The Future of AM

Once upon a time, TV stations got viewers strictly via over the air reception. Then came cable TV and most people began paying to watch TV because by paying you got more choices. Once cable moved to the big city and many, many began paying to get all those channels, but those broadcast TV stations kept plugging along. In fact, I have to wonder if they'd survive without cable/dish carriage. Sure, a percentage does not have cable or dish but I suspect the biggest reason they don't is because they can't afford it or those dollars are better used elsewhere.

The point is the broadcast TV station likely remains because without that license and transmitter, the cable companies would not have to carry it. Thus, the expense of broadcast and legal liability is required for all that off air viewing via cable and satellite.

Now think AM. That FM translator likely covers only a small percentage of the overall coverage yet has the greater number of listeners. You have to be thinking, hey FCC let me keep the translator and I'll turn in my AM license. The AM, like for over the air TV, is the necessary money drain to get the listeners you can't get otherwise.

In the near future, I think we might see a rush for AM stations to drop those directional patterns, lower power, etc., in order to lower operational expenses. In many areas the land is worth more than the station, not to mention maintaining that directional signal or paying that big electric bill and where two AC systems is preferable to the damage of a day or two without AC during that record hot spell in July (the AC only goes when it is the hottest...a quote from Murphy Law).

Then again, perhaps a savvy Broadcast Attorney can persuade the FCC to allow the troubled AM to reclassify that translator as a 250 watt full fledged FM (with higher filing fees and annual spectrum fees) and actually turn in or sell the AM. In the very least, a less crowded AM dial, I think, is in our future.

What do you think?

b-turner said:

In the very least, a less crowded AM dial, I think, is in our future.

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Sure, just like the CB band is a lot less crowded now than it was in the 70s. Back then, lots of people had CB radios in their cars. Now they have cell phones. Basically the same thing. But it freed up that band, since no one cares any more.

What REALLY has to happen is some serious repurposing of the band by the FCC. They talk all the time about more diverse ownership. Here is a chance to take a band that is losing its profitability, and give it to people who could use it for the public good. Will it happen? Probably not.

I certainly agree TheBigA. The AM dial could serve as a great spot for community service to benefit the public at large. Not more than a few months ago I was talking to a college station about why they no longer streamed their station but opted for the AM radio dial. The head of the department found over 90% of the college station's listening was over the AM band with the remainder split between a cable TV channel audio and online listening. The station is essentially a full service college station with an actual format, hourly campus-wide news coverage (with input from the college newspaper) and college sports. In fact, the college paper uses the station to promote itself but still lags far behind radio even though they're a good paper and available free at 60 spots on campus. That told me the right product in the right situation is the key to AM.

In running an AM daytimer in a major city I used to say I was a modified community access station selling time to groups who could not afford a radio voice for their community. We had lots of ethnic groups represented and plenty of the bubbling under the top 100 denominations buying time. These groups would have had few, if any choices had it not been for us. Some call that garbage or claim we 'sold out' to anybody with money in their hand, but we actually were sort of selective and wanted groups that wanted to reach their respective communities. Nowhere else could you hear Czech Polkas hosted by the head of the Texas Polka Music Association or Texas Polish Polkas co-hosted by one of the top preservers of this traditional music as well as leading musician in the genre, a program for Russian immigrants and another for Polish immigrants or a show for the tiny Bangladeshi community. We even had smaller religious denominations represented like Primitive Baptist, Apostolic Lutheran and so forth on the station.

Ownership diversity, public service and even educational radio makes sense on AM. It seems a unique product is good bait and it doesn't matter if the same is online beacuse radio is free and can be localized unlike the streaming station operating from their yet to be disclosed location.

b-turner said:

Ownership diversity, public service and even educational radio makes sense on AM. It seems a unique product is good bait and it doesn't matter if the same is online beacuse radio is free and can be localized unlike the streaming station operating from their yet to be disclosed location.

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So how much you wanna bet on the FCC doing what it takes to get it done?

