Broadcast AM radio listening.

[maytag85]

Reply #6

Even as a kid in the early to mid 2000’s, absolutely couldn’t stand any of the rap or pop music from around that time.

Probably was losing my sanity even then and not realizing it. When I learned to use a computer around 2007/2008, had the luxury of listening to any song I wanted without having to wait for something to come around.

The 80’s is the cutoff point for me in terms of tunes are cars, everything went to hell when the 90’s came around, everything became mediocre and cars became generic jelly beans with the most boring styling you could ever think of.

 

[robbinsandmyers]

I listen daily to WATX 1220 AM. They play all the classics from many decades. Its station is here in town plus they stream live online as well. Back in the 70's I loved listening to the CBS radio mystery theater with E.G.Marshall. I still listen every night to get me to sleep.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Most of the AM radio here is racing talk, sports broadcasts, or conservative talk news.
I have scanned the AM dial at night, some odd stuff comes on like Coast to Coast AM.

John Tesh still does a syndicated radio show every weekday on one of the local FM stations.

Mostly I listen to music playlists on Pandora or Spotify if I’m at home.

In the car I mostly listen to FM or CDs as streaming burns up a lot of cell phone data in a hurry when off of so-go and I won’t pay for a large data amount.

On the 3 or 4 weeks of the year that Sirius XM does free trials (I think two weeks at Thanksgiving and around Independence Day (?) I listen to that in the car sometimes. I won’t pay for that service either.

Has anyone noticed FM stations having a live host in the mornings or early afternoons, and then they go to syndicated show hosts like John Tesh or Delilah in the afternoons and evenings? Many on the weekend have no DJ/host at all, instead playlists are all automated with ads in between.

 

[petek]

Rarely listen to radio and in the car particularly not. I like driving in peace and quiet around town. On the highway which is rare these days I'll play a CD or some FM but the commercials drive me. At home I get my music from Amazon Music. I have a multitude of Echo speakers around the house and some are set up for stereo etc & the subwoofer. Have different groups set up so I can have the music playing at the same time in different areas or all over the house etc. The main reason I like Amazon Music is the huge selection of classical and jazz music which is hard to find on radio

 

[rp2813]

Commercials

Pete, I'm right there with you with regard to commercials.  They are particularly annoying on news and talk stations, as are most of the newscasters with their irritating inflection.  I can't even tune into KCBS because their commercial breaks are too long and too frequent, the ads themselves are grating, and they seem to be intended for the hard of hearing.  The only time I'll tune in is to get the latest information when we get a random storm that involves flooding and/or destructive winds, or after an some earthquakes that smack of being stronger with a distant epicenter.  Lately, I've found it more informative and less annoying to pull up the USGS "Did You Feel It?" web site.

 

[cfz2882]

BC radio malaise, Coast to coast AM.

I think it was about 1996 when radio was deregulated and there was no longer a limit to how many stations a single entity could own,so same corporate playlist with many.
Coast to coast AM was the main reason for listening during the '95-2000 years -Art Bell,etc. Avalible local from around 11:00 pm to ~3:00 am-so had to set up system on a timer to record during those hours,the listen the next day-had to "cock"reel to reel recorder the set timer still have reels of tapes from that era.

 

[rp2813]

I liked listening to Art Bell's show late at night.  It was a fitting time slot.

 

[qsd-dan]

KCSM

I haven't listened to KCSM in 20 years but in the 90's through the early 2000's on the weekday mornings, there was a female DJ that spent most of morning with obnoxious chattering about nonsense. She also played the worst goddamn jazz I ever heard in my life, even to this very day. Their evening jazz was somewhat decent, hit and miss.

Back then, I would listen to KXJZ (Sacramento) in the house. Needed to use a very powerful antenna placed with impeccable precision in order to lock onto a good signal. Forget about receiving a signal in an auto unless one was over the Altamont Pass. Their morning jazz was fantastic but it all came to screeching halt after 9/11 when it became just another (annoying) news station. I sent them a few emails in the early, mid, and late 2000's asking about plans to bring morning jazz back. Never got a response.

