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How Boston AM's will either go silent, or already are?

R

Retro

Just following up on some reading, and it seems like, at least in other markets, AM stations that are both silent and the owner cannot find a buyer, so they end up surrendering their licenses to the FCC instead.

This city has a real lot of dead weight AM's. Which stations are likely to end up suffering this fate also?
 
WMEX seems like an obvious candidate.
 
Ed Perry will never let WMEX and the translator that will eventually go with it go dark

You'll see WPLM AM go dark long before WMEX AM

Now some of the dolla a holla stations WUNR, WLYN WAZN WESX and a few others.... how they have hung on this long is beyond me
 
MRBIboredop said:
Ed Perry will never let WMEX and the translator that will eventually go with it go dark

You'll see WPLM AM go dark long before WMEX AM

Now some of the dolla a holla stations WUNR, WLYN WAZN WESX and a few others.... how they have hung on this long is beyond me
Click to expand...
WUNR is a money maker. Always has been. They have no trouble selling the block programming to ethnic broadcasters. WESX and JDA seem to be doing fine ith there Spanish religious programming.
 
Trying to remember if ads run on MeTV Music (run by the MeTVFM folks)

Justice has a younger partner.
Gary Leavitt has 'sponsors' on his show to pay himself back. He and Nick Ristuccia do a
rundown of them in a segment. Where the
meat falls off the bone...

RadioBusinessReport:"Who’s the buyer?
It’s L&J Media LLC, which is agreeing to purchase WMEX and unbuilt FM translator W266DQ in Waymouth (sic), Mass., from Marshfield Broadcasting.The transaction is valued at $390,000, and a $50,000 check is due upon closing. Then, 34 equal payments of $10,000 will commence.Marshfield is led by Ed Perry Jr., while the buyer is a 50/50 partnership between Anthony LaGreca and Larry Justice."
www.rbr.com

Justice Served: WMEX’s New Owner Is Its ’60s-Era Morning Man | Radio & Television Business Report

For a generation of Boston radio listeners, the call letters are very familiar. Today, WMEX is associated with a Class D AM at 1510 kHz licensed to Quincy, Mass. Now, this incarnation of WMEX is about to be sold. Who's the buyer?
www.rbr.com www.rbr.com
 
vmorrison99 said:
I can not recall ever hearing a commercial on the new WMEX.
Click to expand...
You're not listening closely or often enough. During their live daytime programming, every hour they do spot breaks just before the top of the hour and bottom of the hour. There are always at least one or two commercials in each break. Some may be packages with WATD, but there are at least a few commercials per hour during the live programming.
 
My question is which AM is the first to go all digital? Once that happens, quality of the signal can increase and interference can decrease. However, a few things. Although many car makers are adding HD Radio, the majority of the population don't have HD Radios in their cars or homes.

The next issue becomes the format of these stations. Particularly, we now have digital AM stations with better sound and range. Right now, AM in Boston is WBZ-AM, the talk radio stations, Oldies, national sports talk (WEEI-AM running 24/7 ESPN Radio), foreign language stations, and religious stations. Many of these repeat on HD-2/3 on FM and FM Translators. What programming is out there that could benefit from Digital AM? So now we have an AM band that sounds nearly as good as FM, with less interference. What do we add and remove from it? Sure, WBZ 1030 would benefit. As of now, WRKO would too. How many more will? How many FM formats didn't pan out? Would those have a shot on AM? Could there be life for an Amp Radio on Digital AM? How about an Alt format? The list goes on.

I know I shifted gears from the main topic; but in my mind, the next logical step is digital. However, where it can revitalize the band, I don't see where it will help programming. We would need to find a reason for people to flip to AM, where virtually most people don't even recognize that AM exists.
 
People can hear such stations if they stream (Bittner's in MA and ME do not) if their car has bluetooth capability or with a cord connecting to
a 1/16th inch plug...or a mini FM translator beaming to an open spot on the FM dial. How.many listeners to the RKO or BZ talk shows do it via stream? Same with a workplace. Listen to streaming beamed to a bluetooth speaker or a small radio with bluetooth capability...or with headphones on your smartphone.

WMEX with its oldies and a couple talk shows is available via streaming.
There's your religious or foreign language stations...
The likes of WRKO and WEEI AM have to deal with signal problems at night; high tension wire or thunderstorm interference...but WRKO streams and maybe WEEI AM does too. Non Sox baseball playoffs may well wind up on WEEI AM
in many cases but people might get those online too.
I used to have XM but gave it up. Those who do
have satellite radio can get all those bsseball playoffs via streaming on the XM app.

We haven't had a government order to switch all AM stations to digital.If that happened people would have to get HD radios _with the AM band_ to get AM.How many HD radios have AM and I don't mean "WRKO on 100.7 HD2" I mean the actual AM band..? Would people bother or would they just use streaming on smartphones?
Or suppose you had some AMs switch to digital. So most AMs don't but your AM does (digital only) so only those with HD can pick you up.
Or they can just hear your stream on their smartphones.
 