Even as a "community station" the inherent problems with AM are still:

Millennial's don't even know it exists, nor do they care.
Given the amount of (potentially valuable) land required alone, much more expensive to operate.
Inferior audio quality

Purposely moving the band to those kind of services would be dead man walking option to both. Boomers who still rely on AM for news, sports, religion and political talk will continue to support the stations on the band. As the boomer ranks die-off, so will AM stations.

Would AM have had a better chance of a future had it gone hybrid or full digital? Maybe a little bit, but a small group of Boomer Curmudgeons with the 'don't tread on my distance listening' pretty well killed that option.

Kelly A said:

Would AM have had a better chance of a future had it gone hybrid or full digital? Maybe a little bit, but a small group of Boomer Curmudgeons with the 'don't tread on my distance listening' pretty well killed that option.

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Not sure about that. The FCC gave full support for HD AM, but consumers weren't willing to buy new radios. The radio industry has experimented with full digital in a number of cities, including Pittsburgh, but it really doesn't change the fact that if it isn't receivable on existing devices, it's DOA.

Generally speaking, you are stuck with an off-norm-format and have to be very resourceful. Interesting thing is the small local communities (businesses and local citizens) still will moderately support an AM station as part of the public goodwill and these stations can do ok if you do the right things. It's not easy. This is a very good post, so I hope others comment on it. The FM dial is sounding just as bad as AM with some hint of a small power station on each and every channel.

Granted, in small markets AM finds adequate support in most cases but it is never a cakewalk. Many AMs with substantial coverage do fairly well on average (those big clear channels and regional stations). For most AMs, it is a struggle. How many of the top 10 billing stations in the nation are AM signals. I think that's about 30% but I'll concede they're not 1,000 watt high on the dial stations in bad ground conductivity with 7 watts post sunset.

Among those that struggle, it seems those that try serving those that cannot amass the audience to command an FM signal or even a regional stick will listen. A station I managed proves that and actually, we did pretty well on costs vs, revenue. To the top dog in that metro, our monthly take was about 2 hours worth of commercials on that station. So, while AM in most spots struggles, the best option might be the unique format that fulfills the need of a few. It will not be the huge biller but can turn a profit if expenses are closely watched.

I agree AM is disadvantaged at every turn but the trick is the recipe for making lemonade. And that recipe requires just enough to do okay but too little to make a competitor want what you have because slicing the pie never leaves enough for both to survive. Certainly the cost of land in densely populated areas is a big factor which is why I see lots of directional signals opting for a lower powered non-directional at some point.

Sure millennials don't go to AM but what programming is catering to them on AM?

b-turner said:

Sure millennials don't go to AM but what programming is catering to them on AM?

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How about sports talk? It seems to be doing well in San Francisco.

Just putting music aimed at millennials on AM isn't going to solve the audio quality issue. In a competitive situation, audio quality is a factor.

TheBigA said:

Not sure about that. The FCC gave full support for HD AM, but consumers weren't willing to buy new radios. The radio industry has experimented with full digital in a number of cities, including Pittsburgh, but it really doesn't change the fact that if it isn't receivable on existing devices, it's DOA.

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The Commission approved the use of the Ibquity hybrid digital model, but hasn't considered let alone approved, full-digital Medium Wave broadcasting. Stations were allowed to do experimental full digital testing, but that's about it. Problem is, traction for anything that has to do with the existing AM broadcast band has diminished because of the focus on AM to FM translators. It's doubtful that the whole digital AM thing will be revisited, because the assumption is AM has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

Kelly A said:

It's doubtful that the whole digital AM thing will be revisited, because the assumption is AM has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

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Because digital AM would require consumers to buy new radios, and that's not going to happen. As I said, if it's not receivable on existing devices, it's DOA.

Existing radios that have HD radio tuners can receive full digital already. Not large numbers like it was in the 20th Century, but there are a fair amount of HD- capable tuners in cars on the road starting in 2014.

In some markets -- like mine -- a lot of popular sports talk and play-by-play remains on AM . It's the only programming on that band that could conceivably attract under-55 listeners. Should CBS ever decide to move WTIC's sports to FM, it would be game over for AM here. But with no format duplication on FM and all of CBS's music FMs being safe, advertiser-friendly-format money makers, that's not likely to happen soon.

