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AM stations in Europe (Is it dead?)

E

e-dawg

Is the UK the only country in Europe that provides AM (Mediumwave) services to the audience without an FM simulcast?

For example in Paris, you only could pick up 2 am stations in the area and both of the stations simulcast FM program or in Madrid only about 5 or 6 AM stations and it simucast the FM stations. However, in London, there are lots of AM stations that have separate programs from the FM and also, they are privately run and not state owned run like most of the radio stations in Europe. I.E. (Spectrum radio 558, Buzz Asia 963/972, Kismat radio 1035, Talksports 1089, LBC News 1152, 1305/1332 Premiere Christan Radio, 1458 Sunrise Radio, 1548 Capital Gold, 1584 London Turkish Radio)
 
In the UK nearly all the AM stations simulcast on DAB (instead of FM). There are maybe a couple of exceptions. I think the Netherlands has a handful of AM-only services, and the Spanish stations I thought had some AM-only programming at some times of day (or maybe it's just occasional sport commentary these days?).

Quite a few European countries went through the AM --> FM switchover before they legalised commercial radio anyway. In fact, I think only Spain, the Netherlands and the UK ever licenced AM commercial radio on a large scale (maybe Portugal too?). In France they licenced AM commercial radio 20 years after licencing FM, and there was very little interest by that time.

Also, very few places in Europe have ever had more than 5 or 6 AM stations. I don't think much has actually closed down in Madrid. The band was too crowded with international services to allow more. Many countries had a "European service" of some sort. A lot of the lower power London AM allocations are actually relatively new (1990s).
 
Is there a Radio Luxembourg tribute page to the glory days of Top 40
 
A few countries, notably former Eastern bloc, still have a long-wave station, the band below AM. That will diminish soon I presume. In Europe commercial radio is something scarce, but evolving. That's why there were pirate stations in English channel giving people what they want. World Radio Handbook shows only FM in Bhutan, along with one SW service.
 
In The Netherlands, the AM band is still in use, but commercial radio mostly on low power TX's:

675 kHz - 120 kW - Radio Maria (Religious) (Commercial Radio)
747 kHz - ??? kW - Radio 5 Nostalgia (Public Radio)
828 kHz - 20 kW - Radio 10 Gold (Oldies) (Commercial Radio)
891 kHz - 20 kW - Radio 538 (CHR) (Commercial Radio) (On-air to fill the FM gap in the South-East corner of The Netherlands)
1008 kHz - 400 kW - Groot Nieuws Radio (translation Big News Radio) (Commercial Radio)
1116 kHz - 0.5 kW - Radio Bloemendaal (Church Radio, Sunday's only On-Air)
1251 kHz - 11 kW - Radio 5 Nostalgia (Public Radio)
1332 kHz - 2 kW - Radio Paradijs (Oldies) (Commercial Radio)
1485 kHz - 1 kW - Radio Marina (Commercial Radio)
1557 kHz - 1 kW - Magic Jazz (Jazz) (Commercial Radio)
1584 kHz - 1 kW - Radio Paradijs (Oldies) (Commercial Radio)
1602 kHz - 1 kW - Radio Waddenzee (during daytime) / Radio Seagull (during nighttime) (Offshore Pirate-ish) (Commercial Radio)
 
DutchGuyOnAir said:
In The Netherlands, the AM band is still in use, but commercial radio mostly on low power TX's:

675 kHz - 120 kW - Radio Maria (Religious) (Commercial Radio)
747 kHz - ??? kW - Radio 5 Nostalgia (Public Radio)
828 kHz - 20 kW - Radio 10 Gold (Oldies) (Commercial Radio)
891 kHz - 20 kW - Radio 538 (CHR) (Commercial Radio) (On-air to fill the FM gap in the South-East corner of The Netherlands)
1008 kHz - 400 kW - Groot Nieuws Radio (translation Big News Radio) (Commercial Radio)
1116 kHz - 0.5 kW - Radio Bloemendaal (Church Radio, Sunday's only On-Air)
1251 kHz - 11 kW - Radio 5 Nostalgia (Public Radio)
1332 kHz - 2 kW - Radio Paradijs (Oldies) (Commercial Radio)
1485 kHz - 1 kW - Radio Marina (Commercial Radio)
1557 kHz - 1 kW - Magic Jazz (Jazz) (Commercial Radio)
1584 kHz - 1 kW - Radio Paradijs (Oldies) (Commercial Radio)
1602 kHz - 1 kW - Radio Waddenzee (during daytime) / Radio Seagull (during nighttime) (Offshore Pirate-ish) (Commercial Radio)
Click to expand...

747 used to be quite regular for me, but I haven't been able to pick up Radio 5 Nostalgia, here in Canada, since the fire/collapse of the Radio 1 tower. They are listed as running 400kW, but drop to 60 kW from 0000-0500 UTC. That leaves me a pretty small window, during the evening, to snag them. :(

I have GNR on 1008 listed as running 200 kW and being quite directional ("HOL - GrootNieuwsradio, Zeewolde (Flevoland) (200*) - religeous programmes; * max. power radiation at 133 degrees, reduction of 4dB at 180° and 11 dB at 300°, no other reductions" Source: emwg.info), which may explain why I haven't heard that one here.

