Broadcast AM radio listening.

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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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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]

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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
 
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.
 
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.
 
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]
 
Effectively AM in Europe is almost dead. There’s hardly anything on either of the AM bands anymore,

There are two bands used in Europe:

Medium Wave (MW) 531–1,602 kHz which has 9 kHz channel spacing, which is fairly similar to AM in the U.S. and Canada. It’s allocated as 119 channels.

Long Wave (LW) 153 to 279 kHz also with 9 kHz spacing - this was never used for broadcasting in North America.

Historically, most of the big stations were on Medium Wave, aiming to cover domestic audiences in a particular country. All the old public service broadcasters and some commercial stations were there.

Long Wave tends to propagate much further, so it was often used with single, very high power transmitters, either to cover awkward topography (RUV in Iceland for example used it even though the listenership was almost entirely domestic. In others it provided back up coverage to supplement FM and Medium Wave (BBC Radio 4, France Inter, RTE Radio 1 etc all did this) or to have international reach.

Some LW stations also carry time signal. BBC Radio 4 Long Wave for example was used to control day/night electric meters in the U.K., sending a code to “radio teleswitch” devices that flipped meters between day and night registers. France used the France Inter LW signal to carry a digital time signal which was used by many systems like railway ticket machine, bus ticket validators, parking meters, etc

Several of the 1960s pop stations used LW as a way of getting pan European coverage for commercial radio - Radio Luxembourg (RTL), Atlantic 252, Europe 1, Radio Monte Carlo (RMC) and quite a few others did this. It was a way of getting commercial radio beyond their borders, both to make money and in many cases, to bypass neighbouring countries’ excessively tight licensing regimes that gave monopolies or near monopolies to state owned broadcasters.

Some of the LW stations were extremely powerful transmitters. The USSR for example has several that reached way beyond 1.5 megawatts of radiated power. One even hit 2.5 megawatts, which was basically to cover their entire territory with just a few huge transmitters.

In Western Europe Radio Luxembourg hit 1.5 megawatts, but for rather more capitalist reasons- to get music radio and ads into lucrative markets.

There was a period of pirates and super pirates - unlicensed commercial stations, which included several quite literally broadcasting from ships at sea, which is where the name came from and others were broadcasting from land based stations, for example here in Ireland, from the Isle of Man and other places that didn’t have as draconian a listening regime or didn’t enforce one as heavily as certain bigger markets at the time.

They were interesting times. Plenty of info online about it if you’re ever interested in the history and a rather fun movie The Boat that Rocked was loosely based on super pirate ‘Radio Caroline’ and stories from several others - it’s not a documentary but it’s a fun watch with a lot of great music of the era and gives a sense of the industry as it was at the time in Britain anyway.
 
Well now my beloved AM 580 CKWW has changed from '60's & '70's to now '70's & '80's...

 

Wonder when this change took place as I'd noticed this yesterday (Tuesday) when it's more likely the day before (Monday) it would have been done, as I'd gotten a few hints judging from songs from a decade surely not normally played...

 

So, on and on, more clues came: The Station Identification Jingle, the rather more "peaky" sound, as in this AM actually comes in clearer though at times made methinks I was listening to Sirius or Satellite Radio and even places where the reception was poor, enough technology went in to where it comes in just like FM!

 

And searching through Google, I'd encountered that there is also (Gasp!) a morning show, though this week I'm off work so I didn't yet tune in to it, but will be hosted from 6AM to 10AM, by these two:

 

(Mark & Kara, two well-known Windsor-area broadcasters)

 

Lastly, if I may quote what I'd read on many of the online discussion boards actually concerning this to me local event, of which I may have even heard this songs played on the radio station's way to this apocalyptic format change:

 

 

 

