Saving AM Radio

[ted chittenden]

FCC Chair Brendan Carr Supports AM Radio Mandate, Calls It ‘Vital’ Technology.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr voiced his support for efforts underway in Congress to require carmakers to keep AM radio in vehicle dashboards, calling the service “vital” during a Wednesday appearance

www.insideradio.com

Here is the FCC's response to AM Radio during a hearing in the US House.

While I support the initiative to require AM radio in cars, I think some of Mr. Carr's other comments vis-a-vis public radio, diversity, freedom of the press, and the relationships between individual broadcasters and network affiliations are really trying to paint white black and black white. Then again, this is what his boss wants...

 

[bossbill]

I'm not understanding the focus on AM radio as a "vital communication technology", or the concept of AM radio even being viable moving forward. As AM stations are signing off across the country, how can we rely on AM for communicating during time of need? Since AM radio is unable to support itself economically, how can we rely on it moving forward? FM is more efficient, and already what the broad base listens to. FM has much more predicable coverage 24/7. AM is great if you want Seattle listeners to hear the overnight messages from Mason City, Iowa... but not worth a sh-t if you live in East King County WA.

 

[ted chittenden]

I'm not understanding the focus on AM radio as a "vital communication technology", or the concept of AM radio even being viable moving forward. As AM stations are signing off across the country, how can we rely on AM for communicating during time of need? Since AM radio is unable to support itself economically, how can we rely on it moving forward? FM is more efficient, and already what the broad base listens to. FM has much more predicable coverage 24/7. AM is great if you want Seattle listeners to hear the overnight messages from Mason City, Iowa... but not worth a sh-t if you live in East King County WA.

What you're missing is that there are still places in the United States, particularly in the western part of the contiguous states and in the state of Alaska, where FM coverage is spotty at best, mainly due to terrain issues. Because the longer waves used on AM follow the curvature of the earth, AM signals, especially on lower frequencies, can get in to many of the places in these areas where FM cannot go.

The other thing to keep in mind here is EAS. Before removing AM entirely, the FCC would have to create a new list of primary stations to listen to in case of emergencies. Because FM signals do not travel as far as AM signals, despite their more predictable coverages, the FCC would most likely have to at least double the number of stations used for the EAS service to cover the vast majority of the areas served now by AM radio frequencies.

 

[TomásEstefan]

What you're missing is that there are still places in the United States, particularly in the western part of the contiguous states and in the state of Alaska, where FM coverage is spotty at best, mainly due to terrain issues. Because the longer waves used on AM follow the curvature of the earth, AM signals, especially on lower frequencies, can get in to many of the places in these areas where FM cannot go.

The other thing to keep in mind here is EAS. Before removing AM entirely, the FCC would have to create a new list of primary stations to listen to in case of emergencies. Because FM signals do not travel as far as AM signals, despite their more predictable coverages, the FCC would most likely have to at least double the number of stations used for the EAS service to cover the vast majority of the areas served now by AM radio frequencies.

You're absolutely right. As I've mentioned previously, here in SoCal, although the majority of news listeners are probably tuned to KNX at 97.1 FM, KNX's massive AM signal at 1070 covers more than twice the radius of the FM and gets into canyons and various nooks and crannies that the FM can't.

 

[davideduardo]

If you were on a task force assigned by the FCC to help save AM Radio, what recommendations would you make?

• Remove the requirement for translators tied to AMs to maintain the associated AM on the air; create a new and permanent A2 or some such class for FMs of that type.
• By allowing AMs that are only on the air to keep the FM with a protected license while closing the AM itself, many other AMs might be able to do simple power increases without complicated directional antennae.
• Change the night skywave protection rules to allow interference between stations anywhere outside a reasonable groundwave coverage area, such as 1 to 2 mV/m.
• Allow an easy "migration" of AM daytimers to vacated fulltime channels without opening up for cross-filings.
• Allow easy 1 to 2 step processes for an AM that wants to survive to take over a vacated channel or frequency if the resultant change would result in less complicated directionals and fewer daytimers.
• Open a window limited only to existing stations wanting to change which includes deals with other stations that want to cede facilities or change them to make the other station more viable.
• Eliminate minimum signal rules for surviving AMs that want to relocate even if the "city of license" coverage is not in compliance with today's rules; ideally, license "changed " AMs to the Metro area and not to specific towns.

