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Would AMs be missed?

W

Wazzie

I had a thought the other day. It seems that just about every county in Indiana has at least one AM station. If the local AMs were forced to go dark, would most people even notice? The regional AMs could stay on... I'm talking about the 1000 watters with laughable night wattage.

If you've read any of my earlier posts, you know I'm the first one on the soap box, yelling about community service & keeping it live and local. But in this day and age of Satellite services, i-Pods and comming soon, HD radio, do the smaller AMs even make a scratch into their towns?<P ID="signature">______________
[email protected]</P>
 
No. Unfortunately they would not be missed. How many of these stations merely pick up satellite feeds for their programming anyway?

> I had a thought the other day. It seems that just about
> every county in Indiana has at least one AM station. If the
> local AMs were forced to go dark, would most people even
> notice? The regional AMs could stay on... I'm talking
> about the 1000 watters with laughable night wattage.
>
> If you've read any of my earlier posts, you know I'm the
> first one on the soap box, yelling about community service &
> keeping it live and local. But in this day and age of
> Satellite services, i-Pods and comming soon, HD radio, do
> the smaller AMs even make a scratch into their towns?
>
 
> No. Unfortunately they would not be missed. How many of
> these stations merely pick up satellite feeds for their
> programming anyway?
>
> I would say some would be missed...Look at WBNL's success in Boonville on the air and on the net....They've done it right... Local and even the hour in automation are local......Ralph does not have an FM and is very fluid in cash flow and increasing the stations Warrick County reach with news/sports and classic pop and show tunes...

WKWH-AM has a local following for news/info, due to Shelbyville's need for local information.. Their Classic Hits format was working well, but now have JACK and the such in Indy doing what they've been doing for three plus years on 1520... They're waining some, as the AM studios were moved to the FM studios in Rushville (94.3)....

WRAY-AM in Princeton has done well with News/Talk/Sports and has a decent signal in the County, day and night....

I would love to get my hands on 1450 in Jeffersonville...What a waste...If you give the north bank of Kentuckiana a Floyd, Clark counties type of information station (in the lines of Boonville), you don't need ratings to sell it to the locals in New Albany, Clarksville and Jeffersonville......Just another corporate AM running satellite country, at this time...

Most AM's would not be missed...
 
> No. Unfortunately they would not be missed. How many of
> these stations merely pick up satellite feeds for their
> programming anyway?

In Indiana, I don't think they would be missed because many of the AMs in the state have either an FM sister station an FM competitor that does a much better job at serving the community. This is generally speaking, of course. I have heard a few AMs in the state that still stay true to their community and have a great following. However, many operators in Indiana just overlook their AM stations and put their money, time, and effort into other stations within their group. It really is too bad considering that with the right format, proper promoting, hiring the right people, etc., several of these AMs in smaller markets and communities would give the FMs (many who are also on the bird) some competition.

The wild card on the future of AM radio really lies on how well HD radio will take off. If an FM station duplicates an AM competitor's programming on their digital subchannel, most people will choose the subchannel if it's readily available. This certainly holds true today with an FM and AM station carrying the same format. Why listen to a staticy, monophonic AM when you can hear the same music clear and in stereo on FM?
 
I agree that they wouldn't be missed. For example, listen to the turd of a so called radio station WAKE. Night coverage almost makes it inside the studio...no local shows at all...barely even sports....truly a bastard stepchild.

Does a bastard stepchild ever do well? No. WAKE was once a very prominent station....but when idiot owners saw they could gut the staff of their AMs in favor of the new cash cow FMs...they forced the listeners of these AM stations to go away.

How can you rely on your local AM for information if it doesn't even have a single employee?

Now does it HAVE to be that way...No way in hell.

Look at WJOL in Joliet (part of NextMedia)....Its ratings in the county by county stuff are no more spectacular that WAKE (per say) but it is the #2 biller at the Next Joliet group over WSSR and WRXQ...only outbilled by WCCQ...

It has two local shows, lots of sports, and a degree of automation and whatnot...but WJOL would be missed...stations like WAKE might as well sign off or be donated to colleges/churches
 
I too agree that most AM's would not be missed. What I can't understand is why the AM stations in Indiana do so poorly compared with AM stations in similar size towns in Illinois.


WDWS Champaign, WJBC Bloomington, IL, WTAX Springfield, WMBD Peoria all do well both in the ratings and revenue. Yet Terre Haute, Bloomington, IN, Lafayette, IN, Muncie, Anderson, Kokomo...have AM's that if you shut them off tomorrow, no one would notice.

Why is this?
 
