Of course he did. He was promoting FM.
There is nothing inherently wrong with amplitude modulation.
Impulse noise is the issue.
There is nothing inherently wrong with amplitude modulation.
Impulse noise is the issue.
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- Thread starter landtuna
- Start date
But Armstrong considered the lack of noise, fading and static to be what made FM superior.
Keep in mind that in the late 30's when FM was being launched with the first experimental stations the main restriction on AM fidelity was the system on national network loops which were very low fidelity, as were many studio-transmitter links that used, at best 8 k lines and were more likely to be 5 k lines.
Seems to me that it was modulating the frequency rather than amplitude that solved the problem. No?
But there were several additional problems that kept FM from working for several decades.
First, Armstrong's designs did not have Automatic Frequency Control in the receiver, making all FM sets prone to drift. This was not "fixed" until the 60's. Then, you did not have a "hook" like stereo to attract consumers... that happened over 20 years after the first FM broadcasts.
And, mostly, you did not have the FCC requiring totally independent programming on AM/FM combos. That happened nearly 30 years into FM broadcasting, and, combined with AFC, stereo and lack of impulse noise, made FM happen.
Also, for years there was the 'image' of FM as being for fuddy-duddy jazz and classical and BFL listeners only.
Young people didn't seem to adopt it until the underground FM movement in the late 1960's / early 1970's.
By the early 70's, the processing on FM stations progressed to where the announcers and DJ's voices sounded better, which coincided with young people turning to FM for their music.
From what I understand, early FM DJ sound was crisp but stale sounding. Compared to AM, the DJ's sounded asleep. Kind of didn't mix with lively, pounding music.
Young people didn't seem to adopt it until the underground FM movement in the late 1960's / early 1970's.
By the early 70's, the processing on FM stations progressed to where the announcers and DJ's voices sounded better, which coincided with young people turning to FM for their music.
From what I understand, early FM DJ sound was crisp but stale sounding. Compared to AM, the DJ's sounded asleep. Kind of didn't mix with lively, pounding music.
And that was because AM operators, who by 1960 owned most of the shrinking number of FM stations (over 1000 in 1950 and and under 700 in 1960), were simulcasting for the most part while the few independents were doing what was perceived as being "high fidelity" formats.
And that occurred because the FCC mandated the end to most major market simulcasts in 1967, and those successful AM operators wanted formats that did not compete with the cash-cow AM formats. Thus the first formats were fairly fringe, like progressive rock, a better developed "good music" which was renamed "Beautiful Music", oldies and such.
Even the first youth-oriented FM's from 1967 and on had good presentations. What made them win was lower commercials and generally much better market coverage than the directional AMs most markets had for Top 40 formats at the time.
That's not true. FM sounded, in 1967, the same as it does now... perhaps with a little different audio processing but essentially the same.
I have argued that same point here many times. I was 15 in 1968 when WBCN changed from classical (WBCN: Boston Concert Network) to being one of the first underground stations. I had never heard anything like it and kept my ears glued to that station until sometime in the late 80's, it had gone AAR by that time but they still had great DJ's and still played a lot of new seldom heard stuff and broke many new bands. I wouldn't have cared if it was being received on a crystal radio back then it was the content that kept me coming back day after day, in fact it was difficult to receive in the Worc area back then but that didn't stop us. It was new and exciting, you felt like you were a part of what was going on, underground stations totally refreshed radio and FM was lucky enough to get it, AM was entrenched in boring top 40 and FM was languishing with very few listeners playing classical music, FM was ripe at that point for a change. People here keep saying the same thing will happen with HD, haha! Sure, next time there is a huge movement similar to what the antiwar/hippy/youth movement was back in the 60's HD will take off if is first with the new content and the new wave. Hey I'm not saying a new hippy movement it could be a polka movement if that is what takes the country by storm, I'm not holding my breath though.
You have put the cart ahead of the horse.