 

[radiofan2023]

What you're missing is that there are still places in the United States, particularly in the western part of the contiguous states and in the state of Alaska, where FM coverage is spotty at best, mainly due to terrain issues.

Even so, @SomeRadioGuy took 2 AM signals silent in the last several years.

 

[davideduardo]

My only "but" to that is that the programming is not what killed AM. The companies were still pouring money into live talent. Ultimately the sound on FM was obviously better. Plus the music was changing. and that provided the content for more stations.

Again, in most markets, few (none in some cases) AMs have a useful (10 mV/m at least) signal over the market day and night. So, in addition to audio quality, the biggest issue for most AMs in most metros is that they do not cover the entire market day and night.

 

[ted chittenden]

Even so, @SomeRadioGuy took 2 AM signals silent in the last several years.

While you are correct as far as you go, it should be noted that to maintain roughly the same coverage as the two AM stations did, Someradioguy had to apply for and operate an additional (I think it's 6) FM radio stations; and even with those, he still doesn't have the full coverage that his two AM stations did when they were on the air.

To keep AM stations on the air for emergencies, I think I'd follow (mostly) the advice laid out by David Eduardo in the post above yours. I might also consider opening talks with Canada and Mexico about removing the current air band, shrinking the VHF police and scanner band slightly, and creating an additional FM frequency band from 108.1-137.9 kHz and using that, at least initially, only for U.S. AM stations who wish to migrate to FM. (I don't think that most FM broadcasters would appreciate new Class A AMs two spots away from their position on the current FM dial, and I think it could be possible to use computers and satellites for air traffic control--but what do I know.)

 

[cc333]

I might also consider opening talks with Canada and Mexico about removing the current air band, shrinking the VHF police and scanner band slightly, and creating an additional FM frequency band from 108.1-137.9 kHz and using that, at least initially, only for U.S. AM stations who wish to migrate to FM.

That's a fine idea, but since it would require new radios that can tune that expanded band, and people aren't buying them so much anymore, how can it succeed? People will simply stream from their phones instead.

Brazil I believe has done something similar by expanding the lower end of their FM band down to 76 MHz, and I think they've been having trouble getting people to buy new radios.

c

 

[yeoldeschool]

The negative effects of shrinking the commercial aviation band would be intolerable to that community. The VHF aircraft band is also an international allocation. 108-118 MHz in particular is home to aeronavigational VOR and ILS.

If the goal was finding spectrum with approximately the same propagation and building penetration characteristics as 88-108 MHz (meaning that nobody would want a new broadcast band up in the UHF, sub-microwave, or even GHz ranges), then the only real choices I see -- in terms of spectrum that's largely now empty -- would all fall within the 30-50 MHz and 150-160 MHz regions. Those areas of the VHF spectrum were once home to most state and local civil service agencies as well as to countless private entities with a need for handheld-to-handheld communications and/or base/mobile dispatch (taxi cabs, tow trucks, public utility repair crews, event security, etc.). Today, those bands are mostly quiet, with smart trunking and digital systems on higher frequencies having drawn most of their former users away from them. However, there are still enough legacy users of those frequencies (especially in the 150-160 MHz portion) that nudging them along to other pastures would easily take a decade. After all, it wouldn't be possible to order them to just replace their radio fleets outright overnight. All the licensees affected would need a lengthy grace period to convert, similar to how long the FCC's narrowbanding efforts took. Meaning that by the time the last legacy users had moved on, AM itself would likely have no audiences left to sell new radios to. As cc333 said, even selling those audiences new radios today would be a lengthy nightmare. An even longer delay to wait on existing tenants to vacate would make it impossible.

