I know I may sound like a relic from another era, but chances are if you’re a Baby Boomer (or gasp – even older), you were inspired by AM radio as a kid growing up whether it was in a big city or a small town. If you’re a member of a younger generation, you may not even know that AM – or amplitude modulation – has a magic power. At night when the clouds are just right, AM signals have the ability to “skip” across geography, unlike frequency modulation (FM) which is line of sight. “Clear channel” stations had an even easier time being heard beyond their metro confines – often covering many states during the nighttime hours.
Many of us radio veterans remember those nights, lying in bed, where your trusty bedside AM clock radio pulled in signals from all over the U.S. As a boy in Detroit and not especially well-traveled, I learned how to pronounced Des Plaines (Des-planes) and Touhy (2E) by listening to Chicago radio stations like WBBM and WLS. Tuning in KYW in Philly (which came in “like it was next door”), I learned how to spell the quirky town of Conshohocken from listening to Phillips Ford commercials. It was from a jingle that got in your head (CON-SHO-HO-CKEN). At least, it got in mine.
It didn’t matter if you lived in Dallas or Des Moines, or a small town in Delaware – you were able to pick up big AM radio stations from faraway. And if you talk to today’s broadcasters on the other side of 50, many will tell you their careers were likely inspired by these booming, exciting blowtorches on AM radio that provided a soundtrack for our teens.
AM radio was where we first heard the Beatles, the Supremes, the Stones, Stevie Wonder, and even the Doors. Big AM Top 40 stations of the day – KHJ, WABC, CKLW, WLS – played all these cool rock songs, right next to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Elvis, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, and the Singing Nun. And even though the fidelity of amplitude modulation is obviously technically inferior to that of FM, there was something very different and even romantic about hearing all those songs first on AM radio. All the big recording studios used AM radio-sounding speakers as they worked on their final mixes, knowing that’s where the music would first be exposed. They may have sounded cleaner years later on FM, but they sounded bigger on AM.
So, when Steve Goldstein posted a Wall Street Journal story the other day – “Why Nighttime Is The Right TIme For The Great American Road Trip” by Dan Neil – it sparked a reaction from lots of old radio guys on Facebook. One after another chimed in with call letters, personalities, and faraway cities that charmed them over AM radio during the evening hours decades ago.
But alas, there’s nothing very romantic about AM radio these days. While broadcasters did their best to salvage these facilities, mostly by switching to spoken word formats, there are fewer and fewer AM stations still thriving. And unlike those good old days where many AM stations were in hot pursuit of one another, there are just a handful still operating at meaningful competitive levels. Even the great stations feel a lot like high-end department stores anchoring malls on the poor side of town.
And so in this year’s Techsurvey, our new research director, Jason Hollins, came up with a fascinating idea to gain a better understanding of AM radio’s continued relevance. Over the years, we’ve identified new car buyers (or those in the market for a new vehicle). We then give them a list of in-car media features, and ask them to tell us which are most important to them.
We’ve always expressed broadcast radio as “AM/FM.” And it has always ended up at the top of drivers’ wish lists – ahead of connectivity features like Bluetooth, Wi-FI, and Apple CarPlay. It’s not just our radio-centric Techsurvey that shows broadcast radio ranking above newer features – everyone’s research reinforces its value at these high levels.
So, in our new Techsurvey 2018, we separated AM and FM radio for this question. And the results are perhaps predictable:
The chart tells the tale of these two broadcast radio platforms. On its own, FM hangs in well, deemed to be “very important” for eight of every ten respondents looking to purchase or lease a new car. AM, on the other hand, is mentioned by fewer than four in ten as a must-have feature, behind the CD player.
A solution for the AM radio problem? It’s a tough one, or it would have been solved years ago.
It turns out The Verge wrote a feature story about AM’s dilemma back in 2014 – “Can we save AM radio?” by Trent Wolbe. Its sub-heading – “Keeping amplitude modulation out of the dustbin of history” – is ominous and speaks to the precarious position of the platform nearly 5 years ago. Today’s AM’s health is even more tenuous.
The story charts then-FCC commissioner Ajit Pai‘s efforts to save AM radio, and concludes with the hope that perhaps today’s AM radio stations
could become what those early FMs once were – sandboxes used by pioneers, swashbucklers, and even wild-eyed entrepreneurs to try something very “unradio-like.”
