Big thanks to Ridge for sending me this wallet and supporting the channel! Here’s the site if you want to check them out at the affiliate link! www.ridge.com/ANTENNAMAN UPDATE: This rule change passed. While I don't see analog AM radio going away for a while I can see more and more stations converting to all digital operations as time goes on. Maybe 10-20 years down the road. 📡 Do you have reception problems? Consider an antenna recommendation from me below: 👉 www.antennamanpa.com/antenna-recommendations.html
Well, if the clear channel stations remain analog I will still be able to enjoy tuning them in at night on my 1939 Zenith Chairside radio (and my 1938 Montgomery Ward and 1942 Philco radios).
NO. AM radio is crucial when you need it. AM radio signals travel further, especially at night, or even when there is heavy cloud cover. AM signals also penetrate and bend around obstacles. FM has a much harder time penetrating or bending around obstacles and work best with line of sight. If you’re in a car in the middle of nowhere, you are far more likely to pick up an AM radio station than an FM station. ADDENDUM: Someone has argued that it’s still AM, only digital. The problem with that is that with digital, it’s an all or nothing proposition, like digital TV. With analog, you can pick up a distant, faint signal. It may be staticky, or it may fade, but you can hear it. Not so with digital.
This is why in a lot of European countries DAB that’s used doesn’t go over too well. The terrain almost forbids it because the wavelengths are way too short.
@@LG123ABC , I believe the CARRIER is the issue here . I live well away from ANY digital transmitters and Ampitude Modulation is my only choice when traveling to even more remote destinations . To abandon AM would be a great disservice to future generations . My two cents ; In the '09 digital changeover , many found that usable weak signals they enjoyed were no longer available to them . Our Government and Federal partners decided to consolidate all TV stations into a relatively small and narrow width of band space no longer allowing us to "fine tune" a desired station .... and here , because of the precise bandwidth and virtually line of sight transmission lies the problem ..... YEARS AGO , As a contractor for the DOD , I helped with a research study named "Dust Lofting and Survivability" , a program to determine how our communications would survive in the case of a nuclear strike , volcanic eruption or a possible earth strike from an astral body with debris suspended . Beyond that , many transmitters , reluctors and repeaters have precise targeting with little forgiveness with misalignment and dust and debris build-up . I say keep operational ALL manner of analog AM transmitters in the very real event of digital failings .
Lyle G one that you’ll have to buy all new receiving equipment for. It may be a little clearer but with a lot of bugs. Pure greed, that’s what it will be turned into.
I also forgot to add that AM can't be beat for emergency broadcasts, especially in an SHTF situation. Imagine most cell phone towers and internet down. A situation like the wild fires in CA or hurricane Katrina, or even a massive grid down extended power outage. It can get through when almost no other higher frequency signal, cell signal, cable, wire, or fiber based communication can and at lower power than FM, and is the simplest to receive. Some high power AM stations should always remain on air if only for emergency preparedness, even if those stations are government stations.
@@stuarthirsch a razor blade with a safety pin can work too, Actually, I am a little foggy at remembering that technique and will have to look up and practice that again.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Politics notwithstanding, I would consider the government AM analog transmitters part of the emergency broadcast system and a necessary part of homeland security and FEMA. They could also be used for things like local information such as weather and traffic and road conditions, such as school closings in blizzards, public service announcements, even music and high school and Jr. college training and broadcast experience for students when not need for emergencies.Things that restricted are apolitical broadcasting..The rest of the AM analog band should be given to amatures, hobbyists, nonprofits such as churches, but restricted to 1 KW power output. You could however have repeater stations on different AM frequencies.
Did the same thing when I was in high school 40 years ago. Also did the same thing with UHF TV in the summer. I think the farthest I got from LI NY was St Louis. Was a lot of weird talk shows and religious shows. Also managed to get as far as ch 20 Washington DC a few times. Must have been a heck of an atmospheric night. Used to get PBS Wilkes-Barre PA in the summer circa 1980. Got a decent picture.They used to show Dr. Who on Sat Night.
