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Losing An Affiliate for America's Best Music

You forgot KRIB 1490/96.7 Mason City, IA, they are a 24/7 ABM affiliate....type in KRIB on the iHeart radio app.
To add on to KRIB, on Saturday mornings, they air archived hour-long shows spotlighting big band and early rock and roll music (the host of those shows died over a year ago, and the family gave the station their blessing to keep airing them), as well as two hours of all-Elvis, plus local high school sports. In addition, they commemorate the Winter Dance Party (yes…THAT Winter Dance Party) for a week each year with music from the late ‘50s and focusing on Buddy, Richie and the Big Bopper.
 
I opened my iHeart app today and one of the icons was for WNAM - America's Best Music. So I clicked it.

I got several commercials for things like Charmin tissue, clearly national spots. Then silence. Awww. iHeart hasn't taken down the WNAM icon, even if the station is now dark. The national spots run before you can hear the station. But with WNAM, there's nothing to play after the commercials are over.

Even in a large market like San Francisco, Cumulus doesn't think anything it could put on AM 560 would be worth keeping the station going. So it went dark in 2025, along with other Cumulus AM stations like 1070 in Birmingham and now 1280 in Wisconsin.
 
I opened my iHeart app today and one of the icons was for WNAM - America's Best Music. So I clicked it.

I got several commercials for things like Charmin tissue, clearly national spots. Then silence. Awww. iHeart hasn't taken down the WNAM icon, even if the station is now dark. The national spots run before you can hear the station. But with WNAM, there's nothing to play after the commercials are over.

Even in a large market like San Francisco, Cumulus doesn't think anything it could put on AM 560 would be worth keeping the station going. So it went dark in 2025, along with other Cumulus AM stations like 1070 in Birmingham and now 1280 in Wisconsin.
The only commercial format that might work on AM now, other than dollar-a-holler religion or ethnic (which Cumulus and other mega-chains don't do), is sports, preferably with home team major league or major college play-by-play. And even that is growing less tenable with each passing year. I wouldn't be surprised to see "FM required" language in affiliation contracts soon, if it's not in some of them already. If that happens, it will be time to sell to a bottom feeder for pennies on the dollar or at a loss, or turn in the license and stop the bleeding.
 


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