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NOW...How about 640-AM

A

amlover

HEY CC now that you have changed 105.7 and made everyone on the board here happy, how about 640am. It's current spanish sports format has NO listeners! Why have you thrown away a good frequency? You could put a good oldies format on it and gain a lot more listeners than you have now. Most of the good oldies was played on AM Radio and people will listen, anything is better than the crap on now. If not turn it off an put it out of it's misery!
 
I would love to image a station like that.. "Atlantas Class of 64". With classic hits from 55-75, and it could be done cheap..with several really strong jocks from the QXI, Z93 era..who still live in the area. Theyd do it..and actually they could VT during the week and go live only on the weekends..I do several CC stations as clients, and it would be a treat to be able to produce stuff for Atlanta.

I say "why not"..and crank the processing up on that 50,000 watts!
 
Wonderful idea. Oldies on 640. There is a huge hole in Atlanta for oldies/classic hits. Yes,WYAY filled a void when they went all news, but in doing so they created another void with no oldies outlet in a Top ten market.

Much like 1050 in New York, ESPN deportes on 640 have very few listeners. Two wastes of incredible signals. Aren't there any lower powered AM stations in Atlanta where ESPN could have their Spanish signal?..and free up 640 to really do something unique.
 
I have also heard 92.9 as possible oldies,but they have only been a sports station for six months,it takes few ratings period to gauge were the station is,they have a great signal and all their programing is live and local,what hurts them is they don't have any of the sports teams,al tought there is Nascar,it would be like adopting a stray from the animal shelter.
 
I just wonder if Cox's HD2 programming would work on 750. 95.5 covers the "Republican" part of Atlanta, so how many listeners would they lose if they split WSB's 95.5 and 750. And when 95.5 get's moved to a downtown tower there will be no need for 750. Of course the call letter swap with 98.5 would be necessary but B98.5 would work with the WSBB call letters and they might even be able to swap COLs. That would free up 750AM to play music. Then (I think) of the original 50 KW clears only 650 and 750 would be playing music at night to a nationwide audience.
 
Why not? AM is demographically challenged. Why not put a demographically (oldies) challenged format on an AM. Granted the station will never bill a great amount of $$, but the AM station could be a "extra" or "throw in" for a local advertiser.

IMHO oldies on 640 should generate better ratings than what on there now. Is there that much money in the Hispanic Demos to justify a "throw in signal"?
 
With the daytime reach of 640 there are several things that might work in CC's corner to justify a flip to oldies. First there is NO other outlet that would serve the "demographically challenged" populus, ...who can poke a hole in serving a rather large (and growing) group of people who are already conditioned to listening to AM. Older listeners do have more available cash. Properly placed spots would generate immense response from a decidedly loyal audience. Music on AM sounds technically BETTER than either Sirus or XM's swirly offerings. <------ That is embarrassing, and a fairly well engineered AM station will produce a perfectly fine music program. The production costs would be minimal. The returns would be better. There are already several regional Mexican/Spanish stations..(four on AM alone) and a few of them play music. Are we saying that music is okay on AM for Spanish speaking audiences...but 45-65 demos won't listen? Not buying that. A compelling, and fun station playing the niche songs for thousands of people is a better choice than wasting a solid 50kw (and really..not all that bad city grade 1kw at night) trying to run a satellite spanish sports format for literally a hundred or less people is a better use of the signal? Nope. I would program the station for a stipend, and make it cook. Plus locate some fun-to-listen-to jocks who know the music, who would do it for grins, and barter. C'mon CC..you guys know me. I'm not a wannabe..give this a shot!

Oh hey...who or what is holding the keys at 1550? Seems that was a decent day signal...would they LMA?
 
Don't forget that Clear Channel has that translator at 92.3 that could give an FM signal to a FEW of those that prefer their music on FM instead of AM. I say a few because that signal is pretty weak.
 
R2D2onthe air said:
Don't forget that Clear Channel has that translator at 92.3 that could give an FM signal to a FEW of those that prefer their music on FM instead of AM. I say a few because that signal is pretty weak.
Click to expand...
Someone suggested on the Radio 105.7 thread that that 92.3 translator could be used for ITP fill-in for 105.7/96.7.
 