Also forgot to mention Short Wave back then. Another thing gone. Some how it was a little sinister to listen to Radio Moscow back then. Yes the internet gets us basically almost anything in an instant from around the world. But there was a level of fun searching out something on AM or SW.
Thanks everyone for replying, I didn’t even think of asking for a qsl card but I’ll definitely have to try that! I also have just recently got my technician amateur radio license and haven’t made a contact yet but I will, little mic shy lol
I am 19 years old and I don't think there is anything more fun, than to pick up a radio and start scanning through the channels on both AM and FM day or night to see what I can find. Some of the best music channels are on AM in my opinion, whether the signal is strong or not. Sadly I am one of the few younger people to actually enjoy radio and things that surround it, while 98% of other kids my age just play with their cellphones or other gadgets around now. It really is sad to see radio basically go down the drain, AM now, FM next. Soon it will be all just streaming music and news.
Fully Agree as Here in Buffalo NY & at Many Many Many out of State Radio signals can be picked up as Far away as St Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Minneapolis, Louisville,Detroit, Philly Many Stations out of NYC come in Crystal Clear. Considering also when You hear these Stations on Apps or Streams have a serious delay where they do not on the Direct Station. Live Sporting events are also the Prime source for Local Stations.
I tried to get phones with FM radios for my family. One of them is a flip phone with a talk and text plan, so FM is helpful and we save money. Another phone is an Android, and while I saw FM radio support on the spec sheet, the phone doesn't support it. I'd like to see more phones with FM, and AM if possible.
I just love the simplicity of AM (and shortwave) radio. A transmitter, the ionosphere and a receiver. When things go pear shaped, you can always rely on an AM signal. The BIG issue that AM (and shortwave) radio faces is interference from poorly designed electronics. The FCC (and other worldwide governing bodies) have dropped the ball with this... and it's probably impossible to fix it properly. Rest assured, when RFI from crappy electronics stops people from using WiFi or their cellphone.. something might get done about it!
I use AM radio to predict the weather when camping. Every time lightning flashes there is a crack that can be heard on the radio if tuned between stations and by judging the volume of the crack I can tell how close a thunder storm is long before hearing the first clap of thunder. Now a days wimps use their cell phone and look at the weather radar. What's the fun in that?
When you mention about the radar, you mean the news? Me? Zero interest in that garbage. Yeah, I have my phone, but still, I am not interested in the news.😒
Who the heck is going to buy a NEW radio just to listen to digital AM? My parents listen to AM stations through their Google device. They don't realize it, but they're getting that station through the Internet.
In Australia's capital cities, AM Radio still commands an enormous audience share. Govt owned ABC and the commercial talk radio stations still top the ratings. They simulcast on DAB+ but most listeners haven't shifted away from AM.
I love my local AM station, it’s a small station in a small town and it’s really our only source of good local news since the paper got bought out and is now getting too big for their britches. The FM stations from the neighboring cities are all run by robots or something and they don’t care about any local issues. FM morning shows talk about Hollywood or some news story from another state that everyone has already seen on tv. Our AM station is supported by local business ads,. You get to hear about all the people you know who got arrested over the weekend, all the town’s obituaries, a free daily swap shop that you can call in and buy and sell junk. Plus they play Carolina Beach Music that is hard to find elsewhere and they broadcast several area church services on Sundays. On Saturday mornings they give the listeners a voice, you can call in and tell them what you think about anything going on in town. Losing the station would be a blow to our community, I hope they don’t change a thing.
Lyle G I’m not too worried about loosing because of this yet, if I understood the video this would be optional so they could keep on like they are. If they do make it mandatory I would start worrying because the station probably couldn’t afford it unless the government stepped in to help. I do worry about what will happen when the owner or the main “dj” lady retires.
