Again, Why is this in the Phily Thread?
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When and how will AM die?
- Thread starter Miguelito
- Start date
That's how it was when my Mom had her '06 Chevy Malibu. Every single AM station was full of static. From the 2500 watt (then) Spanish station which has their towers in the town where we live to the 50,000 watt power house known as WTIC AM 1080. Mom got an 2010 Honda Civic in 2014 and the AM reception is excellent. (So is the FM for that matter).
The only 2 AM stations I used to listen to now have FM translators, so I personally don't listen to AM any more.
AM radio might be less popular now, but I think (you might call me a dreamer) but I think AM transmission is such a basic yet effective radio transmission technology that it'll never really die. There will always be someone somewhere doing an AM broadcast. Especially in lesser developed areas around the world, AM is still the big guy on the block. It's simple, can cover a whole lot of area with less power and takes up less bandwidth. AM radio is going through a huge change right now. The older generation is still in control of radio; that is why we see so many god squadders on AM and useless sports talk. Once younger people (like myself) start owning Ams, I think we'll see some (hopefully) putting AM radio to a different use. I think we might, *might* see AM radio enter some sort of wild Wild West era, when stations start playing by their own rules, airing more underground music and less conservative talk. It has a chance to become a very niche and counter-cultureesque medium. Maybe we'll be lucky. Probably a pipe dream.
Your predictions go against what is trending.
Many countries have eliminated all or all but a few AM stations... with examples ranging from total elimination in Norway to near total in Austria and South Africa.
In our Hemisphere, most of the Lesser Antilles and Jamaica have eliminated AM. In countries like El Salvador and Ecuador, the number of AMs remaining is falling at a rapid pace as FM has grown considerably, reaching smaller and more remote towns that, in the past, had weak AM service.
Mexico just eliminated more than half its AM stations, with only a few remaining... principally community and government stations serving indigenous communities and AMs in areas where the FM band could not accommodate those licensees as it was already full (Mexico CIty, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla and the US border areas).
Nobody, young or old, wants a station with low fidelity that is subject to increasing man-made noise and where AM radios are decreasing in number and of very low quality, all of which requires a large piece of real estate and high transmitter site costs.
David, what have the countries that have phased out AM radio done with that banned band? Reserved the width for cell phones, police/first responder radio, etc.?
ixnay
In the case of Austria and South Africa, there appear to have been some small, niche stations approved to serve ethnic or other minority audiences. But there are few of them. Mostly, the band is just empty domestically. In El Salvador, some AMs are operated by evangelical and Catholic groups, and the rest of the dial is empty.
In Mexico, AMs were offered a migration path to FM, but the AM had to be surrendered; the nation's legislature essentially stated that the AM band was no longer economically viable. Some AM frequencies that were vacated have been authorized to community groups, frequently in rural indigenous communities in areas with rugged terrain not suitable for FM.
In Ecuador, stations are dying and just signing off. The government has no policy, so the band is simply thinning out just like short wave did 50 years ago. Ecuador at one time had more Shortwave stations than medium wave ones (even I owned one) and now only a couple remain.
Norway has simply closed the government stations. They have announced that FM will be totally phased out in a few years.
State broadcasters in France and England have eliminated nearly all AMs and those that remain will apparently be closed when the equipment is no longer serviceable.
An extreme example: in Haiti, only a couple of AMs (mostly religious) returned after the earthquake but there are as many as 56 FMs in Port au Prince alone!
Who uses 540-1600 khz isn't up to any single nation. The band allocation is set by international treaty. Police radio and phones -- neither of which are good uses for medium wave, anyway -- couldn't be put there even by a country like Norway, which has abandoned the band. The frequencies would stay unused, other than by pirates.
Presidents don't write legislation. That's what Congress does.
Executive order.
Even if he could, mandating AM in cars forever wouldn't make people listen.
Well to be fair, it doesn't really seem that he cares about the consequences of his actions so I doubt that caveat would matter.
The main chore -- maybe the only chore -- to make AM viable again is to clear up all of that noise.
Yes, some AM car radios are relatively pristine and sound pretty good. But the very best communications and DX receivers in this house (in a town of just 6000) are useless in the day inside a house or a place of business.
Before *any* president, irrespective of party, feels moved to regurgitate the AM dial and is faced with all of that noise plus all the commerce and business behind all that noise .... well, as the saying goes: 'Swine will have become airborne first'.
Yes, some AM car radios are relatively pristine and sound pretty good. But the very best communications and DX receivers in this house (in a town of just 6000) are useless in the day inside a house or a place of business.
Before *any* president, irrespective of party, feels moved to regurgitate the AM dial and is faced with all of that noise plus all the commerce and business behind all that noise .... well, as the saying goes: 'Swine will have become airborne first'.
Hmm, not really true in the case of England/the UK, at least not yet.
A handful of BBC local transmitters in England have been switched off, and a few more will be switched off in January. These are in areas where the BBC local station is also available on FM, so the transmitters were essentially redundant. Near where I live, where the town of Burton on Trent isn't adequately covered by the nearest BBC local station's FM transmitter, AM broadcasts will continue for now, and this will apply in a few other similar areas.
At the moment, there are no concrete plans to switch off BBC Radio Five Live, which isn't available on FM, nor any plans to switch off AM broadcasts in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
There are constant rumours about BBC Radio Four's LW transmitter in Droitwich. That has been going since the 1930s on basically the same channel, and it's getting harder and harder to source replacement parts. It clearly won't be long for this world, but we don't have a switch off date yet.
I've been playing with remote SDR receivers for the last couple of years, such as the one at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and it's amazing how many stations have left the band in a short time. Look at any frequency on MWList and you find very few Europeans. There's a longwave transmitter on 196 that runs a dead carrier with bleedover from a couple of different networks.
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