In some ways, AM’s pathway may resemble that of my hometown of Detroit. A once-proud city that fell on the hardest of times is now on the comeback trail as young innovators flock to the city. Most find the environment agile, inexpensive, and inspirational. Like AM radio, Detroit has a rich history, having once played an important role in millions of lives. But that was a long time ago.
A palpable spirit of innovation pervades the Motor City these days – an attitude that would suit AM radio operators, whether they chose to experiment with their own properties, hire inventors to try new concepts, or lease their airwaves to wild-eyed devil-may-care artists looking for a palate on the airwaves.
Now the cynics among you may be thinking, “Isn’t it possible to do this on the Internet?” Or on H2s? Why would anyone bother experimenting with AM radio at this point in time?
I’ll let Verge writer Wolbe answer that question:
“The AM band may eventually return to the Wild West feel that it had when it was first deployed in the early 1900s: a low-rent haven that artists and other cultural opportunists will inhabit and reinvent for their own devices. Imagine an instant, global communications medium free of regulation: it sounds a lot like the internet used to be.”
Is it even fathomable that a 12 year-old in 2018 would lay in bed at night tuning in an AM clock radio?
It may sound far-fetched, but remember it’s largely Millennials buying those antennas to pull in local televisions stations without having to buy cable TV. There’s nothing hi-tech about that.
They even have a cool acronym – OTA – over the air.
Now that sounds a bit romantic.
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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There’s also Part 15 AM … maybe it wont reach the other side of the street on a rainy day, but it’s out there and its fun to do and listen to.
Pretty good community of users too:
hobbybroadcaster.net
part15.us
http://www.lpam.net/
Much appreciated, Alan. Thanks for reading our blog.
We have a huge number of online listener sessions for a smaller market AM sports talk station. The percentage of online listening with our smart phone apps is way above the national average. The mobile app has turned smart phones into the transistor radio of 2018, at least for us.
Bob, you’ve just listed some of the smart survival tactics AM stations have to employ. When we started jacapps a decade ago, realizing the power of the smartphone to bring portability back to radio, we didn’t realize the full impact it would have. Sadly, more AM stations have not embraced mobile as you have. It’s a missed opportunity. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Well done! This line in particular-‘Even the great stations feel a lot like high-end department stores anchoring malls on the poor side of town.’
Fred, I won’t turn this into a ‘remember when’ post, just wanted to say, like yourself, I wasn’t well traveled either, but as a kid growing up in Martinsville, Va., WLS, WABC, and WOWO taught me much more than I could have learned by myself. Good luck to AM radio.
Barry, I’m not a “rear view mirror” guy (usually), but the WSJ article (and Goldstein’s post) makes this both a nostalgic post but also one about survival and innovation. Thanks for the comment.
Fred, I think with innovative and personality driven radio we could experience the revival of AM radio. I even venture to say a true oldies format would be viable. We need to throw out that 18-49 BS. One folks over fifty do spend lots of money and ,two lots of the long for the days of old Time AM radio. I being a former dj would work for you and endeavor to inform, entertain, and construct more of the sound we grew up with.lets keep reaching for the stars as Casey would say.
Steve, there’s money among those white hairs. Thanks for the comment!
Steve, I think there are many “seasoned” DJs who would give their eye teeth to get behind the mic of an AM Oldies station that was serious about winning. Thanks for the comment.
I love medium wave as long as I can receive Canadian stations and the few locally owned independent stations that are left on the dial. But it’s tough to avoid the syndicated lunatics of the political right who try to indoctrinate me night after night with their fact-free ranting.
Clearly, shifting AM radio to consservative talk was a survival decision that may/may not have serious ramifciations on the platfrom’s ability to surving. Thanks for the comment.
Dear Mr. Jacobs,
Thank you for this excellent article – you have your fingers on the pulse of radio. You and I have the same hair color… you mentioned some of the early radio stations, in particular, KHJ. I grew up in Southern California when AM and Rock and Roll was king. I’d start my day getting ready for school, but the first stop was turning on the AM radio and waiting for the tubes to warm up. Then there would be the blasting sounds of 93 KHJ with morning host Robert W. Morgan. “Good Morgan Boss Angles – Arise and Morganize!” Even today, my In-Law’s will sit in front of the AM radio with the lights down, and listen to Dodgers Baseball. I truly believe that they still see radio for what it was – the theatre of the mind. Long live radio!
Rick, great story, wonderful memories, and thanks for enhancing the post with a great comment.
I grew up with AM radio and to this day carry a small portable radio around my house. But if you show one to people under 25, most probably will not know what it is. They definitely won’t have one tucked away in a draw somewhere (Does Sony still make small portable radios?). And so, we can lament the passing of Blockbuster, Radio Shack, 78, 33, & 45 RPM records, VCRs, and now AM radio, we need to let time and technology march on. Now where did I put my TV Guide?
Steve, there’s nothing wrong with having great memories of the media we grew up with. But connecting the past with the present is something I’ve been focused on the last decade or so. Maybe we can give you something worth listening to on that portable AM radio. Thanks for writing.
Steve Edelman: Vinyl records made a very powerful comeback beginning w/ hip hop turntablists (who obviously used them as their instrument) & club DJs & then other young listeners/collectors for the last twenty years. Despite the advent of digital music. Some younger people only buy vinyl now!
Hi Fred,
A great read as always 🙂
I grew up in Newcastle, regional Australia, about 200kms (125miles) north of Sydney.
At night I could hear all the powerhouse AM services in Sydney and a bunch of other markets as far north as Brisbane (1,000klms away) all the way south to Melbourne (1,100klms away).
Then in 1980 when Sydney commercial FM services started, weather conditions and ducting made it possible to hear those as well.
It was great listening and since there was no real internet it was a privilege to hear the content.
Times have changed, but one thing I think remains the same is great content — if broadcasters produce great content that people want to hear, they’ll find a way to consume it.
AM, FM, DAB, Online streaming, podcasts.. they are all great delivery platforms. I now listen to more podcast/catch-up content than live.
AM definitely still has it’s place, I have long believed it’s more suited to talk and sport, but I also think what we’re seeing now is another transformation in the way we reach listeners — smartphones are fast becoming the new tool for everything, even listening.
I wonder if smartphone listening will be the alternative to rolling out DAB since there’s already phone towers and capacity in most places where there are people (listeners).
Cheers
D.
Darren, thanks for the kind words – and the international perspective. Many thanks for the comment.
AM is certainly “worth saving”. I worked very hard with the then-active NRSC 1/2 committees in the 1980s and some very good things came out of it. Once we get back into our heads that AM is a 10khz service, and properly protect the 20khz allocation (read: no hybrid IBOC), it could be resurrected again. If you want to hear the potential of AM, listen to the off-air stream (from a production receiver circa 1990; not a console feed as many assume) from WION. This small town radio station is delivering serious audio quality to its listeners. AM can sound like this. The ability to do it is public domain; patents have long expired. Use the AM band, with its narrow allocations, long wavelength, and propagation qualities for what it best serves. A lot of potential still exists out there. But Part 15 inintentional radiators must be clamped down (an issue now affecting FM as well) and a concerted effort on the part of broadcasters must take place for this to happen.
I know there are engineering issues, Greg. But my personal bandwidth takes us only so far as the Optimod. Appreciate you weighing in on the tech side.
That’s exactly what I was about to bring up. Many an AM station had response out to 13 kcps. back in the ’60s. That 5kcps figure was a minimum!
Too much of today’s FM sounds worse than what AM sounded like back then.
Those old Motown records would still sound great regardless, thanks in part to your good work back then!
Lee, thanks. The Motown era came a bit before my time. But those Supremes & Temps songs all sounded great on AM radio.
I am an old radio guy (66) who is living the opportunity to work for an AM station now. Some incredible guys decided to reinvent WTOB (heritage call letters from the 50s to early 70s). We are only the air playing the music of the 60s, 70s and a few 60s, live 24 hours a day almost 7 days a week ( a few syndicated weekend shows). We have 14 luve locally produced newscasts a day. Yes, we have an FM translator but continue to promote ourselves as the Big 980. We turn a small profit and the Winston-Salem, NC is embracing us. What more can I say? AM radio can survive if you’re willing to try to make it work.