How long is the AM-FM simulcast of WFAN New York going to continue? The FM is already being mentioned first in the IDs.

CTListener said:

How long is the AM-FM simulcast of WFAN New York going to continue? The FM is already being mentioned first in the IDs.

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More recently, when the value of the property the AM transmission facility occupies, exceeds the value of the AM station.

The future of AM radio is very bleak. AM listening is so low that almost no one would notice if the FCC did mandate all digital broadcasts.

Examples: Indianapolis has only 4.3 AM shares (and that's including WFNI and WNDE's FM translators!). Nashville has only 5.9 AM shares (including translators for WQZQ & WNVL). Atlanta has 12.5 AM shares, including a the full power simulcast of WSB and WSBB-FM. Take away WSB/WSBB-FM and it's a 2.6 share - still including FM translators for WCNN & WGST.

What is the business case for keeping a band with only 3-6% of total listenership?

Nashville has numerous viable AM signals. Indy & Atlanta, not so much.

WSM, WLAC are class A stations with good coverage of the entire metro day and night. There's 3 or 4 other AM stations with good coverage in the daytime, and poor coverage at night. (1160, 1200, 1300, which are all currently broadcasting religion, and an NPR talker on 1430).

Of these good day and poor night signals, none has been operated commercially in over 15 years. 1160 and 1300 went to religion in the 80s, 1200 was a rich guy's polka and big band play toy until his death a couple years ago, and 1430 became NPR talk around 2002 or '03.

I wasn't around to watch the slow de-commercialization of Nashville AM radio unfold, but my general impression today is that there is little reason in Nashville to press the AM button, because all the mainstream formats are covered on FM. News/Talk, sports, about 8 varieties of country, classic hits, oldies, etc.

That seems to me like the biggest difference between Nashville and New York: there remain several strong stations on AM. I know this isn't in the cards, but hypothetically if Entercom were to sell off 1010 WINS to a religious or foreign language broadcaster, the vitality of the whole band in the NYC market would decline.

We left Nashville when I was 5 but with relatives there, I was frequently back in Nashville for days at a time.

1300 was once WMAK, a top 40 that battled for the honor as the top 40 favorite with WKDA, then 1240 if I recall correctly). As a side note, I had a real strange thing happen. I found some old airchecks of Nashville stations online. As I listened to one of WKDA, I recalled hearing it before. My memory flashed back to a night around Christmas listening carefully to the radio in 7th grade on a visit to a relative's home in the Green Hills area for the holidays. The aircheck I heard years later was a recording of the station I heard live as it happened...a very strange feeling. They sure sounded 'big time' as I heard them live but much more 'small market sounding' years later but the jock was sure having a blast on the air.

The William Barry station with the nostalgia format might have made some money. I just never listened enough to know. He did have a pair of other AMs that were leased. When I visited the station, it was sort of crowded in the station. What looked like a closet for a couple of teletype machines was one of the AM stations and the other was in what looked like a production studio, then the WAMB studio. Add a couple of offices and that was it. If WAMB sold few commercials, the other two AM stations with their monthly checks from leasing the airtime likely kept the station in the black. If I recall correctly they got a nice rate for some college sports broadcasts. Local alumni groups where I manage a station these days will pay dearly to clear their college's football games on your station.

And actually, Mr. Barry was the first guy to actually get an AM translator, sort of. He was wiped out by a Cuban AM at night. After sending a letter a day to the FCC for 5 years, the FCC gave him a 75 watt FM that was allowed to operate only after sunset and before sunrise. Officially it was WAMB-1. It ran a beautiful music format sponsored exclusively by one sponsor that got a 30 second commercial every quarter hour. It was 58 minutes of music each hour all night on WAMB1.

It seemed like 980 in Nashville had a decent signal throughout the metro (the BBN station). When AM was viable, it was WSIX.

I've never heard as much noise on AM as I have heard in Nashville. I'm guessing I have lived in places where more electrical lines were not overhead but rather underground. I could sit at a red light on Charlotte Pike and have an AM's otherwise clean signal wiped out by buzz from the power lines.