The only spectrum that could have ever offered AM a practical new home, in my opinion, is the low band TV space from 54-88 MHz. At least that way, the number of existing licensees needing to leave would be extremely small, meaning a comparatively short wait. And because of ATSC's nature, those licensees wouldn't have delayed the move with objections on branding grounds, since their physical channel number changes would have been hidden. The actual problem with moving AM to channels 2-6 is that when the FCC sold off the latest chunk of UHF, only channels 36 and below were left. And since in most major metropolitan areas, channels ~14-20 are often unavailable due to historical re-allocations of their frequency ranges to huge public safety radio systems, many markets are now down to 15 or 20 available UHF channels tops. In Los Angeles, for instance, channels 14-17 and 19-21 are off limits. Bottom line, there would be markets were stations on 2-6 had nowhere to go.

 

[yeoldeschool]

If you were on a task force assigned by the FCC to help save AM Radio, what recommendations would you make?

• Remove the requirement for translators tied to AMs to maintain the associated AM on the air; create a new and permanent A2 or some such class for FMs of that type.
• By allowing AMs that are only on the air to keep the FM with a protected license while closing the AM itself, many other AMs might be able to do simple power increases without complicated directional antennae.
• Change the night skywave protection rules to allow interference between stations anywhere outside a reasonable groundwave coverage area, such as 1 to 2 mV/m.
• Allow an easy "migration" of AM daytimers to vacated fulltime channels without opening up for cross-filings.
• Allow easy 1 to 2 step processes for an AM that wants to survive to take over a vacated channel or frequency if the resultant change would result in less complicated directionals and fewer daytimers.
• Open a window limited only to existing stations wanting to change which includes deals with other stations that want to cede facilities or change them to make the other station more viable.
• Eliminate minimum signal rules for surviving AMs that want to relocate even if the "city of license" coverage is not in compliance with today's rules; ideally, license "changed " AMs to the Metro area and not to specific towns.

A good list. The most effective way I now see for saving AM broadcasting, after all I've absorbed from the conversations and debates here, is to just change the licensing requirements for the existing AM band. Do a survey of old, archived technical literature to determine what the urban and rural background dB noise levels were across the AM band 75 years ago. Next, determine what those dB averages are now, including inside modern multi-tenant buildings. Then take the differences and calculate what wattage increases would be needed at each station to restore 1950 reception quality for each listener, given its current licensed contours if it were actually 1950. Then tell every AM station it has x years to upgrade its facilities to those wattages, or to surrender its license in favor of moving to FM, or to streaming. Concurrent with this, a law would also have to be passed prohibiting any further importation or domestic manufacturing of unshielded electronic components so that the general RFI problem that's killing not just AM, but other services as well today, stops getting worse. (Also so that, over the course of time, as existing pre-law components died out, the general RFI levels would gradually reverse and actually begin declining.) In the meantime, the FCC would have to compensate for all of the large wattage increases among the surviving AM stations (the ones that could afford their new electric bills). That would mean some frequency shuffling for geographically adjacent same-frequency stations, but also a return to previous standards of forcing enough stations off-air overnight that clean post-sunset AM reception could be achieved everywhere again, especially with all the new watts that would be bouncing around the ionosphere.

Just for emphasis: I am not envisioning any arbitrary wattage increases here. I'm talking about precisely calculating what the exact power increases would have to be, based on yesterday's versus today's average noise levels, to "adjust for RFI inflation." The goal would be restoring yesterday's SNRs within the licensed coverage areas, not giving stations opportunities to enlarge them. That said, I don't believe any of this would clash with your sixth bullet point. On your third, I'm actually curious what you would think about weakening the skywave protection rules, as you described, only above a certain kHz, while strengthening them, as I'm suggesting in this post, below that same frequency. I truly believe in the strong civic utility value of having at least some clean, long range skywave reception. If nothing else, it gives AM broadcasters the ability to function as far-reaching cable-style "superstations" in times of crisis, without any extra Edison costs, even if during non-crisis periods there aren't sponsors willing to pay extra for that extended reach. But I'm digressing.)