I grew up in the sixties listening to WLS, the 50K watt powerhouse and the personality DJs that brought rock and roll to the Baby Boomer generation, specifically The Wild I-Tralian, Dick Biondi. He had some kind of magic that kept him on the air for over 6 decades. That’s the kind of radio we grew up, and that’s the kind of radio we are missing today. Dick Biondi is the subject of my documentary film, The Voice That Rocked America, which will air on PBS once it is completed. It is a tribute to Biondi and a love letter to an era when radio was king. Thanks for your thoughtful article, Fred. Like rockstar Jim Peterik says in an interview for The Dick Biondi Film, “There’s nothing like hearing your song on AM radio.”
Pamela, nice ot hear from you. Good luck with the film – I think we’ve just run into a few thousand radio folks who would love to see it.
Great article. In 2011 I resurrected a small stand alone AM in rural Wisconsin. While it was and is a ton of work, by listening to my community and caring and doing what they wanted, the station is doing well. Some of our biggest fans are the high school kids and they still get excited if I interview them on the air. Funniest story with one of the kids. He asked why does the music on the radio station sound better than on my phone? He didnt used headphones on his phone, just the little speaker. I had another student ask me how to tune her car radio to the station as she couldnt figure it out. Showed here the “band” button. Wow was she happy when she could get the station and pre-set it!!
Brian, fascinating stories that reinforce the notion that even technology from the past can be confounding. Congrats on your success with your AM sandbox – perhaps an inspiration to others reading these comments.
Touhy Avenue! I was mentioning to a streaming friend, this morning, that ten years ago, I watched email addresses from a major market stream service, and 40% of the 120 listeners were from China. The GM said, ‘we’d never be able to monetize this stream’, and time has proven him correct. RF is the only way to reach masses and all classes for free.
I’d hate to do a tornado warning in Wisconsin, and have the digital stream have to ingest, re-route, distribute, then re-send over a 40 second delay.
Fred you are Right many of us wood love to hear Radio as it was Many years ago and from our point of View it was the best but I feel that boat has sail now .You are also right AM needs some thing which the younger person can ready like, working with the Internet is a very good goal. Every kid I see now days is plug in to there own ear phones (ear plugs). the Question is with Programing can we plug it to there personal needs? it a hard Question which only time will tell that my point Earl at Screechy-r-Productions (About People Warren Michigan)
Earl, thanks for the comment. Nothing is the way it used to be, but that spirit of innovation was alive and well back in the ’60s. It sure wouldn’t hurt to rekindle that today.
Thank you for your time Fred.
This is a great article! I spent almost every night as a small child in the late 60s & very early 70s w/ a tiny palmsized transistor (candy coloured or silver iPod of their day) under my down pillow listening to WABC (NYC station) play the Beatles & amazing Soul & everything else.
We lived an hour outside of NYC on the CT Shore. My dad – program consultant Mike Joseph who just passed on 14 April – had turned that station around by programming it’s top 40 format & hiring Bruce Morrow (Cousin Brucie) & others there.
The tiny transistors were gifts from stations that he consulted freelance & NBC in Rock Center where he was briefly VP of radio nationally. I’m mad at myself for not keeping those tiny transistors! They piled up in our country attic as they were such a common gift then. A later early 70s shiny silver one was only two inches square!
When ABC switched to news in the early 70s I was very sad at the change.
I then listened to WNEW till I graduated HS in 1978. It was a great album oriented station in that it played amazing live streamed concerts such as Bruce Springsteen at the Bottom line in Greenwich Village NYC in August of 74; right before Born to Run was released.
But it had a very very narrow musical focus & I really missed the extremely varied music that ABC played.
Shortly after graduating I moved to NYC & aside from listening to WFMU (the very interesting & eclectic NJ college station) & other stations very low on the FM dial; I was part of the art/music – inc. graffiti/street art & hip hop – w/ people who made & played their own music live (inc. my brother a bass player).
A lot of the people I knew well are household names now & from my perspective so much of the creativity that came out of downtown & the Bronx NYC then had to do w/ the loss of music to listen to on radio then.
