How about we do away with the AM band all together and concentrate our efforts on this new fangled technology called FM? Isn't AM just old technology? Discuss!
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here's a crazy idea...get rid of AM!
- Thread starter Mark Vanness
- Start date
If you're just a bunch of dudes sitting in a sports bar enjoying a few adult beverages, it becomes a fun discussion. With no skin in the game, live for the day! propose revolution.
Now, on the other hand if you bet the family grocery money when you bought a station a few years back, and you've worked night and day for 7 years now cultivating the thing to health and excellence and you are planning to send your kids to college from the earnings from you "ugly sister homely" A.M. station, You may be ready to call anyone who suggests just removing A.M. radio from the face of the earth.... calling that someone names not normally heard in Sunday School.
Do you have an equitable plan to carry out this euthanasia scheme?
Now, on the other hand if you bet the family grocery money when you bought a station a few years back, and you've worked night and day for 7 years now cultivating the thing to health and excellence and you are planning to send your kids to college from the earnings from you "ugly sister homely" A.M. station, You may be ready to call anyone who suggests just removing A.M. radio from the face of the earth.... calling that someone names not normally heard in Sunday School.
Do you have an equitable plan to carry out this euthanasia scheme?
Seeing as a number of 50,000 watt AM stations are at or near the top of the ratings in their respective markets, AM as a 'medium in its deaththrows' is simply not true. Now, stations with weak signals, that may be a different story in some cases, however aren't there a number of small and medium market AM stations that, even in this day and age, are tied to, and an important part of their community?
johnbasalla said:
Yes, there are some. The current action by the FCC to allow them to acquire an FM sattelite/translator (I have problems keeping the definitions straight) is working well for some of them. There isn't spectrum available for ALL of the smaller market AMs to have one, but if the reports and response from those who do have one is positive, I see a couple of possibilities: Maybe some re-thinking of how the FM allocations are structured. Maybe some creative thinking will figure out how to make additional locations available, and maybe get the power level up a notch or two.
Kind of hard to do away with AM radio considering many of the stations in large markets where those stations are still ratings producers...are worth many millions of dollars.
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
Personally, I see no reason to kill AM. Two reasons:
1. If you really want AM to go away, just wait. AM is dying on its own. Yes, there are still some successful stations. (and really, I suspect there will still be successful AM stations in 20 years) There aren't many. It's a rare market that has more than one successful AM.
2. Nobody else wants the spectrum. If we *did* kill AM, the spectrum would simply go unused. Might as well let the few people who can make a buck on it and the few who find it worth listening to keep it.
Translator. A "satellite" is a full-power station that has no main studio -- it relays some other station. The technical parameters of a satellite are the same as for a full-power station. A satellite can be converted to a standalone station without further FCC action.
A translator is a low-power station and cannot be converted to/from a full-power standalone station.
I do think some restructuring of FM is possible -- while as a DXer I really shouldn't say this out loud, I do think with modern receivers, there's no longer a need to protect 2nd and 3rd adjacents. That said, with the crowded band I doubt you could accomodate many AM stations on FM in significant markets.
I'm not a fan of increasing opportunities for AMs to be translated on FM if it happens at the expense of LPFMs or a reduction of the protected service area of full-power stations. AM daytimers knew what they were getting into.
w9wi said:
Great information in your post.... as usual!
For the sake of discussion, I would challenge slightly that last sentence. A number of daytimers, particularly smaller markets, were purchased at a time when it was not possible, or not obvious, that we would end up in market conditions and changed regulations that we have today. Example: People bought a daytimer in a viable county seat market back when the Class A FM in the next county seat was limited to 3KW and a transmitter on the far side of town from the daytime. Then the FCC changed the rules and the 3kw Class A is now 50,000 watts and has a couple of sales people crawling all over the little town with the daytime.
The AM Daytimer purchaser knew what he was getting into? He thought his biggest threat would be kept at bay by a 3KW leash.
In metro markets people bought powerful AM daytimers thinking that the need for ethnic channels and religion channels and talk channels would remain viable. Then the FCC allowed more and more and more fringe area FMs to abandon their original markets and rim shot their way in toward the center city. Now these FMs step up to the trough and hog even these secondary and third level format opportunities.
The owners of daytimers have a legitimate complaint. Some are victims of their own poor management, but some are victims of changing the rules in the middle of the game and it is fair for them to scream: YOUR RULES have killed my investment. The maker of the rules (government? civilization?) should share in my financial loss as we take the back-hoe, dig a grave, and shove my station down in the hole as a total loss.
And when you've had the dinner after the funeral, all the folding chairs set up in church hall have been folded up
and the church kitchen volunteer ladies have gone home....
Can we have .54-1.7 mhz populated with not for profit stations, those who will pay full-boat for the equipment, programming,
electricity and staffing? What if they offer to bring us that all war-songs format? The all-Shakespeare station?