~BG
 
M.J. said:
If FM was licensed before AM in some countries, was LW first in these countries?
Click to expand...
Not sure I understand what you mean...

AM radio came before FM radio across Europe, just as in the USA - but this was often run only by the state/public monopolies like e.g. Radio France, RAI or the BBC. Many of these used LW, and some still do. I'm not sure which of the AM bands is older (LW or MW). In the UK, MW came first (but only just).

The original question on the thread was about commercial radio, which only ever existed on FM in many European countries, simply because AM was old technology by the time they made commercial radio legal.

In terms of whether commercial radio came first on LW anywhere - it did in France, but only by being broadcast (much to the annoyance of the French government) from neighbouring countries. LW has a longer range and so it was the only way these 'border blasters' could reach Paris. However, two of the three French-language commercial stations wouldn't fit the modern definition of commercial radio - Radio Luxembourg was owned by the Luxembourg government, and Radio Monte Carlo by the Monaco government. Europe 1 was a genuine independent station though, licenced in 1957 by the government of the Saarland (a German state) to broadcast in French to France. This was a one-off licence, though - it took decades longer for the Saarland to legalise commercial radio in German aimed at their own residents!
 
e-dawg said:
However, in London, there are lots of AM stations that have separate programs from the FM and also, they are privately run and not state owned run like most of the radio stations in Europe. I.E. (Spectrum radio 558, Buzz Asia 963/972, Kismat radio 1035, Talksports 1089, LBC News 1152, 1305/1332 Premiere Christan Radio, 1458 Sunrise Radio, 1548 Capital Gold, 1584 London Turkish Radio)
Click to expand...

In the UK simulcasting on AM and FM was strongly discouraged by government regulators from the late 1980s onwards. Only a handful of stations now do it, it's usually where an FM signal wouldn't give full coverage of their area.

Of the stations you list, four were former simulcasts:-

1089 was formerly BBC Radio One
1152 was formerly a simulcast of the main LBC service
1458 was formerly a simulcast of BBC Radio London
1548 was formerly a simulcast of the main Capital 95.8 service

The others were licenced on AM only from day one. 1035 has had a particularly chequered history, begining life as a Country station in the early 90s, before going Easy Listening and then South Asian Talk.
 
Also 1035 was a simulcast at one time - of BBC Radio Kent.

Very few AM stations in the UK have a long history, mostly dating from the mid-1990s when commercial broadcasting was deregulated (we've had commercial radio since 1973 but until about 1992 it was licenced in the form of local monopolies with very detailed public service requirements).
 
smorris said:
In terms of whether commercial radio came first on LW anywhere - it did in France, but only by being broadcast (much to the annoyance of the French government) from neighbouring countries. LW has a longer range and so it was the only way these 'border blasters' could reach Paris. However, two of the three French-language commercial stations wouldn't fit the modern definition of commercial radio - Radio Luxembourg was owned by the Luxembourg government, and Radio Monte Carlo by the Monaco government.
Click to expand...

While Radio Luxembourg (a part of CLT) and Radio Monaco always enjoyed official monopoly status, I believe they weren't owned by their respective governments. In fact, the French state managed to acquire shares in both of them in order to maintain political control over them:

"Despite their dependence on advertising revenue, their commercial orientation and their less partisan news coverage, the peripheral stations [i.e. the "border blasters" that we are dicussing] were by no means independent of the French state. Through a holding company called Sofirad, the [French] state owned important and frequently majority stakeholdings in all the peripheral radio stations, with the exception of Radio Luxembourg (in which, none the less, it had a stake via the Havas company)."

-- Raymond Kuhn, The Media in France

The French state was even able to have a final say on the appointments of key managers at these border blasters. Therefore, I'm not sure that the French government was really all that upset about the existence of these stations. As some observers have pointed out, Radio Luxembourg maintained its studios in Paris (and sent programming back to Luxembourg via government-owned landlines) and Radio Monte Carlo's transmitter was actually located on French soil, so the French government could have stopped their transmissions if it wanted to. Instead, it chose to control them by acquiring ownership shares in their parent companies.
 
AM is still used also in the Netherlands for pirate broadcasting (always above the legal frequencies (which stops at around 1600 Khz)), they broadcast mainly between 1640 to 1680 Khz (mostly between 1640 and 1650 to get the most of people). I can receive some of them at home (I live 30 Km of the Netherlands border, in Belgium) easily !
Mostly Dutch Retro Pop or 70's/80's Music.

But in Belgium, we still have 621 Khz (RTBF International, former "La Première"), all the other frequencies (540 Khz (VRT), Pure FM (1233 and 1305 Khz)) are off air due of economic reasons.
 
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