What stations existed were difficult to get in the tenements we lived in where neglectful landlords had no interest in putting antennas on roofs of buildings surrounded by taller brick buildings inhibiting reception.
That was probably the best thing that came out of the great loss of varied & danceable radio in 70s/very early 80s NYC. People had to pull their turntables out into the streets & clubs; or instruments in little clubs.
I love this concept of AM becoming a playground again for artists w/ little or no money. People thought vinyl was dead & buried & then it was resurrected like Lazarus. Perhaps the same thing will happen for AM.
*WNEW FM station – not AM
Zoé, first and foremost, sorry about your and your family’s recent loss. I did not know your dad personally, but always respected him greatly. He launched “Hot Hits” around the time I got Classic Rock off the ground. And he was obviously much smarter than me. His success at copyrighting the slogan stood in contrast to my inability to do the same with Classic Rock. I admired him from afar.
Your comments are prescient. It would be an amazing to witness an AM revival that would draw creatives back to the business as was the case back in the 60s. You never know, right?
Thanks so much for your heartfelt comments.
Thank you so much Mr.Jacobs.
The copyright for Hot Hits was difficult for him. There was some kind of lawsuit challenging him in the very beginning. Based on those being common words. But apparently when applied to the radio format the words were able to be copyrighted. I was not really paying attention to the details. (Teenager!). But I heard him discussing it then endlessly w/ my mom & w/ lawyers. That was a tiring battle for him.
Thank you for saying so but honestly I don’t think Dad was “smarter”. I think he was an obsessive. That has its rewards; but also has its downsides.
Thank you so much for your kind words & for remembering Daddy so fondly. If you go to my FB page there is a photo of him as a baby w/ his brother Alfred. Please visit. ❤️
*I have it set to ‘friends only’ – so you would probably have to friend me to see the photo. It is astonishingly cute!
Call me someone who lives in the past a bit too much or is a bit too radical, but I think there is a place for avant-garde or other innovative programming for the AM dial. Many of these small (e.g. daytime – especially low power, local channel [i.e. Class C or Class-IV] or other marginal) facilities that could benefit from offering unique programming not available elsewhere. Among the choices of formats I feel could make a go at it might include something along the lines of alternative/underground/free-form/hardcore programming. Using both a quality form of transmission along with ways to raise money with or without advertising, it could be a model worth pursuing.
Tony, that was my premise as well. But as we know, these sub-genres are increasingly available on other platforms (satellite, streaming, etc). Broadcast radio is still a free service, however, an obvious edge for many. Thanks for the comment.
And I agree w/ the comment here about smartphones being the transistor of this time. I now sometimes listen to radio on my iPhone. And they are just as design award worthy as the tiny transistors! (Included in NYC’s Museum of Modern Art in fact).
Fred,
The technical side of AM has been neglected for decades. Hard to find an engineer under 60 who knows anything about AM or cares. Then there’s the manufacturing side, I rode on an airplane sitting next to a Delco engineer on a flight from Chicago to Boston, the money quote? “If a car radio costs $100. we put 5 bucks in the AM side.” That was in the 80’s.
When I left programming to become a GM, I took over a Class C FM and an AM with 5kw and a great dial position. Both stations sounded terrible. I went out to the AM site, all three sticks were leaning at different angles, there were wires hanging out of the back of the transmitter, the building was a mess. We spent some money, got a crew to straighten the towers, clean up the ground system. they rewired the 5kw Power Rock, then cleaned up the pieced together studio. The work made a huge difference. It didn’t sound good on the radio in my Volvo, but it was better. One Sunday I was at a breakfast place and a guy drove in a 54 Caddy convertible. We chatted about his car out in the parking lot. I asked him to turn on his Wonderbar radio and dial up my AM. The sound blew me away, clean and warm with a lot of fidelity.
When I was in Phoenix, my 10kw AM sounded like a 2 way radio. I hired a retired CBS engineer. It only took him a couple of days to clean the station up and make it sound good again.
AM has plenty of problems and a lot of them are self inflicted. It’s not just AM either, I hear plenty of FM stations today that sound terrible technically too.
The best programming and sales efforts won’t make it if the technical side of the radio station isn’t well taken care of.
