How long will it be before AM radio fades away?

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Quote from: Tom Wells on Today at 02:51:11

If I had stop and continually fiddle with the radio to get the signal, I wouldn't be very likely to pay money for that either. Nor would I be likely to listen for free.

It's doable, but only if the stations want to be accessed that way.

Newspapers, magazines and radio stations feel like their current status entitles them to "nail down" some space on the Internet and create something of value much like they enjoy in their home territory. You can't blame them. They spend a lot of money assembling the content they have and by putting that content in their home territory media they generate revenue. If they are nice guys and put it on the Internet for free with no toll-gates, whats in it for them? As a listener or reader of various media, I have been conditioned to expect to read some ads, listen to some announcements or do something in return for the content I consume. But what many of the would-be Internet captains-of-industry may be asking me to do too many pushups in return for the meager content they are willing to let me consume. The Internet began as some kind of "free exchange" of information and walking away from the free model is not going to be easy.

FM is barely usable on long drives, with such limited coverage areas.

That is the only advantage AM has, and then, only when listening to 50 kW blowtorches.

I know many of you have no fondness for NPR but they have evolved into a technique that all of us can study and hope to emulate. As you travel across the country and you scan from one NPR station to the next, you get some sense of continuity because features come down the net that are familiar whether you are listening in Spokane or Schenectady,
or listening in Chicago or Charlotte. Then depending on the taste and caliber of the local station you either get some local content that is golden or some local content that is only tolerable because you know one of your favorite features of NPR will be back in a few minutes.

My latest car acquisition has a button for rock, for country, for whatever, and if I have one of those pushed and hit scan, it only locks in on stations sending out the code indicating what genre they are programming. Think back to 1950 when stations were NBC, CBS, ABC or Mutual. What if back then your radio had a scan feature that said: find me a CBS station.

Well this is NOT 1954. But what if those who are doing their best to run home-town radio could choose from one of 8 or 10 affordable vendors of drop-in content. You might not be able to retrace Route 66 from Chicago to Albuquerque and hear one station the entire distance, but maybe your future car radio would allow you to scan when things begin to fade to static and find the next logical station where 40 to 60% of the content would be what you started with with the balance having compatible local flavor.

Think big, people.

When "search" becomes standard for finding streams, the big media companies will pay to show up first, just as with any other internet search, and the smaller streams will be listed on page 100, if at all.

After reading this thread as it stood last night, I turned of the machine for the day and a moment of inspiration captured me before the lights went out last night. Little do-it-yourself audio streamers working from home or even slightly more substantial facilities are the proverbial "need-in-the-haystack", not likely to be found by very many people. There may be a way the Alan McCall's of this world CAN BE FOUND.

Just for grins I Googled for: STREAMING AUDIO TALLAHASSEE FLORIDA. Then I did a similar search throwing in some other community names. Try it. You cannot believe the worthless trash and content Google (Or any other search engine) will bait the hook with. Under present conditions if I were having lunch break in the local diner and I overheard one person tell another: "I listen to this really great Streaming Audio that Alan McCall does in Florida" I would probably go blind and starve to death trying to find it on the Internet with no more info than that.

I think that is a problem we can lick. But Alan can't do it by himself. Flying Dutchman can't do it by himself up in Indiana. Bturner can't do it by himself down in Houston, and I can't do it by myself sitting here on a little plateau at the base of the Blue Ridge. But it can be done in a way that maybe the well entrenched group station owners can emulate, but they cannot shut us out.

I'm still thinking. There must be some patenting or copyrighting that needs to be done. Maybe it's trademark that is needed. I guess I have to convince myself it is worth spending a few dollars with an attorney so we can see if this gooney-bird idea will work!

 

[TheBigA]

As you travel across the country and you scan from one NPR station to the next, you get some sense of continuity because features come down the net that are familiar whether you are listening in Spokane or Schenectady, or listening in Chicago or Charlotte.

That's not exactly unique to NPR. Talk radio listeners know they will always be able to hear their favorite syndicated host from sea to shining sea. Several companies have made it possible for a similar thing to be done with music programming, whether you're talking about CC's Premium Choice or Ryan Seacrest, or various other syndicated options. And of course satellite radio provides the same programming coast to cost. For some reason, the pleasure and continuity you speak of with regards NPR gets cloaked amidst far more negative words when the same technique is applied to the commercial world.