Jeff Laurence said:
Music on AM sounds technically BETTER than either Sirius or XM's swirly offerings.
Click to expand...
The sound quality on satellite radio leaves a lot to be desired. You get less RFI on satellite. You get less signal dropout from trees on AM. It's about the same with bridges and underpasses. A well-processed AM station has about the same dynamic range, but satellite wins on frequency range. But AM doesn't have those compression artifacts ("swirl") you mention.

Sad thing is, satellite could be a lot better if they didn't try to cram so many stations into their bandwidth.
 
Also..most CC AM stations use the 7.5khz cap on ther response curves...if there's no IBOC they could widen that out, and get a truly hifi signal. Couple that with some solid aggressive processing and that 50kw would sund right good.

Seriously in many major markets CC has the licenses of many heritage AM powerhouses, and have in many cases gone to an FM signal in the same market. For many of these, a classic hits approach could keep the lights on.

But who knows?
 
I had a rental car for a couple of weeks and it had Sirius/XM....the first time I have had a real chance to listen to satellite radio. While some of the channels were interesting in terms of programming the technical side of the product is horrible! Even my kids asked what was wrong with the radio!!
I have seen numerous posts here from people who have given up their terrestrial radio stations for satellite. I can only wonder why!!
I also now have a HD radio in my truck. Those who know me have had to endure my IBOC "cheerleading" for over a month now......I think the FM technology is fantastic! It's amazing to hear the noise floor drop to 80 db on FM stations in downtown Atlanta. Just as dramatic a difference as HD on television versus analog.
ClearChannel has a great comedy channel (which is feeding the translator) and Cumulus has a pretty good format with that Christian/Country hybrid. They sound great in HD and coverage is surprisingly good.
If all the IBOC channels were used for unique niche programming you would have 30 channels of digital audio with quality that far surpasses satellite delivered audio. And it's free.....
There was one channel that sounded OK on Sirius/XM. The Howard Stern channel. What does that tell you.......??!!
 
taylorengineer said:
There was one channel that sounded OK on Sirius/XM. The Howard Stern channel. What does that tell you.......??!!
Click to expand...

Is Herman Cain on satellite? (Just had to ask... ;D)

---

Anyway, got a new slogan for oldies on AM:

"The future of AM is the past."

Keep it up. ;)
 
taylorengineer said:
I also now have a HD radio in my truck. Those who know me have had to endure my IBOC "cheerleading" for over a month now......I think the FM technology is fantastic! It's amazing to hear the noise floor drop to 80 db on FM stations in downtown Atlanta. Just as dramatic a difference as HD on television versus analog.
ClearChannel has a great comedy channel (which is feeding the translator) and Cumulus has a pretty good format with that Christian/Country hybrid. They sound great in HD and coverage is surprisingly good.
If all the IBOC channels were used for unique niche programming you would have 30 channels of digital audio with quality that far surpasses satellite delivered audio. And it's free.....
There was one channel that sounded OK on Sirius/XM. The Howard Stern channel. What does that tell you.......??!!
Click to expand...
How about this for an idea for driving HD Radio...take TV channels 5 and 6 (which aren't used much anymore because they stink for DTV) and extend the FM band down to 78MHz, but only allow digital stations on the new band. Do it now before the installed base of receivers gets too big.
 
Good idea, Jabba! As Littlejohn said a few years back, the way to make IBOC immediately successful would be to sunset analog FM broadcasting. And that would mean replacing radios.....just like we just finished doing with analog TV. That would be an excellent time to expand the band. (The same could be done on AM. Interference with adjacent channels no longer an issue with all digital. Quality would still be like satellite.....not good.)
I also forgot to mention in my rant yesterday that not only do you have to endure bad audio on satellite but you also have to listen to commercials. Lot's of them. The Blue Collar Comedy Channel had 8 minutes of commercial material between 6-7PM last Thursday. And you pay $15/monthly to listen to this??!!
The future: hybrid terrestrial and online receivers. Receivers suck down fixed content over wifi/wireless while you sleep. GPS or cellular locator so commercial matter can be geographically targeted. User interfaces offering menu choices for programming elements. A radio so smart it will know what you want, and when before even you know what you want.
Terrestrial radio is still the most efficient ONE direction delivery system - listening is unlimited using a finite amount of bandwidth. A combination of wireless ethernet and terrestrial would seem to be an efficient approach.
 
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