AM has been neglected for a long time and the same thing is happening today with FM. Last time I drove up 101 to San Francisco, I heard an FM that was so compressed it made my ears bleed and another that was 80% left channel.
Anybody want to have this conversation with the “bankers” running the business?
Fred, I’ll always believe the FCC screwed up by not mandating an AM Stereo standard back in the late 1970’s early 80’s. I can remember playing AM stereo for my contemporaries and they were all amazed at how good it sounded – first you had them listen for a while and then you watched their reaction when you told them they were listening to the “uncool” sound of AM radio. It was quite transformative. I still believe if you had an AM stereo standard mandated and you mandated receivers be built to pick up wideband AM stereo, you could see a revival of the band. The FCC once-mandated tv sets be able to receive the nascent UHF band by a certain calendar date. Why couldn’t they do the same for AM radio and wideband AM Stereo?
I don’t believe the digital option is viable – the buy-in cost is too high for most AM broadcasters, the ongoing license fees are onerous and the interference it causes to first-adjacents cannot be solved. (IBOC – “It Bothers Other Channels”)
The best course for AM radio that can compete for ears, formats and revenue is analog AM stereo.
Mark, the first Classic Rock station I took on was an AM station in Dallas – KRQX. And with the help of GM Tom Bender, we pushed AM Stereo – HARD. Alas, that ship sailed….a long time ago. Thanks for the perspective and the comment.
Fred….This article reminds me of “elect me and I’ll bring the back the jobs to America”. Who can believe the past is returning? There were many gifted programmers, on air naturals and creative owners who came together at a point in history when radio was dying because of tv. These people brought it back for 15 years. Drake, Sklar and other merchandisers strained out all the reasons to listen. One of the biggest killers was their famous “7 second dj” format.
Regarding radio today: there’s no call for it, nobody wants to pay for it but if offered free, people will listen. In a captalistic country, that’s called a hobby!
Gary, thanks for weighing in. But we’re comiing at it from different angles. You maintain that radio was on the “critical list” when TV entered the scene. I would interpret what Drake, Sklark, Storz, McClendon, and others did was adapt the medium to the distruption from the boob tube. And it sure lasted a lot more than 15 years – the ’70s, the ’80s, and well into the Conosolidation Age. I think it’s hard to compare whether radio today is “as good as it was” back in the 60s in much the same way it’s impossible to compare Curry and James to Jordan and Magic. But we do it anyway. Thanks for the comment.
While it’s wonderful to be nostalgic about AM radio’s heyday, the sad truth is that those days are long gone.
In the first part of the 20th century, AM radio thrived because it had no competition – it was the national mass medium that tied America together with news, information, music, drama, and comedy. In the 50s and 60s, it stayed relevant by appealing to young people with cheap transistor radios and a booming America commuting to and from suburbia.
That audience is gone. AM radio, since the 80s, has become a haven for the fringe – news talk, sports talk, and evangelicals, mostly fed to a network of stations via satellite, all broadcasting the same thing. The stations with original local programming is comparatively small. Ajit Pai‘s FCC is now proposing that we lift caps on station ownership that would proliferate non-local programming even more.
Radio’s problem is one of simple economics. During radio’s “Golden Age”, it only had to compete for ad dollars with newspapers. Then, when it had to compete with newspapers, TV, and FM for advertising revenue, it cut costs in programming, replacing original programming with DJs playing records. As TV and FM drew more listeners, AM cut costs on programming even more by doing away with DJs and moving towards satellite-fed talk.
The FCC has also proposed allowing AM stations to go “all digital”. But would that really make a difference?
Today, AM radio has to compete for advertising dollars with newspapers, tv, FM radio, and Internet apps. And listeners have their own ad-free programming options with subscription satellite radio and Internet services, along with common compact discs and mp3s.
The FCC’s current proposals are a band-aid that will allow current players on the AM band to squeeze some more money out of a dying format. Proposals to do away with station ownership caps will just allow satellite-fed network programming on more stations, to make it easier for existing listeners to hear their favorite syndicated shows and networks to consolidate listening numbers. Proposals to allow digital only AM broadcasting will allow existing stations to serve car-bound audiences with better sound, hopefully keeping them sticking around longer.