As for how easy this would all be to accomplish, ironically, I think that passing an anti-RFI bill might not be the hardest part. RFI levels are becoming so bad from the countless "devices" flooding our environments that even some FM reception is starting to suffer in cases. And because some critical services like police, fire, ambulance, and other emergency responders still utilize legacy analog FM radios on other parts of the VHF band, it could reasonably be said that RFI is nearing levels where a general safety issue for the public will soon exist -- of the same close-in/proximity variety that has always made airlines request that devices be switched off to avoid interference with their VHF equipment during take-offs and landings. Seen in that light, it wouldn't be unthinkable to put forward a bill designed to quiet the entire radio spectrum down in general, with AM broadcasting being just one of the many services to benefit. Other powerful interests suffering from rising RFI could be also marched into the hearings for the bill. For instance, the companies planning to build shortwave data transmitters for conveying ultra low-latency stock market information could cite RFI as a threat to their feeds. Additional politically creative arguments could be made by leveraging current anti-foreign manufacturing sentiment to blame cheap imports for having flooded us with noisy devices in the first place -- which is the truth, actually. Even the ARRL could be brought in to testify how RFI is killing HF bands that "valuable ham emergency communications rely on in times of natural disaster," etc.

That being said, if anything could thwart this idea of doing power increases, minor frequency shuffles, and returning to clear nighttime reception, in my imagination it would probably be lawsuits from the stations that couldn't afford new transmitters or to pay higher power bills, who would argue they were being singled out. But if they're already that close to the financial cliff, how much longer would stalling a revitalization effort like this even buy them? And stalling it would only be pushing the rest of the community closer to that cliff in the meantime.

 

[Bongwater]

Some interesting (and even potentially doable) concepts and theories. But I see a couple brick walls.

A good list. The most effective way I now see for saving AM broadcasting, after all I've absorbed from the conversations and debates here, is to just change the licensing requirements for the existing AM band. Do a survey of old, archived technical literature to determine what the urban and rural background dB noise levels were across the AM band 75 years ago. Next, determine what those dB averages are now, including inside modern multi-tenant buildings. Then take the differences and calculate what wattage increases would be needed at each station to restore 1950 reception quality for each listener, given its current licensed contours if it were actually 1950. Then tell every AM station it has x years to upgrade its facilities to those wattages, or to surrender its license in favor of moving to FM, or to streaming. Concurrent with this, a law would also have to be passed prohibiting any further importation or domestic manufacturing of unshielded electronic components so that the general RFI problem that's killing not just AM, but other services as well today, stops getting worse. (Also so that, over the course of time, as existing pre-law components died out, the general RFI levels would gradually reverse and actually begin declining.) In the meantime, the FCC would have to compensate for all of the large wattage increases among the surviving AM stations (the ones that could afford their new electric bills). That would mean some frequency shuffling for geographically adjacent same-frequency stations, but also a return to previous standards of forcing enough stations off-air overnight that clean post-sunset AM reception could be achieved everywhere again, especially with all the new watts that would be bouncing around the ionosphere.

Great idea. Just one tiny little problem; This isn't 1950.

It's not just a technical/tech gap issue. We could do all these things and then some and still have nothing to show for it. It's a culture issue. Not just in fidelity range matters/stereo sound or not/RF noise. It's public image in 2025 as a graveyard full of decaying obsolete noisemakers for cranky old people who can barely hear them is simply unshakable.

And people have really tried. Ask Delilah. If anyone out there had the clout, the name, the guts, the experience and the boss skills to save any radio station, it was her. SHE couldn't do it. And she had some pretty big names working with her on that little Oregon Coast station. Just everything go and after a few years, it just still wasn't enough to carry on.

At present, AM has next to no commercial value. And the mainstream advertising industry doesn't deal with AM at all. Electronics manufacturers and more increasingly the auto industry (once radio's greatest ally) are becoming powerful opponents of AM. And they can legally fight any attempt to government mandate AM radio inclusion. And potentially win. Especially with the current whatever in Washington DC habitually attempting to overstep free markets in other areas. Any smart corporate lawyer would just be fully loaded.

In fact, the only thing literally keeping some of these AM sticks upright are boner pill spots.

I see what you're saying. But the 800 lb gorilla in the room isn't that cute little squirrel monkey you're looking at.

In the meantime, the FCC would have to compensate for all of the large wattage increases among the surviving AM stations (the ones that could afford their new electric bills). That would mean some frequency shuffling for geographically adjacent same-frequency stations, but also a return to previous standards of forcing enough stations off-air overnight that clean post-sunset AM reception could be achieved everywhere again, especially with all the new watts that would be bouncing around the ionosphere.