I think as a radio listener and Shortwave radio listener, Thinking that AM radio going HD is going to change something about it's decay, I think it's not understanding why AM radio is dying, the biggest problem today is RFI from all the digital equipment we use. I think it is a big problem related to radio in general even FM radio
Radio cannot go HD, that is impossible because lack of a picture. It can go digital and have the same shitbag reception OTA TV has with signals cutting off or freezing.
Antenna Man In an emergency, radio is far more reliable and portable than TV, with signals that are also easier to receive and travel further. Big difference between radio and TV. If you need to evacuate, you’re going to take a a portable radio with you. You’re not going to lug a television with you.
@@AntennaMan Digital TV was about freeing up spectrum space for other services, like 4 and 5G wireless and Wi-Fi., etc.. Digital AM radio doesn't free up spectrum space.
One thing this can ruin listening to DX stations at night. When I lived in NY I would tune to 650 for the grand ol opry. We have plenty of digital stations on satellite and PC without messing up the AM band. You still can't beat AM for emergencies with a good radio.
I'm a 30-year-old blind man and can't get enough of the wonderful stuff. Yeah screw the FCC update it's now in currently voluntary stage then again so was TV and the repackaging. That's just underhanded.
Yes I'm an AM listener as well. I listen to music AND talk on AM. Here's why I like it; I have several 1000-5000 watt stations I like which are maybe 30 miles away. I can't pick up their FM signals, so I need to hear them on AM.
@@foureyedchick The content is fine, AM radio is not. It has serious interference problems caused by modern day devices. Digital will make very little difference when it comes to reception.
Here up North, I like to listen to talk radio at night. It helps me sleep. Coast To Coast AM! Talking about aliens coming into people bedrooms and abducting them and doing experiments on them. On second thought it is probably not good to listen to that at night when I am trying to sleep. But it would be interesting to see how the AM skip would sound in digital. Would it brake up a lot? Would it be better?
No. The digital signal wouldn’t travel very far. Digital radio is a failure in Europe. It’s just another excuse. An interesting example is shortwave. Some stations use a digital format called DRM. It doesn’t work very well for these external services. Some AM MW stations like to use C-QUAM and I had a set that picked this signal up. It worked well but at night the drifting made this format intolerable. A digital format would just kill off the MW band. A band expansion should actually be in order. If you separated station by 25 kHz instead of the 10 we have now and expand the MW band from 450 to 1800 the present MW mess could be solved. The powers that be would rather keep this mess the way it is. I used to build a crystal radio that worked very well for what it was. Several local radio stations have switched formats to a “rock-n-Americana” format. They seem to be doing not too bad for themselves. A band EXPANSION would work better than the proposed mess! Oh, and cellphones are lazy excuses for radio. If that internet goes down that’s it. You have nothing then.
@@RJDA.Dakota Digital Radio in Europe is called DAB. DAB is one of the worst radio system there is. Even when well within the broadcasting area. Audio would sound like mud bubbling in the background due to poor signal codec and error correction. Even Canada once propsed to use DAB quit using it due to unsatisfactory performance and choose HD Radio instead.
900Yugo yes I have heard that. Several dozen times. Shortwave radio is a big hobby of mine and I am interested in most aspects of it. I’ve listened to shortwave and medium wave band for decades.
This proposal isn't set in stone yet. Make sure to contact the FCC to give your input. Even if it takes off I don't see all stations going all digital - only the small ones that are suffering.
Well, I mean, not that I'm either for or against on the idea of analog anything shut off, but, it's bound to happen eventually. analog everything is going to be shut off eventually. Progress is going to strike everything analog one day.
@@RJDA.Dakota yeah, I get the whole idea of computerized tracking, I know a thing or 2 about computers since I'm into them. But, as I mentioned, I'm thinking modernization and progress, and also the government and the FCC will eventually knock on the door of whatever isn't under the prefix of digital eventually.