The truth is, and I've said this many times before, that commercial radio was built on the strength of nationally distributed entertainment programming, as you mention, from NBC, CBS, ABC or Mutual. Looking back, historians call that period "the golden age of radio." They've never used that phrase since. Seems to me it was a good idea then, and it's a good idea now. But that's not how the critics see it. They also tend to like national playlists and air talent on Sirius, and national programming from NPR, but not from Clear Channel. Do I sense a double standard? Absolutely.

Back to the subject, what has kept AM radio alive these last 35 years, outside of a handful of major markets, was the explosion of nationally syndicated talk and sports talent. If not for them, AM Radio would have died 20 years ago.

 

[GeneSavage]

Just how soon do you expect this internet radio to work reliably in a car? I don't just mean on a 20 mile drive to work, I mean when can I tune in a station, and drive from Chicago to Paducah KY and not have it drop out over and over again?

How many of your listeners drive from Chicago to Paducah every day? Seriously?

I've got one (that I know of) listener here in town who listens to me all around town. He hasn't listened to a "radio" station in months, he thinks maybe years. He says dropouts and re-connections (on MY stream, anyway) happen rarely to never... certainly less often than the static & the dropouts under bridges that we put up with on AM for years, or the multipath we still put up with on FM.

Perhaps you should change providers. ;D

And when will this service be paid for completely by the advertisers, instead of by the users?

When it makes financial sense, and not before. Like ANY new industry, the money won't be there, then it will be a drip, then a trickle, then a stream, then an ocean... I never said it was there TODAY.

Then there are the servers which kick listeners off every hour or two. What a treat that is!

Any station that does this will either stop, or will NOT survive. I won't put up with that on my desktop!

Then there's the "user interface". You want me to believe that navigating through screen after screen is preferable to turning a single knob?

I cannot believe that "screen after screen" will be the way internet radio navigation will work in the future. You think today's innovations are the end of the road?

If I had stop and continually fiddle with the radio to get the signal, I wouldn't be very likely to pay money for that either. Nor would I be likely to listen for free.

The earliest radio listeners did this, and more! Early listeners ran wire all over the house, out the window and down to a drain pipe to listen. They were tied to a crystal unit that could only power a headphone so only one person could listen at a time.

Later, listeners would wait for the sun to go down so they could listen to the Grand Ole Opry, The Big 89 WLS, or Wolfman Jack drift in (and out) on the ether.

FM listeners put up with frequency drift... remember when AFCs came along because people were going CRAZY re-tuning and re-tuning their FM radios?

Remember TV viewers putting what amounted to a lightning rod on top of their roofs and yelling at their kid to tell them if "THIS LOOKS BETTER???" Remember horizontal hold?

Remember hooking your cable up to your FM radio antenna connections and tuning the radio to one frequency and your TV to MTV so you could "watch" in stereo?

How about the first big screen TVs, which required a nearly completely dark room to see clearly?

Or today's 3D TVs, which require glasses SPECIFIC TO THE MANUFACTURER for each and every viewer?

We went to the moon on a slide rule... we'll be able to overcome today's issues, too.

You're clearly not today's target of internet radio. Check back with us in five years. ;D

The model of one stream to each listener is very inefficient compared to radio broadcast, where one source can feed an unlimited number of radios.

Actually, bandwidth costs continue to come down, if you look at this long-term. Providers are afraid because HD VIDEO has become plausible over their mobile networks... and if you think streaming compressed MUSIC is inefficient, try MOVIES....

Additionally, multicast (one stream to feed many receivers) is still being developed. BBC Radio & Virgin Radio are already supporting this technology, even though the networks to support it are still rolling out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast

When "search" becomes standard for finding streams, the big media companies will pay to show up first, just as with any other internet search, and the smaller streams will be listed on page 100, if at all.

I never said there wasn't going to be a shakeout. I bet you there are thousands of cable networks (feel free to count: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cable_and_satellite_television_networks), but I'll bet you only get 200 - 400 of them on your local service, and I'll bet it's less than 25 that would come to mind if gave you 90 seconds to name all you could think of (without using Google).

Here's what I see happening:

A handful of internet radio stations will be "top tier." They'll be your NBC, your Nabisco, your Michael Jackson. They'll be everywhere, demand absolute premium prices for advertising, and generate water cooler talk. Some, perhaps many, will have been mega-broadcasters in a previous life, but NOT ALL. A smart webcaster who's working and planning today has the potential to be amongst this elite group.

Then you'll have several hundred "second tier" stations. These stations will be less well known, less widely available, and likely more niche-oriented. Some people may chose certain iRadios (or providers) because they give access to their favorite boutique stream while the other guys don't. They'll do very well, but don't look for stock options here.