FM developed new and different formats because the FCC mandated that nearly all the AM/FM simulcasts be ended in January of 1967.
The first "boom" was Beautiful Music, freshened up by the likes of Phil Stout and Marlin Taylor. They removed the light classics, many of the show tunes and started adding instrumental versions of pop songs. And they dominated the ratings for the next decade and a half.
Progressive or "underground" rock also came along, as did variants on existing formats like oldies, Top 40, chicken rock, etc. A few years into the "switch" to FM, progressive rock formats died when confronted with tight playlists on AOR stations, most using the Burkhart-Abrams Superstars consultancy.
All this happened due to an FCC rulemaking procedure.
There is no equivalent in the world of HD. There are already too many stations and too many choices for HD to offer something unique such as FM did in the late 60's.
I agree somewhat, FM was forced to change, but the "first boom" of Beautiful Music was not exactly a world shaker or beater. I still argue progressive and even underground (there was a big difference, underground would play jazz, rock and folk all in the same set, the sky was the limit) got the ball rolling and the playlists (at least on WBCN even tough it became an AOR station) did not tighten appreciably until the late 70's. AOR was worlds ahead of the boring krap that's played on top 40 stations nowadays and even was back then.
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As a high school senior in 1962 in the Bay Area (which itself adopted FM early) I was one of the first of my peers to have an FM receiver. It is true that many of the earliest FM stations were of the beautiful music or classical genre but then this was San Francisco which then was largely a beautiful music town. There were both AM and FM versions of these genres. I remember specifically KABL-AM used to be one of the most popular beautiful music outlets.
I don't know about adoption nationwide but when I returned to the Bay Area from Vietnam in 1966 there were a number of my peers who were listening to what we called then "underground radio" (which was usually album cuts from rock or rock/jazz bands). There were four AM pop stations in the Bay Area at that time: KLOK, KFRC, KYA and KEWB. Some of the other MOR AM's played some pop music but not on a full-time basis. KEWB probably had the best overall signal over the entire Bay Area as the others were difficult to listen to at night depending upon your location. KGO-FM (93.7) was then playing non-stop rock music, automated, and with very few commercials. The DJ's on these "underground" rock stations tended to speak very low key, sometimes almost in a whisper, and in direct contrast to those of the AM side where the loud, machine-gun presentation was most popular. In many ways the presentations by the classical and underground DJ's was very similar.
I love the Oldies and had been a fan since the "be-bop" days of the 1950's - always listening on AM up to this point. I will never forget the first few days of listening to the same old music on FM - it had sounds I had never heard before on AM. The backgrounds and individual instruments came though clear and identifiable compared to the somewhat "muddy" sound of AM. This was especially noticeable on my just-brought-back-from-Japan Sansui stereo receiver. I don't remember noticing any particular change in the sound of the DJ's.
As I noted earlier, it seemed as if the new FM jocks were attempting to sound like those on the classical stations. Aside from their very understated presence they didn't sound any different though.
There was a real metamorphosis in Beautiful Music when the 1967 rule went into effect.
Previously, "good music" stations were locally programmed and tended to be rather eclectic to the point of having light classics, showtunes and renditions of the big band songs of prior decades. With the FCC action, lots of stations wanted to do such a format, but did not have the music library nor the budget to assemble such a station. So the few programmers who had been ahead of the game soon were found to be in the syndication business, creating modern versions of "good music" for all the station converts. And those Bonneville and SRP affiliated stations often became the #1 station in their market.
Those underground or progressive stations did not really get very good numbers in most places. The Beautiful Music stations did.
It actually took about 5 years for someone to come up with a way of making formats that were stereotyped as "a hippy in the studio at the end of the hall lighting up and playing weird s--t" more commercial. That person was Lee Abrams, and he applied Top 40 mechanics to progressive rock and got huge numbers. At about the same time, Top 40 was taking a big slice of FM, with some of the stations taking leadership positions; WMYQ, WPGC, KSLQ, WDRQ being examples.
