The end of AM radio… Rush breathed life back into it, but as the so-called greatest generation who grew up on AM fade away, so does the remaining viability. WTOD on Toledo is being swapped to a religious broadcaster for an FM translator, WPAZ near Philadelphia is now silent, WYXC near Atlanta has gone silent, KDKA in Pittsburgh which used to have 60% shares (pre FM) now can’t compete with SuburbanWPGB-FM, Citadel the owner of ABC radio, owner of a flock of legacy 50 kW AM stations plans to file Chapter 11 before month-end, the migration of news/talk to FM – the signs of impending doom are everywhere
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Kind of a shame, it might be a good idea to take it underground. If Beck et al., are correct (even 50% correct) it might be wise to tuck some of the amateur transmitters* away for when the voices we like to hear and listen to are classified as ‘hate speech’. *C. Crane’s are toys and not very good one’s at that.
If you think that’s bad, take a look at Canada. 50,000 watt powerhouses are going silent at a rate of about once a month. That’s where the future lies for American AM radio. The Internet has pretty much rendered long-distance listening obsolete.
The problem is that the FM broadcast band can only fit so many stations, and it’s already pushing its limits as it is. HD Radio, quite frankly, isn’t panning out, so if they plan on moving the AM stations to FM, they’ll have to expand the FM band… likely downward. There’s an old trick that a few stations use (e.g. WNYZ New York) that allows TV stations on channel 6 to be heard on the 87.7 frequency. It only works on analog, though, so only existing low-powered stations can use it now. With all the problems HDTV has on low-power VHF, I wouldn’t be surprised if the FCC considered opening the 82-88 MHz space that channel 6 currently uses for more FM stations.
As Dylan once sang, “the times, they are a-changin’…”
NPR seems to be leading the charge now to push FM/HD – since the typical network affiliate has 3 “channels” of programming already – News/Idea, Classical and Eclectic (usually Jazz), if they can migrate their users to HD, they can free up licenses (to sell to EMF :)) and cut down on the cost of maintaining duplicate sets of transmitters… Commercial radio stations decided for their own reasons to debut HD with no commercials (no revenue) and no competition (no reason to program aggressively)…. I don’t know what they were thinking… Maybe if the FCC forced the “Big guys” to consolidate their FM stations on a single frequency (like morphing the ownership rules that you can only have FM station in a market, but it can have 3 channels, and free up the spectrum for other licenses (perhaps LPFMs). Right now all the incentives are to ignore HD.
I agree that a lot of why AM is no longer important is that the Internet allows long distance listening…. the FCC went half way down the path in the 1980s by making the 50 kW stations go directional at night and requiring all new AM stations to have (low) night time power.
Maybe it’s time to cut out the memories of what AM was in the past – and end all “protection” for legacy AM stations (like KDKA) and only protect them as far as their daytime signal reaches, and let the small and medium radio stations have a viable signal at night (so they can carry yet more syndicated programs!) :) (and keep in compliance with international treaties)
When I was researching EAS about a year ago, I realized just how much the entire system is still dependent on those 50 kW AM stations – the notion is in event of a national emergency at night, the AM stations can switch (in theory) to their non-directional daytime antennas and blanket the country (and the secondary EAS hubs) with a strong signal to warn us all that we have 5 minutes to live before the Russian nukes kill us all..
Have we arrived at the point yet where we can declare the internet to be reliable enough to dismantle the over-the-air EAS system? How long before the Govt mandates EAS be built into computers on the Internet (assuming it isn’t already there discretely hidden)?
It’s interesting that over the years, due to a number of factors, KDKAs signal has grown increasingly more difficult to recieve. I am an aberration in that I’m under 40 and a devoted AM listener, and prefer to listen to KDKA here in PA. However, their 50k signal is inaudible due to noise from IOBC on WBZ Boston at night and a spanish language station in the hours of sunrise + about 1 more hour.
Aside from the lack of interesting or different programming on AM (radio in general), there is so much noise on the band now, that listening is very difficult if not impossible much of the day.
Bottom line to the comment is that the FCC has allowed the signals to degrade and interference to increase. Most people I know would never, ever switch to the AM dial. That won’t be changing any time soon.
As I was thinking about this topic a little more, an analogy to the US car companies began to develop…the big broadcasting companies lobbied and manipulated their way into creating an environment where only their products would have the advantage in the marketplace – or would at least have 99% of the advantages over smaller, independent (& often creative or innovative) competition.
In the end, it comes back to bite them because they’ve created a bland product that they falsely assume is a one-size fits all scenario…”Don’t like it? What else do you have to listen to?”…along comes the Internet and the ability to listen to, well, everything…and now they have competition like they never imagined.
I guess I’m saying that the Internet is the Toyota in 1980 and Clear Channel is Chrysler without Lee Iacocca.
I used to love long distance AM listening…but frankly it’s not too exciting to hear Dr. Laura or whomever simply because its DX…I built a part 15 AM transmitter a few years ago and my actual over the air AM listening has all but vanished. Now it’s fun to have a stream with a syndicated national show run over into an unexpected local show.
With regards to EAS, how many ordinary non-radio people do you really think would turn immediately to AM radio in an ememgency? We’ve been conditioned to not think of radio as a reliable source of local information at all – think about a bad storm or tornado…you switch on the radio for updated emergency info and all you get is Barry Manilow and pre-recorded DJ voice tracks.
Funny that you mention the Internet… is it any wonder why the radio industry lobbied alongside Soundexchange to jack up the royalty rates for Internet radio a few years back?
As for EAS… it has never been used for its official purpose, and with the news cycle the way it is, it probably never will. Personally, I think it’s obsolete (it’s also become more and more of a nuisance) and should be abolished.
There are parts of the country (Oklahoma comes to mind where I lived for a year) where EAS is actually used on a regular basis – but this is the local capability to forward weather emergencies (aka Tornados) , not the FCC mandated “This is the White House” national emergency function. The local stations are for the most part set to automatically put the EAS message on the air coming from the hub in Tulsa.
Requiring LPFM’s to have EAS devices is downright silly. LPFM stations are not required to be on the air all day to begin with. Having a range of only a mile or two, they are never intended to be a mass communications tool. The requirement is there probably just to keep the costs of creating an LPFM high in order to olease the NAB and stifle competition, which is what governments do best..