Why I Don't Need AM?

[JIBGUY]

There are fewer and fewer devices equipped with AM tuners being manufactured every day. As was said earlier, an FM tuner chip is small, and the antenna can be built into the earphone cable (with varying degrees of success).

The smartphone is the new "transistor radio" - and they don't have AM.

True, the smartphone will be the future's transistor radio. But not everyone wants to be wired up (or should I say wirelssed-up) so that everything is available all the time. Plus, not everyone is going to want to pay for such service. Watch for in the future, rates for mobile services skyrocketing once "they" have gotten many of us hooked on it. If there's so much doom & gloom for AM radio, then why aren't prices for such AM stations dropping. There are very few, if any AM stations inside Route 128 that would sell for less than 2 million dollars. -similar situation now that was present in the mid 1990's recession. True that many bean-counters are turning off some of their AM's. But that's because they're bean-counters with absolutely no imagination on how to keep an AM alive-&-well. Making that AM thrive is just way too much thinking to do, when its a lot easier to keep tweaking the FM's that they own.

 

[dhoule]

What's a transistor radio?

 

[CTListener]

There are fewer and fewer devices equipped with AM tuners being manufactured every day. As was said earlier, an FM tuner chip is small, and the antenna can be built into the earphone cable (with varying degrees of success).

The smartphone is the new "transistor radio" - and they don't have AM.

True, the smartphone will be the future's transistor radio. But not everyone wants to be wired up (or should I say wirelssed-up) so that everything is available all the time. Plus, not everyone is going to want to pay for such service. Watch for in the future, rates for mobile services skyrocketing once "they" have gotten many of us hooked on it. If there's so much doom & gloom for AM radio, then why aren't prices for such AM stations dropping. There are very few, if any AM stations inside Route 128 that would sell for less than 2 million dollars. -similar situation now that was present in the mid 1990's recession. True that many bean-counters are turning off some of their AM's. But that's because they're bean-counters with absolutely no imagination on how to keep an AM alive-&-well. Making that AM thrive is just way too much thinking to do, when its a lot easier to keep tweaking the FM's that they own.

It's dangerous/foolish to try to predict attitudes of future generations. It wasn't that long ago that the conventional wisdom was that nobody would ever pay for TV. Now 80 percent of all American households do -- and they're paying to watch channels with commercials as well, something very few people would have predicted in pay-TV's infancy. Being "wirelessed up," as you put it, may be the future, whethere we like it or not. It certainly seems to be developing that way.

And if the beancounters want to kill AM, they will kill AM, with the complicity of the advertisers, who won't pay a penny to reach an "old" audience, and the electronics manufacturers, who will exclude AM from future products aimes at younger consumers. I love what you're doing with WJIB, but AM looks to be going the way of shortwave.

 

[KeithE4]

It's dangerous/foolish to try to predict attitudes of future generations. It wasn't that long ago that the conventional wisdom was that nobody would ever pay for TV. Now 80 percent of all American households do -- and they're paying to watch channels with commercials as well, something very few people would have predicted in pay-TV's infancy. Being "wirelessed up," as you put it, may be the future, whethere we like it or not. It certainly seems to be developing that way.

People have been paying for TV for 30 years - more in some cases. It's now the norm, although some (like myself) have finally gotten fed up with increasing prices and decreasing service, and partially cut the cord, only keeping internet.

And if the beancounters want to kill AM, they will kill AM, with the complicity of the advertisers, who won't pay a penny to reach an "old" audience, and the electronics manufacturers, who will exclude AM from future products aimes at younger consumers. I love what you're doing with WJIB, but AM looks to be going the way of shortwave.

Beancounters aren't killing AM. The marketplace is, and has for 40 years. That horse left the barn in the early '70s, and some people just need to get over it.

When I was one of those youngsters back then, we were already rejecting AM in favor of FM. Better sound quality, stereo, no fading, no static from lightning, no noisy lamp dimmers (yes, we had them back then), no TV horizontal oscillator hash, etc., etc., etc. AM was for listening to a ball game, but that was about it.

The kids of today aren't even bothering with FM. Neither are some of us old geezers who can no longer hear the music that we like, since anyone older than 50 is considered dead (never mind the fact that we have more money to spend than the kids do). We're going to the internet just like they are.

