New Member Intro

[MarkT]

Hi, all. My name is Mark and I'm in Akron, Ohio. I've been a talk radio junkie for about 50 years, here and in Cleveland where I grew up. Local AM (and even a local FM talk station), AM DX and shortwave (remember shortwave radio?). I even used to listen to Iron Mike on the local NOAA weather radio station for hours on end when I was a kid just to have a (sorta) human voice in the background. I was on CB when CB was big, did a podcast for a year or two and I had my Tech amateur license for awhile but I always liked listening more than talking. I still play around with Software Defined Radio and I keep threatening to get my ham license again.

I'm here to find out what other people think about terrestrial AM radio, who's listening to what and to get a little 'inside baseball' information on the radio industry in the US.

 

[secondchoice]

Welcome
As to the status of AM, there are a few outliers but the AM band is a hard place to make money. A very large percentage of AMs are there just because they are required to legally "feed audio" to a FM translator. The overall decline in broadcasting revenue has made it even worse. Since there is limited revenue, a lot of antenna grounding systems have been victims of "deferred" or no maintaince. The FCC allowed various equipment in the US that has raised the noise floor. I would venture to say if the FCC allowed AM stations with FM translators to shut down the AM and be guaranteed their current FM signal to be "protected" from future allocations and nearby stations increasing power at least 90% would ditch the AM.

The overall status of radio is diminished by an overall redirection of advertising to the Internet, and Wall Street's funding of over leveraged radio companies that have had to declare Bankruptcy with the slightest downturn of revenue. I wouldn't advise anyone under 30 to work in radio with the intention of retirement in the business.