Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Dennis Dura, Mark Erdle, and Jock Elliott for the following tips:
‘It’s what listeners like’: AM radio purveyors on the Palouse hope automakers heed call to keep their medium alive (The Spokesman-Review)
The rolling, green-turning-golden hills just outside Steve Shannon’s studio window at the offices of Inland Northwest Broadcasting north of downtown Moscow aren’t just pretty to look at.
They’re also the reason the AM radio dial remains important in this expansive, rural stretch of the country.
FM broadcasting is based on line-of-sight, but the pesky thing about AM waves is that they pass through anything, Shannon explained. And they reach a monthly audience that’s still more than 82 million strong across the country, most of them in areas just like the Palouse, according to a fall 2022 survey by broadcast tracking company Nielsen.
“People are tuning in to AM because they are listening to content they can’t get anywhere else,” said Shannon, operations manager for the group that is behind six stations on both the AM and FM dial broadcasting in Moscow and Colfax.
The future of the format seemed in jeopardy just a few short weeks ago, when broadcasters convened in Washington D.C. and pushed federal lawmakers to pressure carmakers who were pondering an end to AM receivers in new cars. Electric vehicles, growing in popularity and headed for a likely continued boom, especially with Washington outlawing the sale of new gas-powered cars beginning in 2035, create interference with a signal that can make AM transmissions difficult to hear, according to automakers.
That pressure, which included the introduction of legislation that would have required manufacturers to install AM receivers in new cars, appears to have made the point. In late May, Ford’s chief executive officer announced on social media it had reversed course and would provide the service in all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models after planning to remove it from some models because of higher costs and lack of listeners. [Continue reading…]
The renaissance of AM radio: a confluence of social, regulatory and technical revitalization (Cardinal News)
AM radio, a pioneering force in the world of broadcast communications, has for several decades been an essential medium for disseminating information and entertainment. However, its appeal has been progressively diminishing due to social, regulatory and technical challenges. Nevertheless, this scenario presents an opportunity for a significant revival.
The decline of AM radio can be traced back to significant changes in content, notably the reduction in locally focused programming. Many AM station owners made strategic decisions to move away from content that directly catered to local communities, often replacing local news, events and issue discussions with syndicated programming. These changes left a void of locally relevant content, reducing listeners’ connection with stations.
The Federal Communications Commission’s abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 exacerbated the situation. This doctrine, which required broadcasters to present contrasting views on controversial issues of public importance, ensured a balanced discourse on the airwaves. Its repeal led to increased broadcasts favoring extreme political views, either heavily liberal or conservative. While this trend may have appealed to specific audience segments, it risked alienating listeners seeking balanced discourse.
Compounding these programming shifts, religious content on the AM band has considerably increased. While serving an essential audience, the sheer volume of these broadcasts reduced the variety and balance of programming, possibly leading potential listeners to turn away. [Continue reading…]
Radio Station WOR in Photographs – 1939 (AWM on YouTube)
In 1939 photographer Ralston B. Collins made a photo album of metro New York radio station WOR. This album is from the J. R. Poppele Collection at the Antique Wireless Museum.
Building a Simple Faraday Cage, by OhioGalt (SurvivalBlog.com)
This article describes the effects of EMP and CME and how to build a simple inexpensive Faraday cage.
Most readers of the SurvivalBlog are aware of the potential damage from either a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) or an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and the impact on everyday electronics. With an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse is generated at high altitudes from a nuclear explosion damaging sensitive electronics. A CME damages electronics in a similar way with the release of a large solar flare from the sun reaches carrying magnetic fluxes and plasma toward earth. These magnetic fluxes interfere with Earth’s magnetic fields and create current surges in power systems and electronics. As of this writing, there is several C and M class flare activity causing some Amateur Radio blackouts on the lower bands. To follow active solar weather visit Spaceweather.com. [Continue reading…]
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Medium waves don’t pass through the ionosphere. They are either reflected and/or absorbed by it.
I find that there is a huge gap between what listeners want and what corporate radio says that they want. In a landscape with little diversity cross either the AM or FM dial. I feel that listeners tune to the least bad of all offerings.
