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Saving AM Radio

Theater of My Mind said:
Well one of those cases is the hurricane from 20 years ago I just mentioned, lol. And Puerto Rico is truly an outlier case in a U.S. territory that doesn't have voting representation in Congress and isn't entitled to electoral votes for President. But sure, exploit their situation when it suits your argument.
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Uh, all of us there are U.S. citizens by birth. The District of Columbia has no congressional voting power, either. Shall we ignore that, too?
Theater of My Mind said:
The narrative you're pushing echoes the Republican talking points being used to try to scare Democrats into voting for their agenda over some nearly fictional emergency resource ruse. They just want to mandate their beloved AM Radio conservative talk ecosystem while killing the platforms that don't parrot their rightwing propaganda.
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You are making that argument for the first time that I have heard it. The AM preservation effort came from AM broadcasters themselves, supported by the NAB. The intent is to not further damage the efforts of nearly 5,000 U.S. AM stations, only a small percentage of which carry shows like Hannity. Far more are ethnic voices in a variety of non-English languages as well as religious operations.
Theater of My Mind said:
Democrats in Congress need to wake up about this. The Republican strategy is clear, and I don't think there's any point for me to keep reiterating the point.
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The major conservative efforts are on cable, podcasts and the like. Many strategists, particularly Democrat party ones, believe that the Republicans managed non-broadcast media much better in 2024 than their opposition.

And we are talking about which medium will be the most durable in an emergency, and there is overwhelming evidence that the answer is AM. This is not about politics; it is about voices in a disaster.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
A very few. Top of my head, I can only think of WNYC AM and several stations in the Jefferson Public Radio network, based in Ashland, Ore.

Almost all public radio outlets are on FM, because that's where the noncommercial reserved band is. Most of Jefferson Public Radio's AM licenses were donated or purchased for a nominal sum when they no longer had commercial viability. The others are licensed to other entities with a programming agreement to air JPR.
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For the Iowa Public Radio group of stations, there’s 640 (WOI), 910 (WSUI) & 1010 (KRNI)
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
A very few. Top of my head, I can only think of WNYC AM and several stations in the Jefferson Public Radio network, based in Ashland, Ore.

Almost all public radio outlets are on FM, because that's where the noncommercial reserved band is. Most of Jefferson Public Radio's AM licenses were donated or purchased for a nominal sum when they no longer had commercial viability. The others are licensed to other entities with a programming agreement to air JPR.
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Okay. Here are some more AM public radio stations:

KUAZ--1550 kHz, Tucson, AZ;
WHDD--1020 kHZ, Salisbury, CT;
WOI--640 kHZ, Ames, IA, along with AM satellites 910 in Iowa City and 1010 in Mason City;

I can't remember the callsign off of the top of my head but the AM at 970 kHZ in Madison, WI, along with one of its satellites on 930 kHZ in the Wausau area. There is also the station licensed at 1450 AM in Gonzales, TX.

Yes, you're right that most public radio stations are on FM but not all. And I just thought of another AM public radio outlet, the 1260 kHz frequency in Christiansburg, VA.
 
ted chittenden said:
Okay. Here are some more AM public radio stations:

KUAZ--1550 kHz, Tucson, AZ;
WHDD--1020 kHZ, Salisbury, CT;
WOI--640 kHZ, Ames, IA, along with AM satellites 910 in Iowa City and 1010 in Mason City;

I can't remember the callsign off of the top of my head but the AM at 970 kHZ in Madison, WI,
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WHA. Longest licensed non-com I know of.
 
ted chittenden said:
Okay. Here are some more AM public radio stations:

KUAZ--1550 kHz, Tucson, AZ;
WHDD--1020 kHZ, Salisbury, CT;
WOI--640 kHZ, Ames, IA, along with AM satellites 910 in Iowa City and 1010 in Mason City;

I can't remember the callsign off of the top of my head but the AM at 970 kHZ in Madison, WI, along with one of its satellites on 930 kHZ in the Wausau area. There is also the station licensed at 1450 AM in Gonzales, TX.