First if they did, they really wouldn't the public at large to know about that. Because if the public ever found out taxpayer money was propping up a dying radio band populated by stations they don't even listen to and think is a dinosaur. They're going to look at that like bank bailouts. But much uglier; They won't look at the terrestrial radio industry as Too Big To Fail. They'll look at it at Too Old To Live. Pitchforks and torches will come out legislatively. Stocks can plummet from the negative reaction (imagine the social media memes.) Especially if there are much bigger priorities on the national agenda, like health care. That's just asking for it in these times.

I mean I get it, clean up the noise and things on AM will be like they were again. But they won't be. The damage has already been done.

 

[davideduardo]

It's not just a technical/tech gap issue. We could do all these things and then some and still have nothing to show for it. It's a culture issue. Not just in fidelity range matters/stereo sound or not/RF noise. It's public image in 2025 as a graveyard full of decaying obsolete noisemakers for cranky old people who can barely hear them is simply unshakable.

That is way to broad an overstatement. AM is used weekly by nearly 40% of all adults in the US.

(And that has to be discounted because some AM/FM simulcasts use the AM as the "single line reporting" base station even if their FM is the main audience source)

So what if a lot of people don't use AM? A lot still do. And AM is the most viable medium of all during an area-wide emergency. All it takes is one or two out of dozens of neighbors to get vital information into a neighborhood. In a major disaster or emergency, nobody is going to be concerned about the "public image" of the only information source they may have left to them.

 

[davideduardo]

Just for emphasis: I am not envisioning any arbitrary wattage increases here. I'm talking about precisely calculating what the exact power increases would have to be, based on yesterday's versus today's average noise levels, to "adjust for RFI inflation." The goal would be restoring yesterday's SNRs within the licensed coverage areas, not giving stations opportunities to enlarge them. That said, I don't believe any of this would clash with your sixth bullet point. On your third, I'm actually curious what you would think about weakening the skywave protection rules, as you described, only above a certain kHz, while strengthening them, as I'm suggesting in this post, below that same frequency. I truly believe in the strong civic utility value of having at least some clean, long range skywave reception. If nothing else, it gives AM broadcasters the ability to function as far-reaching cable-style "superstations" in times of crisis, without any extra Edison costs, even if during non-crisis periods there aren't sponsors willing to pay extra for that extended reach. But I'm digressing.)

There are only a few stations capable of providing an interference-free service via skywave. Even the former 1-B clear channels are full of additional stations that make out of market listening nearly impossible except in a smaller region.

So, even if you protect all the original 1-A clears (about two dozen) and some of the stations in the West that were part of the breakdown of the 1-A's... such as those in Grand Junction CO, Lexington NE and a few others.... you still have only a handful of stations that are capable of broad coverage in an emergency.

In most cases, skywave is not reliable all the time, all year long. Those stations that could provide service from greater distances would have to have some form of official compensation to "break format" to cover a disaster hundreds of miles away. One thing would be for (and example) KOA to cover extensively a situation in Colorado Springs. Another would be for WGN in Chicago to stop local programming to cover a problem in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

 

[TheBigA]

That is way to broad an overstatement. AM is used weekly by nearly 40% of all adults in the US.

You're talking in generalities. There are thousands of AM stations that might have zero audience, and then maybe 50 or so that make that 40% number.

So what if a lot of people don't use AM? A lot still do. And AM is the most viable medium of all during an area-wide emergency.

You can't base a business on that. The original idea behind the public-private partnership that led to radio licensing was that the companies could make money with the frequency during normal times. That money would fund emergency operations. But what happens when normal operations loses money and there are no profits to fund emergencies? That's where a lot of these stations are right now.

The FCC needs to be realistic about this. They have to see that AM radio by itself can't attract enough money to pay for emergencies. They need to remove AM from ownership caps and think about coming up with ways to attract new owners.

