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Is it time to end AM night skywave protection?

DavidEduardo

DavidEduardo

Moderator/Administrator
Staff member
There is an interesting commentary in Radio World...

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/finding-the-right-balance

... about "revitalizing" daytime AM stations by recognizing that skywave distant radio listening is a thing of the past.

The article makes mention of how, 30 years ago, truckers listened to Bill Mack on WBAP in overnights, while today most have Sirius/XM. Yet daytime stations sign off in the winter before afternoon drive even is fully underway.

Is this worth pursuing, or is AM too far gone to be saved by improving the lot of daytimers and restrictive directional patterns that don't protect local service groundwave contours... just unused skywave reach?
 
The ONLY advantage of AM is the skywave. Otherwise, it's not much better than CB radio. Remove the skywave, and AM loses all value.

Sure it only protects a few dozen AM stations, why the vast majority suffer. But the vast majority have become syndicated repeaters. The handful of super powerful stations still do a lot of original programming. Consider WCBS or WBZ or WSB or WSM. If you want to retain that kind of programming, you need to make it worth their while. Otherwise why bother? Just become another repeater like all the other AM stations. That's what a lot of small stations did in the network radio days.
 
Personally speaking, this sort of proposal even if it was fact-tracked by the Commission, is about twenty years too late. That, and the Class B and D stations who rely on what little fringe coverage there is, might lose that fringe to a Class C's co-or adjacent running ND at night.

Not that any station owner would be willing to fork out the dollars for any AM station these days, but in the past there have been many examples of "Negotiated Interference Agreements", where station A pays station B to reduce power or make a deeper null toward station A at night.
 
Kelly A said:
there have been many examples of "Negotiated Interference Agreements", where station A pays station B to reduce power or make a deeper null toward station A at night.
Click to expand...

The famous WOWO purchase comes to mind. You see how much that helped WLIB.
 
vchimpanzee said:
And it didn't hurt WOWO last time I checked.
Click to expand...

That is hard to say. The days of WOWO selling broad Indiana and tri-state area coverage were long gone when they downgraded, but indeed the night coverage of the station was considerably reduced. It still does a fine job covering the metro.
 
TheBigA said:
The ONLY advantage of AM is the skywave. Otherwise, it's not much better than CB radio. Remove the skywave, and AM loses all value.

Sure it only protects a few dozen AM stations, why the vast majority suffer. But the vast majority have become syndicated repeaters. The handful of super powerful stations still do a lot of original programming. Consider WCBS or WBZ or WSB or WSM. If you want to retain that kind of programming, you need to make it worth their while. Otherwise why bother? Just become another repeater like all the other AM stations. That's what a lot of small stations did in the network radio days.
Click to expand...

You make an excellent point. However, I suspect that in the end quantity will prevail over quality.
Those heritage stations will be forced to give way to the demands of the many.
 
TheBigA said:
The ONLY advantage of AM is the skywave. Otherwise, it's not much better than CB radio. Remove the skywave, and AM loses all value.

Sure it only protects a few dozen AM stations, why the vast majority suffer. But the vast majority have become syndicated repeaters. The handful of super powerful stations still do a lot of original programming. Consider WCBS or WBZ or WSB or WSM. If you want to retain that kind of programming, you need to make it worth their while. Otherwise why bother? Just become another repeater like all the other AM stations. That's what a lot of small stations did in the network radio days.
Click to expand...

WSM probably doesn't belong in this illustrious company. Yes, it has a proud past and its programming is distinctive, but it has few listeners in its market or anywhere else its 50kw signal reaches, and most of those who do listen are over 65 and going to their graves at an accelerating rate. The station is essentially a 24/7 infomercial for the Grand Ole Opry and related properties, like the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, but even the Opry and the Hall are getting to be more about the country music of the past three decades rather than the kind of country music WSM plays. At some point, something drastic will have to be done with this heritage station, and I'd expect that point to be within the next few years.
 
Change the laws of physics so MW frequencies don't propagate by skywave, and then this proposal starts to make some sense.

But as long as the present laws of physics continue to prevail, you put a watt of RF on MW frequencies into the atmosphere somewhere after dark and it comes out again somewhere else hundreds of miles away. Start chewing away at the edges of the usable NIF signals of the WBZs and WFANs and KNXs and watch the last truly viable big AM signals become something less than viable. And then what?
 
It's too late to matter anyway, but how about let the stations with skywave protection decide. They could be allowed to sell the right to broadcast a night to these daytimers.
 
fybush said:
Change the laws of physics so MW frequencies don't propagate by skywave, and then this proposal starts to make some sense.

But as long as the present laws of physics continue to prevail, you put a watt of RF on MW frequencies into the atmosphere somewhere after dark and it comes out again somewhere else hundreds of miles away. Start chewing away at the edges of the usable NIF signals of the WBZs and WFANs and KNXs and watch the last truly viable big AM signals become something less than viable. And then what?
Click to expand...

All digital AM would negate this issue, as the signals do not have quite as much reach. I have yet to decode a DX signal on my HD AM receiver, and it is a very good DXer.

Of course, no one is going to buy AM HD radios, so I already know the point is moot.
 
brettbutlerisok said:
It's too late to matter anyway, but how about let the stations with skywave protection decide. They could be allowed to sell the right to broadcast a night to these daytimers.
Click to expand...