Finally, you'll have the "bottom tier" of stations. This will be a HUGE list of tens and more likely hundreds of thousands of streams. It will include well meaning sound-alike stations that never got the momentum going that the top tier stations had, death polka streams, Yiddish rap stations, and kids and frustrated ex-broadcasters streaming to a handful of friends. Good luck having heard of any of them, stumbling across them, or getting a box store sales representative who will be able to tell you if XYZ streambox will pick up your favorite micro-streamer.

The internet radios (in-dash and / or home and / or portable units) will provide you with the top tier stations and a representative selection of second tier stations right out of the box. You'll be able to program your favorite stream in, but it's going to require making selection D from menu 27a, hold the RTL button for five seconds, then typing in the entire stream URL (not compatible with stations streaming in the porta-cast format)... oh, and when you replace your car battery... all of your programed presets are lost.

Most people won't touch the presets. A dozen streams nationwide will dominate, people will be aware of a couple of dozen other stations... and everybody else will be clawing and fighting to get the investment dollars and the exposure to come "pre-packaged" on these boxes.

...Actually, will it be boxes, or will it be an app you'll download to your "phone" to stream to your compatible car stereo and / or compatible home theater receiver? Perhaps you'll buy a "dummy" box that is basically an amp, speaker and a few "traditional" controls to also sync up with your phone for portable use: an internet "boom box."

I'm not sure how that part of it will play out; it will depend on the consumers and what they choose. I do believe, however, that it WILL happen.

 

[Tom Wells]

None of the above sounds as useful, convenient or effective as radio.

While I DO expect local service will work soon enough in urban areas, I'm also pretty sure that as I drive to Paducah,
the UHF services will work while I'm near Lafeyette, and maybe Terre Haute, ther will be NOTHING available between St John, Indiana and Otterbein. What about all these people? They're supposed to listen to ipods or tire noise?

I've been off the road for 1.5 years now, but expect I'll be back on the road, and driving between X and Y is still a very real
consideration for me. This is why I have less use for FM than AM.
I added line inputs to all my car radios, so getting sound into real speakers is not a problem, but getting reception will be.

I want my cellphone to be a phone, which it does well enough to suit me.
I want my radio to be radio, not 10,000 apps, one of which pretends to act like radio but expects me to pay
for the bandwidth AND still expects me to listen to commercials.
I'd much rather we return to SW outlets for major stations, with truly wide area coverage.

And the ionosphere never ever sends a monthly bill.
I have no problem with all the "inconveniences" of radio technology.
Even if the station has no live bodies around I can still tell when a thunderstorm is on the way.
And some crackles don't bother me.
AM does what it does very well. That's why it's still alive.

 

[landtuna]

We went to the moon on a slide rule...

No, we didn't. The invention and maturation of computers made space travel possible. Slide rules are not near accurate enough, nor fast enough, to have accomplished this feat. And obviously, slide rules are not control instruments.

 

[davideduardo]

I'd much rather we return to SW outlets for major stations, with truly wide area coverage.

What major stations ever had SW outlets? None did.

In fact, domestic SW service is not allowed in FCC rules.

In any case, I learned around 1967 when I looked at the ratings for an entire country's metro areas that there was no short wave listening at all. I had just purchased a station that I was doing a major market move-in on that came with an SW license; I turned the license in to the government as there was no viable economic model for using it... over 40 years ago.

And the ionosphere never ever sends a monthly bill.

It is also horribly inconsistent. Shortwave is a roll of the dice every day, but even AM is iffy. I know that at least a third of the time that I drive in the evening eastward between Redlands and the Palm Springs area in California that KFI will have horrendous interference from one or more of the Mexican stations on 640... only about 100 miles from the KFI transmiter... rendering that station unlistenable.

The ionosphere is not our friend. In another era, it was simply the only alternative. And a bad one.

AM does what it does very well. That's why it's still alive.

Barely.

 

[carolinaradio]

AM could be still considered "alive", but it is on life support. And CBS, Cox, Clear Channel, Cumulus, Citadel, Bonneville, Entercom, etc. will have it off of that in the coming years. When the local news/talker here moved to FM, the AM band esentially died.

 

[Tom Wells]

Shortwave outlets of major city AMs DID exist until the hostilities of WWII began.
They often had an "X" in there because these were considered experimental.
After the war began, the Federal government decided private parties had no business being able to transmit signals
beyond our own continent.
One voice for the "inside", one voice for the "outside". This led to the VOA.

