• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Radio: What do AM stations have to lose but go back to music formats?

Wimmmex said:
Someone posted this article at the other board, I figured I would give it more prominence here since some were discussing AM music in another thread...

Radio: What do AM stations have to lose but go back to music formats?

Your opinions may vary!
Click to expand...

Since the article is about LA radio, I can comment with some expertise as I have programmed 7 or 8 stations in LA, one of them having been the #1 station in the market and one AM station having beaten KFI on a number of occasions in 25-54 as a competing talk station.

First, the writer says only 41 stations showed in the ratings. False. Only 41 showed in the published ratings. Many more showed in the subscriber only book. So the core data being used is not totally factual.

Then, and the major point, is that most of the AM stations in the market are not able to cover the entire market; urban sprawl outgrew many of the signals a half a century ago. The only full coverage signals are KLAC, KFI and KNX. The rest of the AM stations in the market only offer partial coverage. That is why so many have programming... and make lots of money... doing formats in Farsi, Korean, Mandarin, Vietnamese and other tongues or why they do brokered or paid religion.

Another point is that the noise level from man-made sources is so severe in metros like LA that it takes a signal as much as three times as strong to be listenable as it did back in the 60's or even the 70's.

Operationally, LA, like all top 10 to top 20 markets runs on agency dollars. That means you have to get ratings to sell at that level. Otherwise, you have to appeal to a niche group that has its own neighborhoods and businesses.

General market oldies won't go on a significant signal because the significant signals are already profitable and will not change; appealing to people in their 60's and 70's won't get advertisers as LA severely under-indexes in seniors due to the cost of living and congestion issues.

The second-best signals like ESPN and Radio Disney are also dedicated to marketing a brand. That leaves signals like KFWB (ethnic), KHJ (religion) and KABC (about to downgrade its signal) which don't fully cover the market.
 
If the station is engineered properly music can sound just fine on AM.
The local stations here owned by Broadcast Communications, Inc. (WKHB, WKFB, WEDO)
and the former classic urban format on WZUM all sounded great.

Of course I am old enough to remember when most people consumed their music on
AM radio, so I'm a bit biased.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
If the station is engineered properly music can sound just fine on AM.
Click to expand...

In much smaller markets, there is a greater likelihood that AM stations will cover the whole market.

But of the 1798 AM stations in the top 100 metros, only about 175 cover at least 80% of the market day and night. So, on average, there are less than 2 really viable full coverage stations per market. Some markets have none, others have more than 2 but there are just not many AM stations that can compete with the fuller coverage FM stations in their market.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
If the station is engineered properly music can sound just fine on AM.
Click to expand...

But, good sounding AM receivers are now few and far between on the market. Most manufacturers AM/FM radios install cheap AM chips as an afterthought that cut off frequency response at 2k. Doesn't matter how well the stations are engineered if most commonly available AM receivers are junk.
 
Eli Polonsky said:
But, good sounding AM receivers are now few and far between on the market. Most manufacturers AM/FM radios install cheap AM chips as an afterthought that cut off frequency response at 2k. Doesn't matter how well the stations are engineered if most commonly available AM receivers are junk.
Click to expand...

The only way around this is to force manufacturers by way of FCC Type Acceptance to go the full 5K and incorporate HD radio into AM and FM chipsets.
 
Most manufacturers use the same chip for FM and AM and have done so since the 1980's, when IF chips became commonplace. Even the recent digital DSP chips use the same chip for AM and FM, although the bandwidths are set differently.

The narrower bandwidth is due to the ceramic filter (to reduce adjacent channel interference) and narrow bandwidth broadcast at the transmitter (the more recent NAB standards adopted some time during the mid to late 1980's).
 
MRBIboredop said:
The only way around this is to force manufacturers by way of FCC Type Acceptance to go the full 5K and incorporate HD radio into AM and FM chipsets.
Click to expand...

The only time the FCC has legislated receivers was, a half a century ago, they required UHF on every TV.

They never even legislated a requirement to include FM on every radio.

Requiring the HD chip (it is a single chip) would seriously harm the portable radio market as digital chips with DAC circuits are battery-drainers of the first order. No manufacturer will want to put HD on a lower cost consumer portable; they would just drop out of the market under such a requirement.

As to "5 k" requirements... the NRSC standard is for 10 kHz audio bandwidth right now, not 5 k.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom