Look, the marketplace for AM radio is having a deleterious effect in major cities nationwide. That's probably not news to anybody here, but the Bay Area doesn't seem to be any exception. The upshot is that we're left with far fewer truly commercially viable and vibrant stations. While the KNBRs and KCBSs may be doing very well, the hangers-on resort to religious or brokered/ethnic formats. As long as that remains a viable strategy that allows remaining stations to stay afloat, we'll continue to see AM stations that don't seem to serve a very broad audience -- and which a lot of us might prefer to just disappear -- as long as they can stay afloat. It's not really our call as radio fans, unless we're talking about challenging the licenses, which is another story altogether.
The FM band is another story. If we don't like hearing what's on 103.7, for example, we don't have to listen, but rest assured, other people certainly are. Of course, it's just a question of what works best commercially on any given signal. (The 92.3 is an interesting development to me, however, that seems to mirror what's happening on AM more than the rest of the FM dial.)