Yes, you're right that most public radio stations are on FM but not all. And I just thought of another AM public radio outlet, the 1260 kHz frequency in Christiansburg, VA.
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Also:
640 WNNZ Westfield, MA
1340 WYBC New Haven, CT
 
davideduardo said:
WHA. Longest licensed non-com I know of.
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Thank you. I had a memory lapse on that one. Oh, and by the way, both KOFA (1320 kHz in Yuma, AZ) and the station at 1340 kHz in Athens, OH can be added to this list as well as the 640 kHz station licensed in the Springfield area of Massachusetts and WICE, the 1290 kHz in Providence, RI. Now I believe I have just about all of them!
 
WBAA/920, West Lafayette IN, first licensed in 1922. Now owned by WFYI Indianapolis. Purdue University sold its stations in 2022.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Well one of those cases is the hurricane from 20 years ago I just mentioned, lol. And Puerto Rico is truly an outlier case in a U.S. territory that doesn't have voting representation in Congress and isn't entitled to electoral votes for President. But sure, exploit their situation when it suits your argument.

The narrative you're pushing echoes the Republican talking points being used to try to scare Democrats into voting for their agenda over some nearly fictional emergency resource ruse. They just want to mandate their beloved AM Radio conservative talk ecosystem while killing the platforms that don't parrot their rightwing propaganda. Democrats in Congress need to wake up about this. The Republican strategy is clear, and I don't think there's any point for me to keep reiterating it.
Click to expand...

While I share some of your concerns in the political sphere, the fact remains that AM was not developed as a saving grace for Republicans. And keep in mind that there have been liberal talkers on AM in the past. (In fact, some still exist but they are aimed primarily at the African-american audience.)
 
ted chittenden said:
While I share some of your concerns in the political sphere, the fact remains that AM was not developed as a saving grace for Republicans. And keep in mind that there have been liberal talkers on AM in the past. (In fact, some still exist but they are aimed primarily at the African-american audience.)
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Good point: iHeart's Black talk network is primarily on AM stations.
 
ted chittenden said:
Thank you. I had a memory lapse on that one. Oh, and by the way, both KOFA (1320 kHz in Yuma, AZ) and the station at 1340 kHz in Athens, OH can be added to this list as well as the 640 kHz station licensed in the Springfield area of Massachusetts and WICE, the 1290 kHz in Providence, RI. Now I believe I have just about all of them!
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You can add KCFC (1490), Boulder, part of the Colorado Public Radio News network. All other CPR stations are FM, and KCFC does have an FM translator.
 
CTListener said:
That's the FM, a commercial station with an urban contemporary format. The AM is separate ownership, non-commercial, news/talk from NPR and elsewhere. I lived in Connecticut for 40 years. Trust me, I know the difference.
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Got ya. I didn't know that two stations, separately owned, could share the same call letters.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
It used to be the case that two owners could not share call signs. That's how WOR-TV became WWOR and KMOX-TV became KMOV.
That rule was eliminated a long time ago, probably in the 80s.
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1987, to be exact. The Commission almost completely overhauled the rules on call letters in 1983, including the elimination of a station seeking to change its call letters having to notify local stations of the pending request; making call letter changes automatically authorized upon receipt of the request; allowing four-letter calls to be used in different services without being in "the same or adjoining communities" in order to have the same base call; adopted a "first requester" policy for reassignment of relinquished call letters; allowed relinquished calls to be reassigned in the same community without regard to the previous six-month wait; and no longer required "suitable clearance" to receive call letters that were the initials of a current or former president, or a government agency.

In 1987, the rules were further relaxed, allowing common four-letter base call signs to be issued to stations with different owners, although permission had to first be obtained from the current call letter holder.

The original limitations on grandfathered three-letter calls remain in force ... same community of license and common ownership.
 
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K.M. Richards said:
In Japan, as @Michi can confirm, FM is 76 to 95 MHz, and so radios manufactured there can tune that band.
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The WIDE-FM radios marketed in Japan can tune 76~108 MHz. The band was expanded a few years ago from 90 to 95. There is currently a proposal to extend it more from 95 to 97. There was an original plan to use the higher part of the regular FM band for something called "multi-media broadcasting", but that never panned out. The spectrum from 95 to 108 is currently dormant. This was spectrum formerly used for analog television, including Japan's "channel 1".
 


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