 

[TomásEstefan]

A good list. The most effective way I now see for saving AM broadcasting, after all I've absorbed from the conversations and debates here, is to just change the licensing requirements for the existing AM band. Do a survey of old, archived technical literature to determine what the urban and rural background dB noise levels were across the AM band 75 years ago. Next, determine what those dB averages are now, including inside modern multi-tenant buildings. Then take the differences and calculate what wattage increases would be needed at each station to restore 1950 reception quality for each listener, given its current licensed contours if it were actually 1950. Then tell every AM station it has x years to upgrade its facilities to those wattages, or to surrender its license in favor of moving to FM, or to streaming. Concurrent with this, a law would also have to be passed prohibiting any further importation or domestic manufacturing of unshielded electronic components so that the general RFI problem that's killing not just AM, but other services as well today, stops getting worse. (Also so that, over the course of time, as existing pre-law components died out, the general RFI levels would gradually reverse and actually begin declining.) In the meantime, the FCC would have to compensate for all of the large wattage increases among the surviving AM stations (the ones that could afford their new electric bills). That would mean some frequency shuffling for geographically adjacent same-frequency stations, but also a return to previous standards of forcing enough stations off-air overnight that clean post-sunset AM reception could be achieved everywhere again, especially with all the new watts that would be bouncing around the ionosphere.

Just for emphasis: I am not envisioning any arbitrary wattage increases here. I'm talking about precisely calculating what the exact power increases would have to be, based on yesterday's versus today's average noise levels, to "adjust for RFI inflation." The goal would be restoring yesterday's SNRs within the licensed coverage areas, not giving stations opportunities to enlarge them. That said, I don't believe any of this would clash with your sixth bullet point. On your third, I'm actually curious what you would think about weakening the skywave protection rules, as you described, only above a certain kHz, while strengthening them, as I'm suggesting in this post, below that same frequency. I truly believe in the strong civic utility value of having at least some clean, long range skywave reception. If nothing else, it gives AM broadcasters the ability to function as far-reaching cable-style "superstations" in times of crisis, without any extra Edison costs, even if during non-crisis periods there aren't sponsors willing to pay extra for that extended reach. But I'm digressing.)

As for how easy this would all be to accomplish, ironically, I think that passing an anti-RFI bill might not be the hardest part. RFI levels are becoming so bad from the countless "devices" flooding our environments that even some FM reception is starting to suffer in cases. And because some critical services like police, fire, ambulance, and other emergency responders still utilize legacy analog FM radios on other parts of the VHF band, it could reasonably be said that RFI is nearing levels where a general safety issue for the public will soon exist -- of the same close-in/proximity variety that has always made airlines request that devices be switched off to avoid interference with their VHF equipment during take-offs and landings. Seen in that light, it wouldn't be unthinkable to put forward a bill designed to quiet the entire radio spectrum down in general, with AM broadcasting being just one of the many services to benefit. Other powerful interests suffering from rising RFI could be also marched into the hearings for the bill. For instance, the companies planning to build shortwave data transmitters for conveying ultra low-latency stock market information could cite RFI as a threat to their feeds. Additional politically creative arguments could be made by leveraging current anti-foreign manufacturing sentiment to blame cheap imports for having flooded us with noisy devices in the first place -- which is the truth, actually. Even the ARRL could be brought in to testify how RFI is killing HF bands that "valuable ham emergency communications rely on in times of natural disaster," etc.

That being said, if anything could thwart this idea of doing power increases, minor frequency shuffles, and returning to clear nighttime reception, in my imagination it would probably be lawsuits from the stations that couldn't afford new transmitters or to pay higher power bills, who would argue they were being singled out. But if they're already that close to the financial cliff, how much longer would stalling a revitalization effort like this even buy them? And stalling it would only be pushing the rest of the community closer to that cliff in the meantime.

You may or may not remember that several decades ago, the FCC, along with some broadcast groups and others, were proposing to upgrade at least 7 clear channel Class 1A stations from their current 50 kw to a whopping 750 kW ! Not surprisingly, this unbelievable proposal went absolutely nowhere...

It's not inconceivable that during day light hours LA's KFI could be heard in SF, and SF's KNBR could be heard in. LA. Of course, what purpose would this serve? Big electric and maintenance tab for what?

 

[CTListener]

You're talking in generalities. There are thousands of AM stations that might have zero audience, and then maybe 50 or so that make that 40% number.



You can't base a business on that. The original idea behind the public-private partnership that led to radio licensing was that the companies could make money with the frequency during normal times. That money would fund emergency operations. But what happens when normal operations loses money and there are no profits to fund emergencies? That's where a lot of these stations are right now.