Something most people don't know about AM radio: The quality of the sound on an AM radio can vary vastly from one AM radio to another. It is even possible to build an AM radio that sounds as good as a fine FM radio. An old AM radio will often sound better than a new one. The reason most modern radios sound awful on AM is due to selectivity - how narrow the bandwidth of the radio is. A narrowband AM radio will reduce noise by blocking the frequencies far below and far above the carrier. Problem is, most modern AM radios have telephone-quality sound, because it takes out any brilliance from the audio before detection. A fifty-year-old AM radio will almost always sound better than a brand new one - because most listening back then was to AM radio - even for music. Too, when radios were all mechanically-tuned, listeners could improve the quality of the sound, by turning the tuner slightly to the left or the right. Now that nearly all new radios are digitally-tuned, you can no longer use that trick to improve AM audio quality. There were wideband AM radios. Some had a switch, that offered WIDE mode for excellent sound from good signals, and NARROW mode for signals that are hampered by noise. A crystal radio, that uses no power source, is inherently a wideband radio. People would buy crystal radios to hear AM broadcasts in high quality, though the signal would need to be strong. As for "Digital AM radio" (actually a misnomer - the correct term would be QPSK digital MW radio), It's dead in the water. If voluntary, almost no AM station would adopt it, because an extant AM radio would only sound like a strong noise, and mandating digitization would be politically impossible.
Don't do it ! we've gone full digital TV here in the UK ( it's crap BTW ). And they've had to postpone the radio Digital 'cos the reception is diabloodybolical ( It's crap BTW ). even a slight change in the weather messes with the signal !
@@fwingebritson Right now, tube radio values are dropping like a stone. Nobody wants them, except for highly collectible Scotts, McMurdos, and few Zeniths. The only thing they might be useful for is in a nuclear war, which will probably fry most solid state radios. But who will be left to broadcast, and where will you get the AC power to play the radio?
@@johnstone7697 I am not talking value in money, but value in use. Right now hardly anything is of value monetarily. There are more things that can happen than a nuclear war.
@@fwingebritson But how many people have a working tube radio in their possession? The capacitors in those are all dried out and most of the later models have silver mica disease in their IF transformers. As for those other things that can happen, please elaborate. It sounds like we're drifting into some kind of "prepper" discussion here. I don't think far fetched disaster hypotheticals are going to be persuasive...sorry.
@@johnstone7697 I am not saying go out and get one by any means, but if you have one then why get rid of it? Nor do I wish to get into a "prepper" discussion because I refuse to live a paranoid life. However, if SHTF and I am stuck wondering what is going on with the outside world, I would rather choose a tube am radio because they have excellent signal range, and there will likely be an AM radio station in service if things haven't gone too far. A person can argue that SW would be better, however radios do not often come with SW bands these days and when they do they are dodgy as hell.
AM Radio is great, no better place to receive live sports broadcast, I live in Southwest Michigan, and can receive station that broadcast Notre Dame, Michigan State, Michigan, Colts, Lions, Bears, Green Bay Packers, Cubs, Tiger's, White Sox, Brewers! AM Radio is the future of sports entertainment!
Daytime AM I can receive stations from MI, IN, IL, WI, I enjoy outdoor actives, and AM radio is the best way to listen to all the live ballgames from stations that can be over 100 mi away! FM, or TV can't even come close to AM radio
I love to listen to distant sports on AM too. Unfortunately, they are figuring out more ways to make you pay, even for audio coverage. High power AM stations blasting through the midwest? I'm afraid their days are numbered. It will be a sad time when the plug is pulled through some new regulation or legislation that ignores rural people. Just another example of why so many rural voters cast their ballots as they do. They dislike being ignored and forgotten.