Not that we would ever generate propaganda or anything like that....
This is also why current shortwave stations here MAY NOT target the "internal" audience.

 

[GeneSavage]

Tom, how do we make any money off of the handful of listeners like you? Goodness knows, satellite has been trying...

I don't know the real percentage, but I'm betting 95+% of the listening audience of a radio station doesn't leave the market in a typical week.

I'd also bet 99.999% of the listeners the local radio station's local advertisers care about, don't. (Tourist traps excluded.)

I think it's sweet you want radio to program directly to you, but that's not how it works. As somebody here has said in their signature, "you're better off with an iPod."

 

[davideduardo]

Shortwave outlets of major city AMs DID exist until the hostilities of WWII began.
They often had an "X" in there because these were considered experimental.

The experimental operations were FM stations, on the 47 mHz band before W.W. II.

If you look at...

http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive Whites/Whites Vol 17 No 3 May-June 1940.pdf

...and go to page 17 you can see that the SW operations were not rebroadcasting AMs, but running international services for CBS, NBC, General Electric, etc.

If you browse the Broadcasting Magazine issues from the late 30's into the early 40's, you can also see that much of the Short Wave broadcasting was aimed at Latin America and run by the major networks and the programming was not a simulcast of the AMs of the day. They did not have "X" in the calls, either.

http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive Radex/Radex 135 January 1940.pdf has a listing of all the early FM stations.

 

[Tom Wells]

I'm better off with my own Part 15 AM, but it's as labor intensive as an mp3 device.
It does sound a heck of a lot better, as mp3 devices all suffer from dead air and poor randomization ( and no reverb ).
It requires me to continually feed new music and spots in, as I'll always want more and more songs in my format,
which is "Greasy" radio, radio for the "juvenile delinquent within". Plus some of everything else.
Now when AM dies and I can run the 500 watt xmitter doing nothing currently, so that I can cover 1 or 2 counties, I'll be
set. Not everybody feels the highest purpose in life (or use of technology) is to make money.
Making money is a means to an end, not the end purpose.

Slavish dedication to the bottom line dehumanizes everything it touches. Radio included.

I don't run a radio station to make money, but to make radio.
Satellite never even tried to appeal to me.
The decades channels were born moribund. As if old people were always old...where was the hot, fast and loud stuff on the 40s channel? It wasn't there at all! What about the hot, fast and loud stuff from the 20's and 30s?
They never even bothered with those channels, let alone the hot, fast and loud stuff from those years.
Here's your blinders, go eat what we've served up.

CFZM is a real gem on AM. I'll listen to something mellow as long as I know there's going to be some wild stuff.
And I enjoy hearing someone dig up 'Oh wow" tunes. Almost more than anything else.
Even if it's mellow.

I DON'T want radio to program directly to me. That's my point. I'm not alone in feeling this way,
just part of a large unserved audience.

If only WFMU had a 50 kw AM ND service, we'd be making progress.

Shortwave outlets of major city AMs DID exist until the hostilities of WWII began.
They often had an "X" in there because these were considered experimental.

The experimental operations were FM stations, on the 47 mHz band before W.W. II.

If you look at...

http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive Whites/Whites Vol 17 No 3 May-June 1940.pdf

...and go to page 17 you can see that the SW operations were not rebroadcasting AMs, but running international services for CBS, NBC, General Electric, etc.

If you browse the Broadcasting Magazine issues from the late 30's into the early 40's, you can also see that much of the Short Wave broadcasting was aimed at Latin America and run by the major networks and the programming was not a simulcast of the AMs of the day. They did not have "X" in the calls, either.

http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive Radex/Radex 135 January 1940.pdf has a listing of all the early FM stations.

I'm sure this is correct, but....in the early 30's....

I'll have to look at some of my old publications as well, but I believe the FM operations were a different thing.
A 1935 Midwest radio I sold a few years back that was AM only went up to 35 mhz or so, and I'm pretty sure there were experimental
AM shortwave ops with total rebroadcast of MW services intended for wide area reception of such stations for daytime use,
as some folks wanted to hear major market signals without waiting for sundown and skywave to work on MW.

 

[davideduardo]

I'm sure this is correct, but....in the early 30's....