WJOB in Hammond Indiana and 5kw day & night WIMS in Michigan City most likely won't be missed. Since St George Broadcasting went bankrupt, both stations have been struggling to stay on the air. WIMS airs Sporting News Radio 24/7. WJOB has been mainly Sproting News Radio on weekends & most overnights, with some syndicated programming during the day. But local programming barely exists since St George Broadcasting went bankrupt, and the news staff were let go. WJOB almost got bought by Starboard Media of Green Bay Wisconsin, but backed out after a lot of protest that Starboard had no intention of having any local programming, and that there would only be enough power to keep the transmitter going, but the studios on site would otherwise go dark. WLTH is another AM station in Gary that is barely on the air. I don't know who runs the station, but their audio is so bad that it barely can be heard over lots of humming. Also their day & night sites (they operate from Gary during the day & Hobart on their directional towers at night). It's mainly on the bird a good part of the day, with occasional gospel programming some overnights & on Sunday evenings. WWCA was off the air for a good 9 years starting in 1994, when the original owners shut down the station. Starboard eventually bought this station after backing out of buying WJOB, spent lots of money to make repairs to the WWCA site after 9 years of being off the air, and neglect to the site. I don't know if anyone really listens to the station since Starboard doesn't advertise the station like they do with WAIT AM in Chicago, which they broker time with Newsweb on the daytimer.
Most NW Indiana residents don't listen to WNDZ in Portage Indiana anymore since it's ethnic programming aimed at Chicago & surrounding suburbs. It used to serve NW Indiana, and it was one of the last daytimers that signed on in the last half of the 1980's. They can't easily get night status because they're within the 750mile radius of WSB Atlanta. As for WAKE Valparaiso, it's a shame they're on the bird, airing ABC standards 24/7. As for the night status, they can't increase their power due to being within the 750 mile radius of KTSP St Paul Minnesota. For the person who posted that the station is barely heard in the studios; do you work for Radio One Communications (formerly Porter County Broadcasting)? I know I can hear WAKE with no problem in Valparaiso and about 3 miles outside of Valparaiso. Also, WAKE's towers are on site with the studios for WAKE, WZVN, WXRD, & WLJE.
 
I think the common thread here is this:

- AMs that have some local content would be missed
- AMs that are hooked to the bird would NOT be missed

Can't you extend this to FMs and even TVs -- having real people doing real things makes it worthwhile?

Peace,
jim
<P ID="signature">______________
It's not right / In one life / Too much rain</P>
 
Now that we have had our paragraph fun...anyone care to comment on the orginal topic?



> I too agree that most AM's would not be missed. What I can't
> understand is why the AM stations in Indiana do so poorly
> compared with AM stations in similar size towns in Illinois.
>
>
>
> WDWS Champaign, WJBC Bloomington, IL, WTAX Springfield, WMBD
> Peoria all do well both in the ratings and revenue. Yet
> Terre Haute, Bloomington, IN, Lafayette, IN, Muncie,
> Anderson, Kokomo...have AM's that if you shut them off
> tomorrow, no one would notice.
>
> Why is this?
>
 
Misinformed about WJOB

Wow Dave,

I'm afraid your summation of WJOB and WIMS is wildly wrong. Sporting News has not aired on either station since early November, and ownership has not let go of one newsperson since I got there two years ago. We have also purchased the Calumet Press...a free weekly newspaper that compliments our newscoverage.

In the morning we are all talk (The Morning Stampede with Ric Federighi and the Preacher)and play the golden oldies throughout most of the rest of the day. We also aired basketball (college, pro and highschool) seven nights a week during the season and plan on doing two or three highschool baseball games a week this season. We have political talk and a local spanish speaking show on the weekends along with locally produced religious programming on Sunday mornings. We also do live local news twice an hour from 5:30a to 7:30p along with local traffic 4 times an hour during drive times.

I would hardly say that we are struggling and plan to launch an independent WIMS soon as we are currently simulcasting the stations out of Hammond.

For all of your inaccuracies, I will give you one point...you obviously would not miss the station since you haven't tuned us in during the past 8 months or so.

John Rush
Program Director
AM1230 WJOB AM1420 WIMS
 
> I think the common thread here is this:
>
> - AMs that have some local content would be missed
> - AMs that are hooked to the bird would NOT be missed
>
> Can't you extend this to FMs and even TVs -- having real
> people doing real things makes it worthwhile?
>
> Peace,
> jim
>
I'm the manager of one of these types of stations in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The station itself is very old, dating back to 1932. We're on 1490-AM with 1Kw day & night. For most of it's life it was the quintessential "hometown" station running everything for everybody. The original owner held the station from it's sign-on in 1932 until the early 1980's. After that came a string of out of town owners, and it finally wound up in the hands of Citadel who simply shut down what little local programming was left and turned it into a repeater of another station down the road. When our company bought the station at the end of 2003, I inherited a station with no studios, no staff, no format, and no listeners. We returned the station to it's community of license, put on as much live programming as we could afford, including local news and high school sports. It has done reasonably well, BUT....in today's world people have so many choices for entertainment, news, school closings and such that just being the "local" station is hardly a lock on your audience. Most people under the age of 40 don't even know what an AM is, much less listen. One of the area TV stations who has a fine news staff and plenty of cash, has a great news website. The local school district will email any closing info to your computer or text your cell phone. And as much as I'd like it to be true, no one is sitting around the radio [whether it be AM, FM or XM] breathlessly waiting for the lastest news, weather or song. Those days have passed. I'd like to think that if our station went away, we'd be missed. But I'm afraid that the gap would close quickly filled by another of those many choices that are now available.
 
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