@@arise2945 The AM band has not changed fundamentally in many years. There's nothing inherently different about it today that has contributed to this decline. The frequencies haven't changed, the propogation characteristics are all as they were. Clear channels have been with us for many decades. What has changed is the tremendous increase in the alternatives, offering far more options, better sound quality, etc. The push to digitize the AM band is not coming from the FCC or any other government agency. It's coming from the station owners themselves who see the writing on the wall for this obsolete broadcast format. It all comes down to dollars and cents. The AM band has been in a long decline, and profits for the station owners are harder and harder to achieve. That's the impetus behind this push. As for how rural voters cast their ballots, you seem very confused. The person in charge of pushing this proposal was picked by the person who is now president. This person claims to be an expert business man. AM stations are private businesses. This proposal is coming from the people you voted for.
@@arise2945 How do you think voting could save AM? Do you want to government to subsidize failing AM stations? To mandate that people listen to AM stations to prop up ad revenues? To forbid competing content on the internet or Satellite radio? If your AM stations are failing then the only thing that could save them would be the type of government overreach you're complaining about.
Funny how they kept vinyl records analog (rather than trying to replace grooves with pits and lands on vinyl records!), but they want to change AM radio to digital.
@@ebinrock They actually did that. That's what a CD is. A disc with lands and pits instead of grooves. Frankly, I think they should leave AM alone. It will die a natural death within 15 years anyway. It is no longer commercially viable.
Everything can't be digital... and I KNOW what your thinking "FM is analog" that's going to be digital to someday because the FCC is blind... and AM is litteraly just 1 frequency instead of like 30 different frequency on FM and yet the FCC complains about radio bandwidth... not feeling it
Going complete digital on AM radio would kill the antique radio hobby. Those are pretty much just limited to AM radio, but they are fun to use and often have superior sound quality to the cheap radios of today. In my opinion, AM radio should be left grandfathered for analog broadcast. Digital probably would kill AM radio altogether as digital can't work with any interference. Also, classic music gets dumped on AM, and that will move down the line as people age. Eighties pop is already getting dumped on AM. Soon, your '90s music will follow suit as will 2000s music. It's the old timer's radio, and we just won't have any radio as we age if we don't protect the AM band. Besides, it's the older people that pay the most in taxes, so ignoring their needs would be political suicide.
Tyler, I still listen to AM Radio all the time and I am in your media market. However, I like talk radio such as 1060 and 1210. Years ago in our market, 640 had Radio Disney which was a great alternative to regular radio playing a lot of unknown b-side music (if you can deal with the kid stuff in between). I think the biggest problem with AM Radio is that most broadcasters don't want to put good quality content on AM. Besides news/talk, political talk, and sports talk... a lot of it is religious and other language radio. If some local FM radio stations would simulcast on AM (the opposite of what you were saying) in the more fringe areas, it would get more listeners and also more coverage, depending on the time of day and terrain. For example, MMR. The station fades when you get up to your neck of the woods in Allentown. If they transmitted on AM up in that area, it would be great to continue listening to it. I wouldn't support an AM digital transition as a DXer but I don't think we as the public unfortunately have a choice in the matter.
For those of us that actually learned to build a crystal radio long ago, a few scraps of wire and a "crystal" can get us critical information if things ever get that bad even if there's no electricity or batteries. I'm thinking that making a digital receiver from scratch is going to be a lot more challenging given only junk you have laying around in the basement and no readily available power source. Plus, what am I going to listen to when and if I ever get my 1966 (EMP proof) Oldsmobile back on the road?
@@erwe1054 Yes, the great digital divide. Those with the money will control the access to all of the information. It's kind of like the days where the nobility spoke Latin and the serfs were never taught to read even their own language.
@@RJ-vb7gh Удивляют люди, которые говорят "ой как же это хорошо, теперь мы будем слушать AM без шумов это же так удобно" , не понимая того, что правительство борется так же с альтернативной точкой зрения, которая может быть высказана на пиратских радиостанциях. Аналоговое радио будет выброшено на свалку и никто не сможет прослушать информацию, кроме официально одобренной.