 

[fisherpaykel]

radiogarden, radio.net

Wow, thanks Glenn and Louis for those links , I learn something new here everyday.

 

[whitewhiskers]

Reply# 21

"On the 3 or 4 weeks of the year that Sirius XM does free trials (I think two weeks at Thanksgiving and around Independence Day (?) I listen to that in the car sometimes. I won’t pay for that service either."

If you go to the SiriusXM website, sign up for the Platinum Free for 3 months. No credit card required. I did this TWO YEARS AGO and my radio is still activated! It's like they completely forgot about me. Every time I drive my car I expect to get an update that disables the service but it never happens. You will get a ton of spam emails, just ignore it all. Eventually it stops. At a minimum you'll get 3 months free.

https://www.siriusxm.com/free-trial?intcmp=Global Nav_NA_www:Home_FreeTrial

 

[fan-of-fans]

3 month free trial

Very interesting. I did have a 3 month trial when I purchased the car used, for Sirius XM and Travel Link.

I’ll have to check on that, I have heard if rare instances where older vehicles still had service years later, but I thought perhaps the previous owner had purchased a lifetime subscription.

 

[kb0nes]

I am an AM BCB DX'er and I frequently tune through the band to judge propagation. As an amateur radio operator who is very active on the 160m band (1.800-2.000Mhz), AM broadcast is a good prediction of what conditions are like.

On most any night, although better in the winter due to storm related noise, many of the stations that maintain omnidirectional patterns and high power after dark can be heard most places in the US. A few stations to look for

WSM 650 Nashville
WLW 700 Cincinnati
WGN 720 Chicago
WCCO 830 Minneapolis
KDKA 1020 Pittsburg

There are others also but I scan these almost nightly. These used to be called Clear Channel stations but those really don't exist any longer.

If you wish to know details about any AM broadcast station use the FCC AM Query page. There you can learn details of the stations location, their daytime and nightime power levels and their directional patterns if they run one. Reducing power or running a different night time pattern is done to reduce interference to other stations that share the frequency.

https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/am-query

The reason that stations can be heard after dark is that once the Sun sets the lowest layer of the ionosphere (the D layer) loses its daytime ionization. During the day this layer effectively acts like a sponge and it absorbs all the low frequency RF so the higher layers don't refract it back to Earth. After the D layer collapses then single and multi hop propagation is possible.

Note I really only listen to AM broadcast for the magic of radio. Most all the program material is cringeworthy at best...

A fun story from a number of years ago. My mother walked into the room one even when I was listening to KDKA in Pisttsburg. The station ID'ed just than with their call and location and mom stopped mid sentence like she saw a ghost. She wanted to know how I was hearing that. She mentioned that as a girl she used to sit by her father during the war and they listened to KDKA from their home in rural Pennsylvania. She was amazed the station still existed. Even more amazed when I told her that KDKA was essentially the first commercial broadcast station ever!

tl:dr Yes I am a fan of listening to AM

 

[jamiel]

Ah the good old-fashioned clear channel AM stations. KMOX 1120 out of St. Louis is another olde-time one. Grew up listening to that station all the time.

Funny experience--we got a used Fisher tube-type high-end stereo console and had it refurbished, including a Bluetooth receiver. One day after we got it, I was upstairs and was coming downstairs, and the whiff of ozone from the old tubes hit me. Took me back to about 1968 at a neighbor's house in a blink of the eye. However, it would have been tuned to KMOX in St. Louis in my memory...WJR in Detroit in our house here in Detroit...but my husband was streaming public radio from Seattle. I had to shake my head out of my reverie...was truly a weird multi-sensory experience.

 

[cfz2882]

I can get KMOX here in western SD using the 84 GM radio Others noted are :
KTOA 1000-OHIO
WHO 1040 IOWA
KFAB 1110 NEB,
KXEL 1540 IOWA
WCCO 830 MINN.
WLS 890 Chicago-I found this one in 1981 and liked they played rock.

