Those who continue to ignore the elephant in the room need to read this again.
In particular, the section called "Going Against Strong Competition". This article was written by the late Glen Clark, who was the CE of WLS-FM, and staff Engineer for WLS (AM) for quite a number of years. He investigated moving WLS to Addison, IL in the 1970s for this reason. It's on the History Card. The location was near Grace and Fullerton.
[June 2011] In the history of audio processing, the TEXAR Audio Prism holds its own place as one of the key tools in the arsenals of stations fighting to produce their “signature” sound and stand
www.thebdr.net
People who make judgments about the "politics of an area" should consider that the general WLS format did well for years. I agree that it has to do with Rush Limbaugh passing away. The Detroit Area is hardly a conservative area, mostly voting Democratic, yet WJR, in the resulting format disarray, continues to do quite a bit better than WLS. I attribute that to what David says about the ever increasing noise floor on AM, and needing at least 15 mV/m to be viable on AM, and that that contour misses the more affluent conservative areas North of Chicago. For some coincidental reason, the same more affluent demographic is North of Detroit, but WJR has double the signal there, equivalent to WLS going from 50 kW to 200 kW at its present location.
Also note that MANY stations are DIPLEXING now, so suggesting a diplex further North is not "off the wall". WBBM and WSCR (almost typed WMAQ) recently diplexed.
Note that I attribute SOME of it to FORMAT, but some of it to the SIGNAL.
Jeremy, I have had relatives from Evanston, Park Ridge, and Des Plaines, to the Union Grove-Racine Area, and have visited the area for extended periods for nearly 60 years, so I am quite familiar with those areas. I noticed the weak signal on WLS compared to the other powerhouses as soon as I picked up a transistor radio near those areas in the early 1960s. Regarding translators in your area, I tried to listen to the Racine and Kenosha translators for WRJN 1400 in the car, and found that they were OK in the house I stayed at, but driving around, to Racine and Kenosha, I found that the AM was a lot better in the car, at least in the Daytime. 250 watt translators are not the whole answer for AM, even in medium sized towns.
The suggestions I made suggesting what might happen to WLS were somewhat tongue in cheek.
My relatives go from one end of the political spectrum to the other. One relative listens to WFMT and WBEZ and watches WTTW almost exclusively. Another listens to WTMJ and WISN almost exclusively. Thanksgiving Dinners were always...er...awkward. The upside of our current chaos is that for the last two years, we had an excuse to not go.