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Saving AM Radio

Hyrum said:
As an old person not used to those new fangled gadgets I don't understand exactly how people make millions of dollars out of EweTube (farm videos of sheep?) I do know that making money in that method is much like becoming a big screen star. Thousands will audition and two will make it. It is not as lucrative as the guys submitting videos in hopes of fame and fortune wish it were
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Content providers who generate huge views get payments. But YouTube gets its revenue from subscriptions and ads.

In the niche area, there are a number of YouTube computer product reviewers who try video cards, motherboards, SSDs, RAM, M.2 memory modules, HDs, power supplies, keyboards, mouses, water coolers and the like who make a good income doing little 10-12 minute reviews of such items. They only may get a few thousand views on each review, but those are from motivated buyers and they get a good income from doing that all day long!
 
vchimpanzee said:
Most of the stations I listen to have short frequent commercial breaks. They don't bother me and some of the commercials are even entertaining.
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I agree with you about the frequent short breaks.On another thread, people were talking about WNCI in Columbus.Having 20 minute stop sets and as usual, people were saying."Well, they need to make money".Blah blah. yes they do but they don't have to do it all in one twenty minute period.
 
TheBigA said:
Fine. Then pay for an ad-free subscription. It's up to you. Listen to non-commercial radio. The choices are there.
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I chose to buy a Part 15 AM transmitter and program my own station. It's a lot of work *just* to listen to music, which I can do just as easily with a streaming service such as YouTube, Spotify, etc., but I get everything I want out of it, and it will never flip, go permanently dark or play anything I don't like!

And I can listen to it on a regular radio for nostalgia's sake, too, as that's how I first discovered much of my favorite music 15+ years ago.

c
 
cc333 said:
I chose to buy a Part 15 AM transmitter and program my own station. It's a lot of work *just* to listen to music, which I can do just as easily with a streaming service such as YouTube, Spotify, etc., but I get everything I want out of it, and it will never flip, go permanently dark or play anything I don't like!
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That's a choice, and it appears that creating the Part 15 and programming it is a big part of t he satisfaction of hearing your own music selections and lists.

Personally, I don't program music and entertainment unless there is a transfer of money to my account. I enjoy programming, but not as a hobby. So you and I do things from different perspectives.

As I have said over and over in recent threads of this type, you are what researchers call "outliers" and you will never be happy with non-personalized radio formats... so we don't event try!
 
BruceB said:
I agree with you about the frequent short breaks.On another thread, people were talking about WNCI in Columbus.Having 20 minute stop sets and as usual, people were saying."Well, they need to make money".Blah blah. yes they do but they don't have to do it all in one twenty minute period.
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The reason for the long stop sets is to hold the listener through at least one or more fifteen-minute periods in a row. Rolling one or two large breaks in an hour gives the modern on-the-go listener a better chance of staying around the longest stretch. Breaking up an hour with more short breaks allows the listener more chances to tune out.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Most of the stations I listen to have short frequent commercial breaks. They don't bother me and some of the commercials are even entertaining.
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Just remember that the fewer the commercials on a station, the less advertising revenue the station is getting, and the more likely it is that a format change will be on the horizon.
 
Kelly A said:
The reason for the long stop sets is to hold the listener through at least one or more fifteen-minute periods in a row. Rolling one or two large breaks in an hour gives the modern on-the-go listener a better chance of staying around the longest stretch. Breaking up an hour with more short breaks allows the listener more chances to tune out.
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I know we're all different but if I'm in the car, I am not going to stay with one radio station that plays commercials for 20 minutes in a row.Not gonna happen.Other people don't mind. I get that.
 
BruceB said:
No that came from another thread about
WNCI Columbus. Apparently they do it frequently. I don't know how many others do it,but it is an iHeart station so I doubt that they are unique in the chain.
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I was part of that thread. We discovered and reported that it only happened once. Most likely making up spots missed in a previous hour. We presented the clock for the Ryan Seacrest show that factually showed that there are only 12 minutes of commercials in every hour, broken up in two 6-minute groups. So it's incorrect to say it happens "frequently." It does not.
 
DavidEduardo said:
That's a choice, and it appears that creating the Part 15 and programming it is a big part of t he satisfaction of hearing your own music selections and lists.
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Yes, it is. Basically, I wanted to hear the music as it first appeared to me over the radio, which, incidentally, happened to be primarily over AM (I witnessed, apparently, the last gasp of oldies/classic hits and adult standards on mainstream commercial AM radio in San Francisco (KFRC 610 and KABL 960, respectively), and I enjoyed every minute of it). The music is mostly on FM now, but none of it is anything I care much for. I also don't care much for the sterility of online streams like Spotify et al (having infinite choices is all fine and good, but sometimes "Less Is More"), so I for all intents and purposes I made up my own stream, which happens to also be over the air :)

DavidEduardo said:
Personally, I don't program music and entertainment unless there is a transfer of money to my account. I enjoy programming, but not as a hobby. So you and I do things from different perspectives.
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You've been in the business most of your life and you've accomplished quite a bit in that time, so you deserve to be paid for your efforts. I wouldn't mind getting there myself someday with whatever I do (be it programming/operating a radio station or something else), but for now, given that I'm interested in learning how to program a radio station, but lack the means and opportunity (and, to a point, education and experience) to pursue a job at an actual station, I figured I'd have some fun building and programming my own. I was very excited when I discovered in early 2021 that legally broadcasting on AM without a license via Part 15 was a thing, or else I'd have done it years ago.