The one thing that AM radio has shown us, time and again, is that quality programming will drive listeners to the format. And quality programming isn’t cheap. “Economies of scale”, which Ajit Pai likes to talk about and technical improvements will only take you so far. Now, we’ve reached a point where the advertising revenue pie slice for AM is just too small to justify the added cost of different programming.
I don’t think anything will suddenly turn AM radio around – there will be a point every station will face when the number of listeners won’t support paying the electric bill.
I grew up listening to AM radio myself. But, things change and broadcasters need to meet listeners where they are, not where they would like them to be.
Randy, as you note, it’s a lot of things that have allowed the spiral to happen. And the way out is not cheap, easy, or simple. At at this point in our media history, it just might not be possible given the landscape. Thanks for a well-crafted response.
The solution to “fixing” AM is never going to be “more stations on the dial” or “more interference (from HD, more stations, foreign stations, etc). The solution to fixing AM long term is not talk and sports. The solution is relevance and compelling programming, something corporate radios is notoriously bad at doing. The time to save AM may be long passed. The abandonment of REAL fidelity improvements like AMax and CQuam stereo, both of which, if mandated, would have put AM on a level playing field. Our FCC bears a lot of the responsibility for AM’s plight, by licensing too many stations – making nighttime AM a cacophony of interference. A far cry from the mandate of the original FRC to prevent interference. They also turned a blind eye to interference caused by badly designed CFL bulbs and badly designed switching wall warts – in the name of “green” energy – when a simple design change would make them quiet in the AM band. But – we couldn’t call out our “friends” in China when they goofed up the designs, Now there are billions of interference producers in the country – the fault lies squarely with the FCC for not doing its job of preventing interference.
AM is rife with “issues,” Bruce, not the least of which are technical issues. Of course, there’s also the content thing, as you noted. Thanks for commenting.
I drive part time for a major car rental company. Part of my job is to bring retired cars back from the branches to be put into the resale inventory.
It’s surprising the number of cars that I drive (I’d estimate half of them) where the radio has NEVER been tuned to an AM station. When I turn on the radio and flip it to AM, the tuner is on 530 and all of the AM presets are all on the factory defaults. I had one just this afternoon. These cars are at most 2 years old. As I rarely listen to FM I remedy this quickly, putting in WBAL (for traffic) and WQLL (for music).
Growing up in the 70s I frequently did my homework while listening to WLS, WHAS and CKLW to name a few, and to this day I usually fall asleep to CFZM and wakeup to WBAL. Top 40 was still pretty rare on FM back in those days, most FM stations seemed to play either “beautiful music” or allbum-oriented rock.
I always liked listening to distant stations and you just can’t do that with FM, the farthest I’ve ever heard an FM station was about 150 miles. Some things, like baseball and country music were just made for AM.
Perhaps it’s nostalgia talking, but I’ll take AM over FM any day of the week.
It probably is nostalgia talking, but there are a lot of us of a certain age who grew up with AM radio. But your experience with the rental car company may be more telling. (I’ve noticed the same thing when I rent cars.) Thanks for the comment.
Nice article Fred, I grew up in the 70’s listening to those big 50000 watt stations at night. WLS, WABC, WOWO etc. What great memories the music and the baseball games. I still love to dx on Am and have a couple of Zenith 1938 console radios and I’m telling you Zoomer radio 740 and WSM sound fabulous on these radios which are the only two big ones that play music. If you have the right system music on AM will sound very good. I have a 2014 ram truck and the am radio is atrocious it will hardly pickup anything. I think if they would go back to making radios the way they used to be made and then maybe stations would try to be different from one another like before and people might get interested. If it doesn’t sound good and reception is bad what’s the point.
Precisely, Chuck. Thanks for weighing in.
Fred, a great read. Thank you! For me, it was WIBR AM 1300, “The shack by the track in Baton Rouge”. Then a move to CT found Imus in the Morning on WABC. Today, we in the area are very lucky to have a true throwback, long-established AM station in WION 1430, Ionia, MI. They line up songs like you mentioned in your piece! Today, they’re AM stereo and streaming but their roots are deep, with mostly loyal, local advertisers.
So, at 60 years old, I again have my “shack by the track”. Long live AM!
Steve, much appreciated.