From market to market, radio is essentially the same. Scan the AM dial and you will hear the same personalities of talk radio across multiple stations. On the FM side its the same ‘best variety’/ ‘perfect mix’ in every market. Presentation is cookie cutter, the male/ female morning team who act like they are just like you, the bland day shift people who read the sound bites that corporate gave them to read, the same 5 songs in row with no identification, the same 6 minute blocks of commercials. Yes, the people may be different from market to market, although with evil of voice tracking by people 100s of miles away this isn’t always true, the presentation is indistinguishable. Yet the likes of Audacy and IHeartRadio try to tell us that this is what listeners want. No matter what music format, the presentation is the same.
Basically corporate radio lies to listeners, making them THINK that what is being offered is what they want. Take the abomination that is Jack FM. Essentially a playlist of 2000 tracks. The slogan ‘Playing what we want’ implies a rebel spirit that says ‘damn the music/ programme directors’. The statement is in fact 100% true, because it truly is ‘Playing what we want’, with the ‘we’ being corporate and not the listeners.
Recently a station that was doing really good in the ratings made a massive change to alt-rock. Thy stunted for at least a day by playing Rage Against the Machine. Its that faux rebel spirit again. The real machine to be raged against is corporate bean counters who took away real radio.
I always laugh when I see TV ads for a station that just changed format. Literally within a few days of the change, I have seen ads running that has people in the street saying ‘Q96 plays the best variety’ etc. How could these people make that call when the new format has only been up for a few days?
During an extreme weather event a years back, the local ‘Star’ branded station was more interested in playing Dua Lipa than providing weather, road and emergency info.
Until radio returns to its locally produced roots, especially in small town and cities, it will not provide what listeners want
Radio does not have to be this way. Outside of the USA Governments fund public service broadcasters which doesn’t follow the commercial pattern above.
Have a listen to https://www.sbs.com.au/audio, https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radio, https://www.cbc.ca/programguide/ and https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds to name a few
Note: The countries using pure digital radio often have 18 or more programs per transmitter which drastically reduces the cost of broadcasting particularly when compared with AM.
In countries with DAB+ commercial stations have much more choice but some of it is a computer playing a play list un attended.
In countries with Government broadcasts community broadcasting is also common. This is where volunteers run low powered stations. In Australia there are high power community broadcasters as well.
I worked for many years in the AM stations serving the Palouse region, FMs too. No doubt, in some parts of that hilly country it is hard to get the FM signals you want, but one of them is almost always receivable for emergency information. AM radio will continue as long as the individual broadcasters make money with it. When the power bills get too high, or real estate prices change, and they can’t sell their audience effectively, they will happily surrender their licenses and operate their FMs. Individual businesses making individual decisions is the model for U.S. broadcasting, and someday we hobbyists will have to like it or lump it.
Jean Shepherd (SK K2ORS) who worked at WOR in the 50s-70s probably would have liked the video of the old WOR when it still broadcast out of the swamps of New Jersey.
Yes. I listened to Shep and Long John on WOR growing up. And the Gambling family in the morning, I was licensed at 13 in ’57 as WV2ECZ and give Shep full credit for inspiring me. He had some great stories about ham radio, and many are online now. One that I cannot find now is when he was in a QSO with a guy somewhere whose shack was being invaded by a sandstorm. No, not the King of Jordan! 73.
AM broadcasting is 103 years old in the USA. Ie Radios and the T model Ford hit the retailers at the same time. AM uses a carrier to bias the diode detector in the crystal set of the time and the diode is buried in most AM receivers today. If they had not done this the sound is unintelligible. The carrier is the power rating of the transmitter as it is a fixed value for that transmitter. When transmitting silence it is the signal and when the highest volume sound is transmitted it is 67 % of the signal. The carrier carries no information or sound. This is very wasteful in eleencies used by the now obsolete analog TV channels 2 – 6. In all cases it can transmit, stereo sound with high pitched sounds, multipage text and images. it is DRM. It has better coverage than AM and contains no carrier.
The USrequA Government at the behest of the telcos legislated the conversion of TV from analog to digital in 2009 then instead of mandating the antique AM, legislate for the conversion of broadcast radio to digital to save electricity and money.
There is a pure alternative which is 21 years old and is available in the AM bands of low, medium and high frequency, and in 2009 it was upgraded to cover the frequencies used for analog TV channels 2 – 6.
Europe mandated digital terrestrial reception in new cars from 2020 now this is spreading to some North African and SE Asian countries. In India DRM is standard equipment in new cars at no extra cost.