DavidEduardo said:
As I have said over and over in recent threads of this type, you are what researchers call "outliers" and you will never be happy with non-personalized radio formats... so we don't event try!
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Yup. I'm "one of those" :)

Based on my likes and interests, I feel like I seem to have more in common with Boomers and Gen X than I do Millennials (of which generation I'm a member). It's no coincidence, therefore, that I like music of the 50s through the 70s best, and that the average age of many of my friends is 65+.

Thus, 98% of all radio stations trying to target everyone younger than 65+ are of virtually no interest to me at all.

Anyway, for a feeble attempt to make all this somewhat relevant to the topic of this thread (sure...), I have a feeling that hobby stations might be the future of AM at this point, since the band is pretty much useless for anything else, and once all the commercial stations go dark, what else could the band be used for? The Netherlands or some such northern country opened up the AM band to hobbyists, and it's "working", so there's precedent for this idea....

c
 
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cc333 said:
Based on my likes and interests, I feel like I seem to have more in common with Boomers and Gen X than I do Millennials (of which generation I'm a member). It's no coincidence, therefore, that I like music of the 50s through the 70s best, and that the average age of many of my friends is 65+.
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Are these guys some of your friends? 😀
IMG_1592.jpeg
 
BruceB said:
I know we're all different but if I'm in the car, I am not going to stay with one radio station that plays commercials for 20 minutes in a row.Not gonna happen.Other people don't mind. I get that.
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Setting aside that BigA explained that 20 minute stopset in the other thread ...

One result of the changes in ratings methodology that the PPM brought about is that stations often all take their breaks at the same points in the hour and for similar lengths of time.

So I am curious: If you aren't going to stay with one station and switch away when the stopset starts, what do you do when every other station you switch to is also in a commercial break?
 
K.M. Richards said:
Setting aside that BigA explained that 20 minute stopset in the other thread ...

One result of the changes in ratings methodology that the PPM brought about is that stations often all take their breaks at the same points in the hour and for similar lengths of time.

So I am curious: If you aren't going to stay with one station and switch away when the stopset starts, what do you do when every other station you switch to is also in a commercial break?
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I was talking about exceptionally long stop sets.four or five minutes is not going to bother me.
And if it does, there is always WDPR the non com Classical station.
 
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DavidEduardo said:
Unfortunately, those things that are timeless are unknown today to many. I'll betcha that a lot of people think that a "Hienlein" is really a "Hineline" and a new brand of Chinese EV.
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Or maybe Milton Hinlein, who was the founder of KDRO-TV in Sedalia, Missouri (now KMOS), which may be the only TV station that went from being an independent, to being an ABC affiliate, then to a CBS affiliate, and finally and currently to a PBS member station!
 
cc333 said:
I have a feeling that hobby stations might be the future of AM at this point, since the band is pretty much useless for anything else, and once all the commercial stations go dark, what else could the band be used for? The Netherlands or some such northern country opened up the AM band to hobbyists, and it's "working", so there's precedent for this idea....
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It was the Netherlands, though those stations can also accept commercials. I haven't heard one that does, and some of them no longer appear to be functioning. Radiozenders in Nederland / Radio stations in the Netherlands — Radiomap.eu is a decent source of listings that include such stations, as well as FM and DAB.
 
Mark Roberts said:
It was the Netherlands, though those stations can also accept commercials. I haven't heard one that does, and some of them no longer appear to be functioning. Radiozenders in Nederland / Radio stations in the Netherlands — Radiomap.eu is a decent source of listings that include such stations, as well as FM and DAB.
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Ah, OK.

I can imagine a similar model "working" in the US when the time comes. As I mentioned, the AM band is useless for anything else, so why not?

c
 
Do advertisers research or know when a station's coverage map is moth eaten or like Swiss cheese due to noise and interference? What counts is whether advertising on that station brings more customers to their store or more subscribers to their magazine or paper, etc. or more orders to there mail order headquarters or Amazon account or whatever.

There are still enough AM radios around and enough AM stations on the air that I believe the band should not be closed down or repurposed and definitely not administered to favor one or a few specific interests including iBiquity.

Is an internet stream a continuous data stream that anyone can join in progress? Or is it an entity that yields a separate data stream from the source to each person connected to it (here, "listener")? I would continue to listen to a radio receiver that runs for an unlimited time without the need to subscribe at cost or to purhase additional anytime minutes on a phone plan or additional blocks of data on an internet plan.
 
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