I would have abandoned AM radio 45 years ago except that AM was a source of news, information and opinion while FM was a brainless jukebox. Programming has kept AM alive long past the time when it became technically obsolete. But with interference getting worse by the day that can't last forever. 45 years ago there was no choice but today's elephant in the room is Internet and cellphone streaming. I still listen mainly to AM content but seldom on an AM radio.
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WABC AND WOR RATINGS AT AN ALL-TIME LOW
- Thread starter qwerty809
- Start date
wadio said:
On the other hand, for classical music lovers and lovers of almost any niche music, those were the good old days before the masses discovered FM radio. It was more than just the progressive rock fans that mourned Bill Drake taking over WOR-FM, because that's when FM began to lose its snob appeal.
Mark Jeffries said:
FM lost its snob appeal and became successful.
Snob appeal works for some things (selling luxury cars, for example), but not commercial broadcasting. How many of those "niche" FM stations of the '50s and '60s made money on their own, without a money-making AM and/or TV station propping them up? Not many, I'll guess - especially before stereo was authorized.
Mark Jeffries said:
WOR-FM had done several iterations of Rock in Stereo going back to, IIRC, 1966, when Murray the K and Scott Muni inaugurated new studios and a pop / rock format. This was about 6 months ahead of the FCC deadline to separate AM and FM simulcasts... and quite a while before Drake came in.
KeithE4 said:
From 1950 to 1960, the total number of FM stations declined from around 1000 to 700. Apparently none made money, and most were simulcasts of AMs.
The introduction of FM stereo did little. It took several years just to get the first 100 FM stereo stations on the air. However, in the early 60's quite a few new stations found ways to make money.
Classical stations generally made money, but mostly in top 100 markets. Some were quite profitable. A number of the early "Good Music" stations in places like Philly, New York, Boston and San Francisco did really well. And there were quite a few ethnic stations... many with a variety of languages (such as those in Cleveland and other markets with Greek, Italian, Polish and Eastern European communities).
See http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1967/1967-07-31-FM-BC.pdf with a story about FM's growth in the 60s and the many profitable stand alone FMs.
I put an FM on the air myself in 1966, and within a year it was profitable. Within about 3 years, it was more profitable than any of my AM operations. And that is all pre-1970.
F
FredLeonard
Guest
David, the important part of the equation is the FCC forced broadcasters in the top 50 markets (kicking and screaming) to stop simulcasting and to offer separate programming on FM at least half the time. It was then that broadcasters came up with new formats like Oldies, and underground rock. Content brought listeners to FM.
Classical music was successful on FM until public radio (tax free, government supported, listener supported) invaded the format and forced many commercial classical stations to flip. Classic music fans are such snobs: They'd sit still for pledge breaks but they couldn't stand the idea of having to hear a Volvo commercial occasionally.
Classical music was successful on FM until public radio (tax free, government supported, listener supported) invaded the format and forced many commercial classical stations to flip. Classic music fans are such snobs: They'd sit still for pledge breaks but they couldn't stand the idea of having to hear a Volvo commercial occasionally.
FredLeonard said:
Not exactly. What also happened (in addition to the FCC simulcast decision) was the Armstrong patent on FM ended in 1966, thus manufacturers could install the FM chip in receivers for a couple of dollars, and sell AM/FM radios for a few dollars more than the AM-only sets. Once consumers saw they had an extra band, they took a listen. Prior to that FM was mainly an audiophile band, available in mainly expensive componant stereo systems. But quite a few successful FM stations in the 70s were totally unaffected by the FCC simulcast decision, and continued the same format they had (like WRFM with Beautiful Music) for many years to come.
FredLeonard said:
Once again, not exactly. Companies recognized they could make more money with other formats. Non-commercial radio co-existed with commercial long before the creation of public radio in 1967, and quite often those stations were classical in format. I was at one of the first commercial stations to flip from classical to rock, and we didn't do it because of public radio. It was a total non-factor for us.
Am I seeing a bit of déjà vu with HD radio?
SonoSational18 said:
IF content is the primary reason for listener migration to other bands such as what we witnessed in the mid 70's when the migration of the mass audience to FM hit it's stride, HD has the opportunity to "catch on" as the case may be. However HD receiver penetration in the market will also be a determining factor as it was when FM receivers became available as standard equipment in automobiles..
I still believe that content can save AM to a degree as long as the receivers remain in automobiles. But the "Talk Revolution" that initially saved AM is now very long in the tooth as the "Greying" of the demographics and general decline/demise of the available AM audience has shown. The person who develops the next programming revolution for AM will be a millionaire for sure.
Jay Walker said:
The only thing talk did was delay the inevitable. Had Rush not exploded when he did, coupled with the 96 Act that gave companies a reason to buy AMs, the band would have died by the end of the 90s. If you broaden the view internationally, AM radio is already gone in a lot of other countries.
TheBigA said:
There are a few, not major by any means, AM stations with one of a kind niche formats that generate decent revenue income streams, but not nearly enough to pay the overhead on a Class A 50k AM for sure. The Dallas area has several low power independent AM music stations in that category. But again I stress not nearly enough income to keep the staff and facility of a 50k AM fed.
This thread has morphed into an AM vs. FM debate. A better question might be, if WABC and WOR both shut down their AM transmitters and magically reappeared on FM frequencies tomorrow morning, would their ratings remain at an all-time low?