 

[rp2813]

As stated above, I used to listen to KFI in Los Angeles at night.  I also discovered Wolfman Jack's program on XERB, south of the border in Rosarito, BCN.  After the Wolfman, Art Laboe's oldies program started at midnight.  All of these stations were pulled in by a ~1948 GE model 64 clock radio with loop antenna on the inside of its back panel.  I still have that radio, but it's boxed up due to the current uselessness of the AM band (the pictured set below was lifted off line -- mine is complete and in working order)

 

The furthest station I ever listened to was WLS.  This was back in the early '70s while I was staying in a cabin at high altitude in the Sierras, not far from Lassen National Park.  The cabin had no electricity, so WLS was pulled in by a hand-held transistor radio.  My family's roots are in Chicagoland and we'd visit relatives there a lot.  I remember in the '60s when WLS was a top 40 station, their ID spots would include "We Love Summer!" appealing to their predominantly school-aged listeners.

[this post was last edited: 1/13/2024-14:44]

 

[retro-man]

Have a local station here in Boston WJIB 101.3 FM they also have AM stations playing the same music. They have stations go along the Mass coast line all the way down to the cape and islands. They also have FM and AM stations that go up the coast into Maine. The best thing is these stations have no commercials. It is big band music along with the past and current crooners. They intermix a lot of oldies. Music is from the late 40's through the 80's. In the spring they are going to go on line so anyone in the world will be able to listen to it. It is so nice not to have commercials playing after ever song or so. Listen to this station daily for hours.

Jon

 

[rp2813]

Jon, WJIB sounds very similar to KCEA here.  KCEA is all pre-recorded and there are no live announcers or commercials, just the usual ID spots and some mentions of school district events, which are also pre-recorded.

 

I like the sailing reference in WJIB's call letters.  Locally we had a (gay) guy who owned a couple of radio and TV stations for many years.  His FM frequency was 101.3 and station was KIOI (it went by K-101).  The TV station was UHF channel 20.  That one was KTZO.  He had AM station at 1050 on the dial.  The call letters didn't match.  I assume KIOS was already taken.

 

The best call letters locally were quickly secured by TV station KPIX when it began broadcasting 75 years ago (December 1948).  WPIX came first, however, in June of the same year.

 

[angus]

Oddly enough, we still have one AM station that plays music and with live DJs yet. The one I can get here in southern Connecticut is WHLI out of Long Island. It is 1100 on the AM dial but has a sister station at 104.7 on FM. For whatever reason, I can't get the FM station but AM comes in loud and clear. They play a mix of 60's, 70's and some 80's. They even go so far as to play the Star Spangled Banner at noon every day. Most of the other AM stations here are talk based and none of the FM stations I can get play anything but 90's and beyond. Even my old beloved WCBS-FM (101.1) once THE oldies station in the NY area no longer plays anything but 90's and beyond.

 

[novum]

Last AM ‘Medium Wave’ Broadcast from Ireland in 2008

This was the closedown of RTE Radio 1 on 567kHz Medium Wave (AM) - clip is very much giving vibe of old style warm Irish radio. It had a certain tone but also AM itself had a magical warmth that will never really be replicated by high fidelity digital perfection.

The station, which remains on air on FM and digital platforms and streaming, launched on 1 January 1926 with the call sign 2RN. It was renamed ‘Radio Éireann’ and then RTE Radio 1. It turned 98 years old this year.

It continued broadcasting on Long Wave 252kHz for several more years, but it’s only available on FM or digital platforms now.



And at the other end of the audience spectrum we had Atlantic 252, which was a fully commercial hot hits station on Long Wave (AM) on 252kHz operated by RTE and RTL broadcasting from Co Meath in Ireland. It targeted audiences way beyond Ireland using a 500kW transmitter. It had big listenership in the UK and was receivable from Brazil to Moscow at times. The driving hits and headline news at the top of the hour apparently was not making the Soviets happy at the end of the 80s

One of their jingles packages:


[this post was last edited: 2/2/2024-22:51]

 

[tolivac]

This sounds like a nice station.Too bad it signed off.They broadcast some nice programs.Better than the TRASH US stations broadcast!