But in any case, the days of Fibber McGee & Molly are long over. So is AM as "standard broadcasting."

 

[raccoonradio]

I don't know if it came out in late 50s (Wiki. says '54)or early 60s or whatever but the wonder of technology gave us tiny little radios, maybe slightly bigger than a Walkman...with a treble-high sound and AM only (or maybe some
had AM-FM). Teens could listen to their Ricky Nelson or Beatles tunes! And I think they had a headphone
jack, that would be one headphone going into one ear in glorious mono. The very portability of it! No huge radios with tubes.

Here's a '64 model...I wanna hold your hand...
http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.com/afu/images/8909/1265/P8300001.JPG

 

[KeithE4]

I don't know if it came out in late 50s (Wiki. says '54)or early 60s or whatever but the wonder of technology gave us tiny little radios, maybe slightly bigger than a Walkman...with a treble-high sound and AM only (or maybe some
had AM-FM). Teens could listen to their Ricky Nelson or Beatles tunes! And I think they had a headphone jack, that would be one headphone going into one ear in glorious mono. The very portability of it! No huge radios with tubes.

Here's a '64 model...I wanna hold your hand...
http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.com/afu/images/8909/1265/P8300001.JPG

IIRC, that was one of the better ones, at around $10 or so in mid-'60s money - about $50 in today's dollarettes. But those AM-only radios were about 10 years away from obsolescence when FM took off and the first Walkman appeared.

And, today's smartphones are the same size, but thinner. And they do so much more for about twice the price (accounting for inflation, and with a 2-year contract).

 

[Tom Wells]

I don't know if it came out in late 50s (Wiki. says '54)or early 60s or whatever but the wonder of technology gave us tiny little radios, maybe slightly bigger than a Walkman...with a treble-high sound and AM only (or maybe some
had AM-FM). Teens could listen to their Ricky Nelson or Beatles tunes! And I think they had a headphone jack, that would be one headphone going into one ear in glorious mono. The very portability of it! No huge radios with tubes.

Here's a '64 model...I wanna hold your hand...
http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.com/afu/images/8909/1265/P8300001.JPG

IIRC, that was one of the better ones, at around $10 or so in mid-'60s money - about $50 in today's dollarettes. But those AM-only radios were about 10 years away from obsolescence when FM took off and the first Walkman appeared.

And, today's smartphones are the same size, but thinner. And they do so much more for about twice the price (accounting for inflation, and with a 2-year contract).

And being the same size as a 1960s transistor radio, they have pretty much the awesome room-filling volume as the 6 transistor jobs did.
The transistor radios actually had a bigger speaker than most smartphones and if you held it against your ear and kept the volume
reasonably low, it wasn't tinny at all. But them little white earplugs were truly awful sounding.
Except that you now pay to have commercial content delivered to you.
I'll still prefer that the commercial content pay the delivery, not me.
There isn't any data I want delivered on a device so small except a phone call.

Quite a few people don't want such overstuffed phones.... there are computers with real keyboards for such purposes.

 

[raccoonradio]

Oh, that's good. I do remember an old small AM transistor radio and at least that one sounded tinny to me.

btw I mentioned transistors and the portability of radios. There's actually a funny sight gag in the
movie Johnny Dangerously, a gangster comedy starring Michael Keaton. It's the 1930s
and a teen had an old HUGE cathedral radio on his shoulder, like the later boom boxes, digging the music!

 

[KeithE4]

Oh, that's good. I do remember an old small AM transistor radio and at least that one sounded tinny to me.

I still have one - a 1960-vintage Commodore 7-transistor job. Still works, too (but not that well).

btw I mentioned transistors and the portability of radios. There's actually a funny sight gag in the movie Johnny Dangerously, a gangster comedy starring Michael Keaton. It's the 1930s and a teen had an old HUGE cathedral radio on his shoulder, like the later boom boxes, digging the music!

Some of those ancient radios did run on batteries.

 

[raccoonradio]

Yes, and the ancient radio museum I went to in Windsor Locks CT mentioned the importance of
battery development, etc! But we picture those days as being the family gathered in the living
room...etc (Little Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story listening to Little Orphan Annie...)

 

[Laurence Glavin]

Yes, and the ancient radio museum I went to in Windsor Locks CT mentioned the importance of
battery development, etc! But we picture those days as being the family gathered in the living
room...etc (Little Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story listening to Little Orphan Annie...)

Based on a novel by the great Jean Shepherd.

 

[raccoonradio]

Indeed and I've been to the house in Cleveland where it was filmed...

 

[SonicOverload]

when I was out walking by the beach yesterday, I saw an older woman with a transistor radio sitting on a bench, with the antenna drawn out so maybe she had FM on. I'ma a couple of years older than Bob (Raccoon) and my first radio was also a small transistor when I was 4 or 5 and I'd listen to the old WMEX for my Beatles fix ;D

I'm down to two AM presets on my car--WBZ and WWZN, for progressive talk, although WEEI is still on there for now. I have three other presets for NYC stations when I travel down there--the sports station (WFAN) and the news station (WINS) and the local progressive talk station there.

 

[spt87]

Radio Shack was still carrying AM only transistor radios in the 1990's. I was told by a store manager that prison's in NY did not allow inmates to have an FM radio - AM only. Not sure why though.

 

[raccoonradio]

My older sister had a small AM transistor radio. Speaking of WMEX, going back to mid 70s, I remember my brother (5 yrs older than me) won an album from them: Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. (Of course
they had 2 hits I remember, Billy Don't Be A Hero, and Who Do You Think You Are)

btw not sure how many there are but some prisons actually have their own inmate-operated stations.
There was one down around La. or Miss. I'd read about...

Ah this may be the one:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n68/ai_8897946/
>>Out of the small studio in the one-story brick control center building of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, KLSP broadcasts from noon until midnight, seven days a week. it's a bare-bones operation. There's an ancient mixing board, a cheap reel-to-reel machine, two turntables, and a couple of shelves worth of albums. But to the 5,000 inmates who make up its listening audience, KLSP is more than just a radio station.

radio-locator.com lists KLSP 91.7, "the Incarceration Station", with a power of 105 watts. Lic. granted in 1987

 

[raccoonradio]

We're celebrating WBZ's 90th birthday and we know they have a powerful signal, etc. and do well in the ratings. Howie Carr's flagship station is still AM, and we know one can find a multitude of formats, etc.
on the AM dial. But at this time as more and more stations simulcast on, or move to, FM, this note from
Taylor on radio-info: Someone at the NAB Radio convention (anonymous) noted:

"Am I the only person to notice that the clock radios at the Hyatt Regency didn’t have AM reception?"

I'm not sure if that means they simply didn't have the AM dial available, FM only, or whether they did have
AM but no stations came in (cheaply made, or simply no recep in the hotel). But..sign of the times?

Admittedly it will take awhile for all the AM radios out there to go kaput of course.

 

[Laurence Glavin]

On one occasion, when I was staying at a hotel in New York City, there WAS an AM radio dial on the in-house clock radio. I could only get the AMs in northern New Jersey like WINS, WHN (as it was then), WABC and WBBR. WCBS and WFAN were no-shows. I don't recall trying WQEW. If I had stayed uptown with clearance to the east and northeast, it's possible that the opposite would have been true.

 

[raccoonradio]

Of course most hotels that provide a clock radio seem to have the type you can buy for $10 at Walgreen's...and cheapie Motel 6 of course doesn't provide one at all. I don't know how good AM
reception can be with a better radio at a high-rise hotel, etc., though at my cartoon convention (in
Pittsburgh and in Philly before that) at various high rise hotels, AM wasn't too bad on a half
decent Walkman etc.

One would think WCBS and WFAN should have come in!

 

[Dighton Rockhead]

I can't see any secular, English- or Spanish-language stations on AM at all in 20 years.

In the Providence market, this has already partly come to pass, at least in regard to Spanish language, with the leading station in that segment being on 100.3 (actually two, if you count the LPFM on 96.5), while a third Spanish language daytimer lingers on 1110.

And the wake for AM continues......

 

[N1WVQ]

I can't see any secular, English- or Spanish-language stations on AM at all in 20 years.

In the Providence market, this has already partly come to pass, at least in regard to Spanish language, with the leading station in that segment being on 100.3 (actually two, if you count the LPFM on 96.5), while a third Spanish language daytimer lingers on 1110.

And the wake for AM continues......

Good. I want WHIM back!