The FCC needs to be realistic about this. They have to see that AM radio by itself can't attract enough money to pay for emergencies. They need to remove AM from ownership caps and think about coming up with ways to attract new owners.

And of all the things lawyers could possibly think of suing the government or the automakers for, trying to convince a court that two people in a car somewhere in an FM radio wasteland who were swept away in a flood or sucked up by a tornado died because their radio had no AM band would have any sane judge shaking his head and laughing at the absurdity of it all. Case dismissed!

 

[Theater of My Mind]

You're talking in generalities...

You can't base a business on that...

I agree with everything you said except this:

The FCC... need to remove AM from ownership caps and think about coming up with ways to attract new owners.

Loosening the ownership caps will shut out, not attract new owners. Keep the ownership cap in place and let the big groups dump the AM stations that aren't making them enough money, like we've already seen from groups like Cumulus. Then those AM signals will become available to attract new owners, or at least smaller, local, independent owners like Buddy Shula who just snagged one in Buffalo. The rest can go silent and help clear up the band.

The current market-driven system seems to be working fine, no need for more ownership concentration by manipulating the caps as you suggest.

 

[davideduardo]

You may or may not remember that several decades ago, the FCC, along with some broadcast groups and others, were proposing to upgrade at least 7 clear channel Class 1A stations from their current 50 kw to a whopping 750 kW ! Not surprisingly, this unbelievable proposal went absolutely nowhere...

Actually, the Clear Channel Broadcasting Service began more about 80 years ago. WSM: The campaign for 750,000 watt AM stations

They lobbied to restore the WLW 500 kw power along with increases for the majority of the 1-A clear channels. They finally gave up when the FCC, instead, decided to allow the 1-A clears to be broken down with secondary high power stations in unserved areas of the west being allowed.

It's not inconceivable that during day light hours LA's KFI could be heard in SF, and SF's KNBR could be heard in. LA. Of course, what purpose would this serve? Big electric and maintenance tab for what?

At the time, through the early 50's, there were thousands fewer AMs (now 5,000 and in 1940 about 1,000) so stations outside the bigger cities did not have the big network shows at night. As the AM dial became overpopulated and listening moved from nights to daytime hours, the need changed.

Remember, the politicians were afraid of huge-coverage stations with huge influence. That is mostly why the U.S. limited power to the low 50 kw ceiling.

 

[davideduardo]

You're talking in generalities. There are thousands of AM stations that might have zero audience, and then maybe 50 or so that make that 40% number.

There are a lot more. Start adding in all the foreign language stations and all the religious ones as well as those that serve vast farm areas like WNAX or KRVN. Yes, there are several thousand that have translators that depend on the FM simulcast to survive, but there are many more with viable businesses.

Ask our resident Alaskan how AM covers vast unserved areas of that state even today.

And if those AMs with translators could get a guaranteed license and turn off the AM, then many of the remaining AMs would be able to make easy power increases

You can't base a business on that. The original idea behind the public-private partnership that led to radio licensing was that the companies could make money with the frequency during normal times. That money would fund emergency operations.

That was never said. What was required of licensees from the time the FCC began over 90 years ago is that they provide some degree of news, public service, public affairs and other content. There was no requirement for stations to prepare for emergencies, such as having backup power or an auxiliary transmitter or the like.

But what happens when normal operations loses money and there are no profits to fund emergencies? That's where a lot of these stations are right now.

Emergency service via EAS notifications does not require anything other than the station be on the air. All the urgent info is provided by the authorities that initiated the EAS alerts and possible updates.

The FCC needs to be realistic about this. They have to see that AM radio by itself can't attract enough money to pay for emergencies.

They don't need to attract money. EAS provides centralized and, supposedly, valid and correct information during an emergency. Even back when stations had news staffs, most people were there to write, rewrite and deliver news in the studios, not to cover actual news events. In the case of a huge disaster, storm or other event, no station, then or now, could have handled it alone.

They need to remove AM from ownership caps and think about coming up with ways to attract new owners.

We have a winner! First prize... one AM station. Second prize... two AM stations. Third prize... three AM stations.