Huh? KEWB had a very defective signal, which was why they got out of Top 40 when Tom Rounds programmed and Bill Drake consulted KFRC exploded to #1 with a signal so big that it got great numbers in Sacramento and Monterrey / Salinas. As a non-directional 5 kw station on 610, it had a terrific night signal, too, getting listening up and down the central valley, northern California, Reno and Klamath Falls areas.
No, they were trying to sound cool, daddy-o. Or they were just stoned. And that was just in the progressive rock format until Abrams pretty much put a lid (pun intended) on that.[/SIZE][/FONT]
That's true. The real turning point for FM came when you could hear Top 40 on FM. When people had the choice between 99X and WABC in New York, that started the decline for WABC. It took about 7 years before they flipped to talk. Same with urban music and WBLS vs. WLIB. It didn't take long before listeners to the AM stations realized their music sounded better on FM.
The big growth in Top 40 on FM did not happen until 1972, though. That was when Bartell almost simultaneously switched on WDRQ in Detroit, KSLQ in St Louis and WMYQ in Miami with hot top 40 stations with 8 to 10 minute an hour commercial limits, very good jocks in the KCBQ / Drake tradition and terrific signals.
Almost instantly we had smaller operators put Top 40 on, such as Mooney Broadcasting taking oldies WBRC-FM in Birmingham to Top 40 first as WERC-FM and then as "Kikx"; that station had 100 kw at over 1000' and outcovered every AM in the market. It did not take long for listeners to discover that they could hear the station at night in all kinds of areas where AM WSGN did not come in. I think it was a better station (I was the PD) but it owed a lot of its success to the better signal and the poor night coverage of all the local AM stations.
It's not broadly recognized that there were FM Top 40's before this, though. One good example is WPGC in Washington. They were a daytimer on 1580 with a lower power, low antenna FM out in Morningside. The top 40 format on AM was simulcast on FM, allowed because they were a daytimer on AM. By 1969, they realized that FM was going to happen and upped the power and antenna on the FM and proceeded to beat WEAM.
Then there is the quasi-Top 40 Drake did on WOR-FM in New York, and the WPIX effort soon after... but New York had a full signal AM Top 40 that was well done. Washington did not and the FM won quickly.
Note that I said "depending upon where you were located". In Marin and the North Bay we got KEWB far better than any other of the BA pop rockers at night.
I used to listen to WOR-FM most of the time after I moved down from Dutchess County (where WABC came in stong) but didn't notice anything unusual about their format. What do you mean by "quasi-Top 40"? In fact, I think I still have a 2-hour off-air program I taped from sometime in 1970.
Here is the full story... and a verifiably accurate one:
http://www.musicradio77.com/WOR-FM/history.html
Note that the station did nothing to be better than WABC. And it did not "launch" but rather eased into the format, cutting the progressive album material and becoming, gradually, Top 40. In the process, it was neither Top 40 nor progressive.
That's bizarre. Are you confusing KFRC with another station, maybe? KFRC's transmitter blankets the north bay area.
The 5 mV/m extends beyond Santa Rosa, the 10 mV/m goes to Napa and Petaluma, and the 20 mV/m blankets the North Bay coastal areas of Marin, Solano, Napa and Sonoma counties.
KYA, with it's 1 kw nights next to Candlestick Park on rocky terrain did poorly at night. KEWB was better, but it was still the equivalent of 1 kw non-directional towards Portland, El Cajon, Phoenix and Denver. KLOK, as a San Jose station, was directional to the Southwest and had little night coverage up the bay.
That may have started WABC's decline but I believe it was WKTU's Disco format that finally did them in.
That's correct, and no amount of disco in WABC's playlist kept their audience from running to FM. The days of popular music on AM were pretty much over in 1978. By the early 90s, there was talk in the industry that AM was toast. Had it not been for news, talk, and sports, it would have been. And all of this was before IBOC.
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