The all-opera station?
The 1920's-only hot jazz station?
Or any any other unserved segments of the population like those who would like to hear a little bit of everything?
Or is it simply important to eliminate the "radio"-ness of AM (think wide area listening), because short-range communications with line-of-sight signals and the capture effect of FM better ensures a captured local audience?
My own experience with a wireless provider for internet access for this laptop has pretty much
been a duplication of the old days of AM, looking around for a place where the -105 db signal will connect.
While the cellphone is full bar, a new usb stick wireless modem wouldn't connect, but the older credit-card type
would, by swiveling the antenna. Still, the only places I ever need it to work it barely ever does.
In a few select places... So I'm quite aware that where I work, the RF noise level would make streaming on a personal device
unlikely. And when it does work, it often just fades out and disconnects, while the 3G application still thinks
it's "connected" just because it can hear the tower....but it can't "hear" the laptop.
It's just like the old "deep fades" of yore on AM.
This is a fine level of service, if it's for free. But I'm paying money for it.
Where I most need it, it's the least likely to work.
So I really like the no-infrastructure basis of radio.
It's as if the someone were to suddenly suggest we stop making violins out of wood.
If you ignore such an essential part of of what radio is, in a desire to be some other kind of delivery mode,
it really does become less interesting to me.
It's nothing more than some wires, and at both ends, elaborate highspeed measuring equipment, with another elaborate system
of record-keeping and access to reproduce and describe a complex waveform at the remote end.
Huh. Not much more romatic than stringling up a mid-fi telehone network for streaming.
They tried that in Europe 70 years ago.
No, radio is a whole 'nother thing, it not just content delivery like a radio app on a sleek little pad.
It's a lot about never knowing exactly where or why the signal goes..
Nothing beats lving in Chicago for keeping track of home on AM,
and when I was on the road, well, almost anywhere in the US or Canada,
I could almost always listen to at least one Chicago station unless I was in the cancellation ring.
I just don't get it.
To me it's lot like blaming a tire for being rubber.
and the church kitchen volunteer ladies have gone home....
Can we have .54-1.7 mhz populated with not for profit stations, those who will pay full-boat for the equipment, programming,
electricity and staffing? What if they offer to bring us that all war-songs format? The all-Shakespeare station?
The all-opera station?
The 1920's-only hot jazz station?
Or any any other unserved segments of the population like those who would like to hear a little bit of everything?
Or is it simply important to eliminate the "radio"-ness of AM (think wide area listening), because short-range communications with line-of-sight signals and the capture effect of FM better ensures a captured local audience?
My own experience with a wireless provider for internet access for this laptop has pretty much
been a duplication of the old days of AM, looking around for a place where the -105 db signal will connect.
While the cellphone is full bar, a new usb stick wireless modem wouldn't connect, but the older credit-card type
would, by swiveling the antenna. Still, the only places I ever need it to work it barely ever does.
In a few select places... So I'm quite aware that where I work, the RF noise level would make streaming on a personal device
unlikely. And when it does work, it often just fades out and disconnects, while the 3G application still thinks
it's "connected" just because it can hear the tower....but it can't "hear" the laptop.
It's just like the old "deep fades" of yore on AM.
This is a fine level of service, if it's for free. But I'm paying money for it.
Where I most need it, it's the least likely to work.
So I really like the no-infrastructure basis of radio.
It's as if the someone were to suddenly suggest we stop making violins out of wood.
If you ignore such an essential part of of what radio is, in a desire to be some other kind of delivery mode,
it really does become less interesting to me.
It's nothing more than some wires, and at both ends, elaborate highspeed measuring equipment, with another elaborate system
of record-keeping and access to reproduce and describe a complex waveform at the remote end.
Huh. Not much more romatic than stringling up a mid-fi telehone network for streaming.
They tried that in Europe 70 years ago.
No, radio is a whole 'nother thing, it not just content delivery like a radio app on a sleek little pad.
It's a lot about never knowing exactly where or why the signal goes..
Nothing beats lving in Chicago for keeping track of home on AM,
and when I was on the road, well, almost anywhere in the US or Canada,
I could almost always listen to at least one Chicago station unless I was in the cancellation ring.
I just don't get it.
To me it's lot like blaming a tire for being rubber.
H
hornet61
Guest
Mark Vanness said:
why don't we just get rid of you,then this would have never come up.
Tom Wells said:
There's something very close to that in Olympia, WA: KBRD 680 AM. They play LOTS of pre '40s stuff, vaudeville, big band, hot jazz, Scott Joplin piano rolls, acoustically recorded cylinders, etc.
The kids now have a name for this stuff......."Steampunk"
http://www.kbrd.org/index.html
If we dump AM .Lets take a look of all the more broadcasting jobs that will go out the window. they should do is dump Iboc.
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