I'd say yes, because the programming on both stations is at an all-time low. With very few exceptions (you can count them on one hand and have fingers left over) the programming is dull, inconsistent, annoying, and much of it bartered.
I'd say yes, because the programming on both stations is at an all-time low. With very few exceptions (you can count them on one hand and have fingers left over) the programming is dull, inconsistent, annoying, and much of it bartered.
FredLeonard said:
The January, 1967, FCC mandate required stations in cities of 100 thousand or more that were co-owned by with an AM simulcast no more than 50% of the time. The rule affected only 140 stations.
Exceptions were given to FMs associated with daytime AMs... they could simulcast. And exceptions were granted for special situations such as Fortune Pope's NYC stations.
What changed was the rush to find easy new formats. Overwhelmingly, the change from "Good Music" to "Beautiful Music" with more contemporary material was the most significant driver of FM growth. Progressive rock was cheap and relatively easy, and was the second choice.
Mostly, AMs wanted formats that did not directly compete with their AM stations.
Formats like oldies did not really start in earnest until the early 70s'... such as 72's conversion of KHJ-FM to K-Earth. While there were a few earlier ones such as DC's WMOD in '69, there were few of those.
There were far more SRP and Bonneville winners in the early years after the simulcast ban than there were in any other format.
Classical stations, for the most part, did well until the demos aged so much that they could not be sold. This was more a function of sales than any competition from non-coms, since the non-coms tended to be far more eclectic didactic in their approach to programming and thus self-limited their appeal.
TheBigA said:
First, there were no "chips" in 1966. FM capability essentially required a separate antenna and RF section for that band.
I worked rather diligently to get as many radios at retail with FM capability as possible in '66 when I launched the first FM in my market. I found that the cost difference to dealers and importers was only a few cents, and the licensing cost was insignificant compared to the antenna and tuning section. This applied to table models as well as little AM/FM transistor pocket radios.
The real problem wasn't table radios and pocket transistors, it was FM in cars which required hanging an adapter under the dash and, even then, the "picket fencing" due to the antenna polarization used at the time was horrible on all but the strongest stations.
In order for anyone to go to all that trouble, there had to be unique, compelling programming to make it worth it. When you think about it, today the only place where audio programming is really driving hardware sales is Satellite.
In order for anyone to go to all that trouble, there had to be unique, compelling programming to make it worth it. When you think about it, today the only place where audio programming is really driving hardware sales is Satellite.
F
FredLeonard
Guest
TheBigA said:
Wrong! Oldies (all oldies, all the time). Progressive Rock (aka Underground Rock). Jazz. Classical. AM was Top 40, MOR, Full Service, Country, Ethnic/Foreign Language, Religion or R&B. Occasionally some blocks of other genres late at night or on weekends but they were not widely available.
FredLeonard said:
Classical and jazz weren't formats that attracted the biggest numbers to FM. Progressive Rock was not a big audience attraction, and was gone by the mid-70s. The most popular FM stations were simply duplicates of the AM Top 40 stations. And in NYC, you had three FM Beautiful Music stations in the Top 10. That wasn't unique programming...it was the same exact programming those stations had done in the 60s before FM became popular. Oldies wasn't unique. These stations took songs that had been hits on AM and played them on FM. The real attraction was the sound quality. I mean WBAI was definitely unique programming, but I don't know anyone who bought an FM converter to listen to Bob Fass or Steve Post.
TheBigA said:
Once again, TheBigA has shifted the focus of his reply away from the point of my post which was about the cost of early FM adoption in cars and referred, obviously, to the post-simulcast era. If I were willing to take the bait, I'd lash back by trying to defend something I never actually said.
This kind of bobbing and weaving is an interesting trolling technique. Keep an eye on it.
FredLeonard said:
Jazz, for the most part, was a format that predated the mandate to end simulcasting at the start of 1967. It was one of the formats that came from the time around the early 60's boom in new, independent FM licenses.
Progressive rock had a very short lifespan, save in a few large markets (KMET in LA lasted till 1987, San Francisco and Chicago had longer lived progressive rockers than most) as the free-form music programming got blown away in the '72-'73 period by Abrams' AOR "Superstars" approach with near-Top 40 formatics and rotations.
Oldies did not gain a real foothold and momentum until the 70's. Early "gold" stations, in many cases, did not last. Even pioneer KRTH became a modified AC, playing "tomorrow's gold" as well as hits of the past.
Foreign language was programmed on FM well prior to 1967; in quite a few places such as Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago, there were one or more mult-ethnic FMs running a variety of Italian and Eastern European language shows. In fact, low cost FMs were the preferred way to get ethnic programming on the air in many markets. Even Richard Eaton's Washington, D.C., FM was doing all Spanish in the late 60's.
The dominant format, though, was Beautiful Music. It was an offshoot of existing "Good Music" formats on already established AMs like WPAT in New York or WDOK in Cleveland or WVCG in Miami in many cases and, while modernized by Shulke, Stout, Taylor and others, was simply an old format with better format mechanics and less commercials.
Beautiful Music stations were at the top of the ratings in most markets from the late 60's well into the 80's, with some markets having several of these in the top 5!
Which brings me to an overwhelming factor in the move to FM by audiences: commercials. Most FMs in the post-67 era set very low commercial limits even when they could sell more inventory. The contemporary formats tended to have 8 minutes an hour as a limit, with 10 being the ceiling for the more "greedy". While AMs were doing the 18-minute thing, the FMs had less than half the commercials and were irresistible to listeners.
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