I'll have to look at some of my old publications as well, but I believe the FM operations were a different thing.
A 1935 Midwest radio I sold a few years back that was AM only went up to 35 mhz or so, and I'm pretty sure there were experimental
AM shortwave ops with total rebroadcast of MW services intended for wide area reception of such stations for daytime use,
as some folks wanted to hear major market signals without waiting for sundown and skywave to work on MW.

See the 1933 listing at http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive Whites/Whites Vol 10 No 4 Midwinter 1933-34.pdf on page 28 you will see the experimental relay stations. Note that they were owned by a handful of operators who were using them as relay transmitters to convey programming from one station to another.

There were shortwave stations in other places (the legendary HCJB began in 1931) but the very reason that US clear channel stations were created also caused the FCC to not license domestic shortwave for the simulcasting of AM stations.

Look through the nearly 200 issues of Radex and White's Radio log at http://www.davidgleason.com/Radio_Archives.htm and see for yourself.

You can also look at the 1935 Broadcasting Yearbook from the same page and see that no mention is made of shortwave under the listing of any AM station in the country.

 

[Tom Wells]

See the 1933 listing at http://www.davidgleason.com/Archive Whites/Whites Vol 10 No 4 Midwinter 1933-34.pdf on page 28 you will see the experimental relay stations. Note that they were owned by a handful of operators who were using them as relay transmitters to convey programming from one station to another.

Yes, these are the stations I'm referring to.
Despite the intent of the companies, people were listening to these directly in the heyday of SW, just as people put up huge sat dishes
at one time to watch network TV feeds directly before they were encrypted.
That is why they show up in the radio guide.
Radio companies hardly needed a guide to know where their own signals were.
I will find some of my magazines from those days, where avid listeners praised the coming of wide area reception in daytime, despite the well known vagaries of the ionosphere. I suppose photobucket will work to post scans of these. Haven't ever tried it yet.
If you have a better suggestion? I'd be happy to see them archived on your site, instead of only being available in my basement.

 

[Tom Wells]

Here's a scan of one of the covers of Radio-Craft...but the only thing I have saved to this computer.

http://s1226.photobucket.com/albums/ee406/thomaswells3/?action=view&current=diatherm.jpg

Boy, this wireless internet thingy sure has some deep fades this morning!

 

[davideduardo]

Here's a scan of one of the covers of Radio-Craft...but the only thing I have saved to this computer.

Interesting... one of the Hugo Gernsback magazines I was not very familiar with. It's a sidebar, certainly, to this thread, but what an "amazing" person Gernsback was... the father of modern science fiction and the person the Hugo awards are named after. And deserving of a visit to http://www.gernsback.com/ because it's impossible to describe his career in a line or two.

 

[Lee Rust]

Thanks for the link to Gernsback. Many of us old-tech types grew up devoted to one or more of his magazines. Who do you think is an equivalent character for the present?

 

[carolinaradio]

OK, here's an interesting question:

What will happen in the larger markets? CBS has 3 AM's in NYC. Would they blow up their three FM's to simulcast the AM's? What about Philadelphia, where CBS has more AM stations than FM's?
Perhaps we would see a trend where AM stays fairly viable longer in the large markets, while it dies in the others?

I'm all for AM going to FM. I'm under 30 and hate dealing with AM (fortunately, there's nothing left on that band around here).

 

[davideduardo]

Thanks for the link to Gernsback. Many of us old-tech types grew up devoted to one or more of his magazines. Who do you think is an equivalent character for the present?

Gernsback was the type of individual that may not exist today. His science fiction magazines literally developed a type of literature, while the technical ones showed the use and deployment of the newest inventions. All his publications asked the question "what if?" in either practical or theoretical terms.

If we look at Jobs or Gates, there is... or has been... the belief in new technology as a builder of dreams. But that connection of fantasy with reality that narrowed the borders between doable and dreamable is not something I see any of today. Maybe we can blame that on the recession, too!

 

[davideduardo]

OK, here's an interesting question:

What will happen in the larger markets? CBS has 3 AM's in NYC. Would they blow up their three FM's to simulcast the AM's? What about Philadelphia, where CBS has more AM stations than FM's?
Perhaps we would see a trend where AM stays fairly viable longer in the large markets, while it dies in the others?

NY, CHicago, LA and San Francisco have more sustainable levels of AM listening and decent signals to put programming on... which is why the average for AM share is around 20%. When you compare with, say, Indianapolis, the AM share is around 5%, and this is an example of those markets that don't have a single viable AM.

In the long run, listener demographics will demand a shift to FM, or the AM formats will just gradually decline but over a period of many years. THis does not have to be decided by the end of this week.