If radio stations owned their frequency, then that might be an option. Only telecom gets to own spectrum.
 
As a kid, I was obsessed with the 50kw clear channel stations and spent every night lying in bed listening to them. These stations gave me my appreciation for music beyond the top 40, especially classic country because I loved the various truck driver shows.

So for nostalgia reasons, I’d be sad to see them go. However, I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone under 50 who even knew there was such a thing so I can’t imagine they have any skywave audience these days.

The only one I still utilize is KMOX. I prefer listening to baseball on the radio instead of tv, so if local sports preempt the Cardinals on the Memphis affiliate, I will tune in to KMOX. I also enjoy KMOX’s Saturday night oldies show, Route 66 with Johnny Rabbitt. While I could obviously stream it, I like hearing 50s and 60s records on a distant AM. Some songs just sound right that way, but only my real radio GEEK friends understand that concept.

WWL and KMOX are really the only two that still come in as well as they did in the past. WLS use to be as good as a local but now is unlistenable most of the time.
 
TheBigA said:
If radio stations owned their frequency, then that might be an option. Only telecom gets to own spectrum.
Click to expand...

While I am not aware of any, my work experience is limited mostly to the Western Hemisphere and Europe... are there any nations where licenses are granted in perpetuity or as a property right?

If the telecoms can own "air estate" what, other than the concept of government stewardship, would prevent a discussion of frequencies as property as opposed to "lend-lease" propositions.
 
brettbutlerisok said:
It's too late to matter anyway, but how about let the stations with skywave protection decide. They could be allowed to sell the right to broadcast a night to these daytimers.
Click to expand...

The problem is that most daytime AMs that would benefit from this are not likely to have the funding to make an offer of interest to the clear channel stations that have protected skywave.
 
DavidEduardo said:
If the telecoms can own "air estate" what, other than the concept of government stewardship, would prevent a discussion of frequencies as property as opposed to "lend-lease" propositions.
Click to expand...

I think telecom is throwing so much money at the FCC that it's just hard to turn down. Radio, on the other hand, doesn't have that kind of bank account.
 
briancraig said:
As a kid, I was obsessed with the 50kw clear channel stations and spent every night lying in bed listening to them. These stations gave me my appreciation for music beyond the top 40, especially classic country because I loved the various truck driver shows.

So for nostalgia reasons, I’d be sad to see them go. However, I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone under 50 who even knew there was such a thing so I can’t imagine they have any skywave audience these days.

The only one I still utilize is KMOX. I prefer listening to baseball on the radio instead of tv, so if local sports preempt the Cardinals on the Memphis affiliate, I will tune in to KMOX. I also enjoy KMOX’s Saturday night oldies show, Route 66 with Johnny Rabbitt. While I could obviously stream it, I like hearing 50s and 60s records on a distant AM. Some songs just sound right that way, but only my real radio GEEK friends understand that concept.

WWL and KMOX are really the only two that still come in as well as they did in the past. WLS use to be as good as a local but now is unlistenable most of the time.
Click to expand...

I'm with you. I really enjoyed picking up KGO and KFRC in San Francisco, as well as KFI in Los Angeles in Seattle as a teen in the 70's. Today, you can still pick up 810 out of SF, but the programming is so vanilla the joy is gone. I also loved to pick up WLS and WCFL on our family trips to Michigan in the 70's. From my Grand Rapids location in the mid-70's I have amateur airchecks of not only those Chicago stations, but WABC New York, and the above mentioned WOWO Fort Wayne.

But the horse is out of the barn. Those good old days are gone and when you pick up one of these giants today, it isn't anything special. Sad, but time marches on.
 
DavidEduardo said:


While I am not aware of any, my work experience is limited mostly to the Western Hemisphere and Europe... are there any nations where licenses are granted in perpetuity or as a property right?

If the telecoms can own "air estate" what, other than the concept of government stewardship, would prevent a discussion of frequencies as property as opposed to "lend-lease" propositions.
Click to expand...

I imagine for it too work it would be more like a lease seeing as no station does "own the airwaves" but they do hold the licence to broadcast. Ultimately it seems to me that in practice this would change the Class A clear channels into the same thing as the other Class B 50,000 watt stations. I suppose this would hurt the value of the effected stations. I would expect the stations that are gaining value (the daytimers) to at least have to pay the difference.

None of this will happen, but it could have really been something 40 years ago.
 
seatownmedia said:
I'm with you. I really enjoyed picking up KGO and KFRC in San Francisco, as well as KFI in Los Angeles in Seattle as a teen in the 70's. Today, you can still pick up 810 out of SF, but the programming is so vanilla the joy is gone. I also loved to pick up WLS and WCFL on our family trips to Michigan in the 70's. From my Grand Rapids location in the mid-70's I have amateur airchecks of not only those Chicago stations, but WABC New York, and the above mentioned WOWO Fort Wayne.

But the horse is out of the barn. Those good old days are gone and when you pick up one of these giants today, it isn't anything special. Sad, but time marches on.
Click to expand...

WOWO keeps being mentioned. It's been quite awhile and KEX remains directional at night.
 
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