A few observations, sorry if I ramble...<br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" /><br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" />Last night, Bell played Casey Kasem's American Top 40 until 10. Then an hour of music as normal. At 11:00, the Drake top of the hour played, followed by an hour of "goodbye" type songs, such as We've Got Tonight (Bob Seger), Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye) (Gladys Knight), Yesterday Once More (Carpenters), My Way (Frank Sinatra), God Only Knows (The Beach Boys), Thank You and Goodnight (The Angels), and Dim All The Lights (Donna Summer) was the last song on Motor City Favorites over the air. There were a few jingles, and only one short commercial break during the hour at about 11:50.<br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" /><br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" />Dim All The Lights was interrupted at midnight for the new top of the hour announcement, and the first song on the new format was Hooked On A Feeling by Blue Swede. Bell's online stream continued uninterrupted as CKWW departed the format over the air. It's still streaming with the old music selection as I type this, however without jingles, commercials, and other announcements. The new CKWW is streaming too (on a new stream), but only on iHeart, the CINA app, and their website.<br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" /><br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" />I am hoping the old music library continues streaming; I'll continue to listen as long as it's available. It's still called AM 580 Motor City Favorites, for those who want to search. I enjoy CKWW's new library, but it's "70's and 80's superhits" which is a dime-a-dozen and basically every other classic hits format with seemingly no jingles (yet?), just monotone liners, which is boring in my opinion. Nonetheless, I'll continue listening to this music on AM and give it a chance. WOMC bores me to tears and I haven't listened in probably over a year. I hope CKWW is better promoted and that they perform well.<br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" /><br style="font-weight: 400; caret-color: #333333; color: #333333; font-family: Poppins, 'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;" />"Radio is a business meant to make money and AM is dying" sentiments aside, this has been a dreaded bummer for me, that I knew would happen, as the old 580 was basically my last terrestrial radio refuge as the rest of Detroit media bores me to tears. Throughout all the other changes to radio in the past 2 decades, 580 seemed to be "old reliable". I've been listening to CKWW since 580 Memories in the early 90's after inheriting the big bands from 800, which I also listened to as a young kid with my grandparents. End of a long era, and I will certainly miss it.

 

 

 

<span style="font-family: -webkit-standard; font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">-- Dave</span>

https://www.am580ckww.com/2024/08/15/mark-and-kara/
 
AM music stations

i have one local AM still playing rock/pop music-they advertise playing '60s/'70s,but similar vibe songs as recent as 1982 are played sometimes.I think there is actually a "DJ" sitting at a keyboard,but no records or tapes..
 
Yes I forgot to mention how DJ's as in Disc Jockeys are now known as On Air Personalities...

I miss the days where sometimes they would announce the artist or group and song being played, so I look up,an awful lot of lyrics until I know or find out...

Though sometimes you can go online to read a station's playlist... (sometimes I can or do)

-- Dave
 
Not sure if any members here in New England like myself listen to WCBS 880 news radio in NY, but its going off the air in a few days after 60 years. Audacy bought the parent company and shut them down. It will get new call letters and be an ESPN station now. I've listened to their news, traffic, and weather for decades here in CT where it comes in loud and clear still. A vital part of AM radio gone for good. Pretty sad.
 
When I was a teen and young adult, we had three AM radio stations in our small city in Idaho. One was an NBC affiliate, one was a rock station that shut down at sundown, and one was a country music station that went off the air at midnight. No problem! At night, KOMA out of Oklahoma went directional and I could pick them up as clearly as if they were local. They played rock and other popular tunes. I would listen to then in my bedroom until I fell asleep, on my late uncle's old Atwater-Kent radio which was on my nightstand.
 
Radio to me AM or FM-------Nothing on worth listening to. Just garbage and the same Blaa records played over and over or boring talk.And you have to try to listen over the sea of switching power supplies that cause interference making what AM is out there unlistenable anyway.Radio today is so bad don't listen anymore.FM audio is so badly processed it can sound WORSE than the AM.Thank goodness for my smartphone and songs I have recorded into it-can play that thru the cars radio.
 
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