how many cell towers there are in the larger metro area here. Take a few out, ok...that's not good, but still, it's not as catastrophic.
Oh, and people under the age of 100 actually use their cell phones vs AM radio.
(Yes, I know that's an exaggeration....)
Oh, and people under the age of 100 actually use their cell phones vs AM radio.
(Yes, I know that's an exaggeration....)
Some other service? Why does it have to be just one other service? Right now we have several. AM/FM/TV, and phone/text/internet. Civil defense/Public safety already use them. Better coverage? That requires people to have the device and have it either turned on or enabled for notifications. DHS doesn't think in terms of ONE service that reaches everyone. There is no such thing. AM is part of a multi-pronged approach. They know it isn't sufficient. Nothing is.
As for the idea of "we" can think about retiring AM, who is "we?" The people don't vote on that kind of thing. The big difference between the US and Europe in terms of radio is that in the US, radio stations are owned by private companies. It's relatively easy for a government to shut down it's owned radio stations. It's another thing to tell a person or a company that they have to shut down their business, and they're not getting anything for it. The FCC offered FM translators to stations that qualified. That wasn't everyone, and the translators don't cover as much area as a full signal. So there is no practical way of "retiring AM." Perhaps the government can stop issuing new licenses. But that's about it.
Some thoughts on the Ford decision from radio consultant Fred Jacobs:
radioink.com
And thoughts from the head of the National Association of Broadcasters:
www.insideradio.com
Inside Ford's AM Rethink With Fred Jacobs - Radio Ink
Fred Jacobs talks with Radio Ink about Ford's reversal on removing AM radio from its future vehicles and what our industry should learn.
radioink.com
And thoughts from the head of the National Association of Broadcasters:
NAB’s Curtis LeGeyt: Ford Decision ‘Means A Lot But The Fight Is Not Over.’
Just over two months after Ford Motor Company sent shockwaves across the industry with an announcement to exclude AM radio from most of its new and updated models, the automaker