Last edited:
raccoonradio said:
People can hear such stations if they stream (Bittner's in MA and ME do not) if their car has bluetooth capability or with a cord connecting to
a 1/16th inch plug...or a mini FM translator beaming to an open spot on the FM dial. How.many listeners to the RKO or BZ talk shows do it via stream? Same with a workplace. Listen to streaming beamed to a bluetooth speaker or a small radio with bluetooth capability...or with headphones on your smartphone.

WMEX with its oldies and a couple talk shows is available via streaming.
There's your religious or foreign language stations...
The likes of WRKO and WEEI AM have to deal with signal problems at night; high tension wire or thunderstorm interference...but WRKO streams and maybe WEEI AM does too. Non Sox baseball playoffs may well wind up on WEEI AM
in many cases but people might get those online too.
I used to have XM but gave it up. Those who do
have satellite radio can get all those bsseball playoffs via streaming on the XM app.

We haven't had a government order to switch all AM stations to digital.If that happened people would have to get HD radios _with the AM band_ to get AM.How many HD radios have AM and I don't mean "WRKO on 100.7 HD2" I mean the actual AM band..? Would people bother or would they just use streaming on smartphones?
Or suppose you had some AMs switch to digital. So most AMs don't but your AM does (digital only) so only those with HD can pick you up.
Or they can just hear your stream on their smartphones.
Click to expand...
Those points are what I was getting at, which is essentially AM is DOA. To make it technologically viable, the trick is to go digital. But, it's a graveyard aside from a couple of stations (which already repeated on HD-2 FM signals), so there is the issue of programming on a digital AM station. Then there's the issue of not many people having access to an HD Radio to pick up the digital AM signal.

I think programming is the biggest issue. There has been little to attract anyone to AM in years. Now "it sounds like FM." Ok? So how do we attract listeners who can pick it up? How do we attract listeners who can't pick it up to get HD radios that pick up digital AM? Or, do we let AM go? I vote to let it go.
 
Least said:
Those points are what I was getting at, which is essentially AM is DOA. To make it technologically viable, the trick is to go digital. But, it's a graveyard aside from a couple of stations (which already repeated on HD-2 FM signals), so there is the issue of programming on a digital AM station. Then there's the issue of not many people having access to an HD Radio to pick up the digital AM signal.

I think programming is the biggest issue. There has been little to attract anyone to AM in years. Now "it sounds like FM." Ok? So how do we attract listeners who can pick it up? How do we attract listeners who can't pick it up to get HD radios that pick up digital AM? Or, do we let AM go? I vote to let it go.
Click to expand...
Let it go, like international shortwave broadcasting, or longwave in Europe, which is down to a handful of stations. Putting formats on digital AM that have failed on commercial FM or musical niches that have never been tried there and only exist on noncommercial FM, few of them full-time, is pouring money down the drain, especially if they're to be done right and not just as a jukebox in a closet.

Electronics manufacturers and retailers have no interest in producing or marketing home receivers capable of receiving digital AM, and consumer haven't been buying radios in meaningful numbers for a couple of decades now.
 
Digital AM?

AM Stereo failed due to lack of support from radio manufacturers and car makers

Name me ONE AM HD station in this market?

WBZ-A shut off their HD encoder long ago

Not that that is a bad thing if you are a DX'er, at night AM HD splash over (for lack of a better term) could interfere with stations hundreds of miles away.... remember when AM HD was a daylight only operation?

We can't get people to embrace FM HD after over a decade of availability

I like having WBZ A , WRKO and now AM1200 available on FM as a HD2 or HD3

I have 2 in market FM's programmed in my tuner, WZLX and WROR, and when I tune iin to one of those stations, and about 7 seconds goes by and the HD light on the tuner comes on, it is amazing how much better the sound is.... think of the transition from mono to stereo when you get a weak signal to pick up the 19Khz signal, and multiply that 5 fold.. that is IMHO the effect of FM Stereo to HD transitioning

Lets work on getting HD radio into the mainstream before we obsolete millions of AM radios
 
Least said:
I think programming is the biggest issue. There has been little to attract anyone to AM in years.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, how about WBZ? When people have the option of the same programming on FM, they choose FM.

What programming on AM would cause people to choose it over other media? There WAS great programming on AM, but the audience deserted it for FM because it sounded better. That hasn't changed. If fact AM sound quality has gotten worse. Its obvious that better programming won't change anything unless the audio quality improves. Too many better options.
 
TheBigA said:
Hmmm, how about WBZ? When people have the option of the same programming on FM, they choose FM.

What programming on AM would cause people to choose it over other media? There WAS great programming on AM, but the audience deserted it for FM because it sounded better. That hasn't changed. If fact AM sound quality has gotten worse. Its obvious that better programming won't change anything unless the audio quality improves. Too many better options.
Click to expand...
Again, go back and read my earlier posts. I listed WBZ and WRKO. Two stations don't make an entire band.
 
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