I wish we could have kept analog tv and i hope they don't make radio digital. Back when everything was analog even if the signal wasn't strong you could still watch it but now its all or nothing so i hope it doesn't become all or nothing with radio.
@Richard Tanguay That why we have HD radio on FM as a digital radio standard. The problem is that there are not many portable HD radio receivers available for sale at an affordable price. The most I have seen are car recievers.
NTSC analog tv sucked. It was a major technical compromise dating all the way back to 1953 when compatible color was added to it. Nobody misses it except those that can't or don't want to access programming via the internet or cable. Well over 90% of the country has those other options available. Sometimes formats become obsolete and just die. It's the reason why we no longer use 8 tracks or cassettes. And the vinyl craze is strictly for nostalgia or for hipsters to brag about.
Excellent point, all those vintage AM radios that have been with three different generations of technology - - tubes, xsistors, analog microchips - - - will now have to be discarded
@@CalumetVideo They could still have a use, they sell AM transmitters on ebay with which you could play your own music and broadcast it to your radio, but that wouldn't be the same as listening to a real AM station
@@whaduzitmatr why bother with a transmitter. Old AM radios can be wired as an audio amplifier in which no more (While whee's) heterodyne noise. Just tap into the volume control and ground. You can even remove or not replace the RF and IF tubes only.in radios that have power transformers. Series sets you cannot remove tubes and still use the audio. I know some troll will say just wire the tubes used which also can be done.
True. Growing up in mountains of Colorado I listened to KFI (Los Angeles) and WLS (Chicago) every night on a small radio. To get some FM stations from Colorado Springs (I was in the San Luis Valley) I had to use a 12 foot FM antenna.
I’m Canadian though. But I do live very close to the state of Maine and can pick up am stations in Boston both day and night because the ocean makes the daytime ground wave signal travel farther.
You are talking DAB? Yeah - Things like this are consumer driven. So if you aren't putting the receivers into cars, you aren't going to get the listeners. Plus - it's only an add-on to existing stations. It's not like the FM transition - where stations migrated over the course of a few years. The broadcasts are largely the same.
Big city stations like WLS didn't need Limbaugh. But his low cost syndication package might have saved some small stations in rural areas with declining populations. When the small stations lose Limbaugh and go digital, I guess they can bring back trade-io in the afternoon.
I personally love listening to the AM radio band. Here in Pahrump, a mere 60 miles due west of LVNV I can hear nothing on the AM other than KDWN. Mount Charleston Peak at 11,000 ft + is between us. I mostly listen at night when KCBS, KNX, KOMO, KOA and KKOB, as well as KTNN from the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, all boom in. I also hear many stations from Mexico. Once on Bora Bora in French Polynesia, was able to listen to WWL from NOLA - over 5,500 miles away! Growing up in Chgo, Radio Havana Cuba would occasionally overtake the 720 signal from WGN. I always loved listening to WBZ and KDKA and WABC. Now over the net I mostly listen to WNYC. Funny, however, the commercials are all about products + services here in LV - go figure? Thanks for your channel, Mike in Pahrump, Nv.
This will be a sad day for us radio collectors! I guess we will have to make our own low power AM transmitters to allow our vintage tube AM sets to live on.
I'm sure someone will come up with a converter box that picks up the digital signal with a display, and broadcast its own low power signal over AM/FM like some of the toy mics back in the 70's, and 80's did.
@@CommodoreFan64 I plan on building a low power transmitter anyways. The FCC narrowed the side bands on AM to 10KHz in the 70s to allow for more stations on the dial. I'd love to hear how AM truly sounded before this. I have a few 1940s console radios with 12" and even 15" speakers in them that need restoration.
Nah - they just play amazing video games on their multi-million transistor GPU'd game consoles, whilst talking to their friends over the Internet, whilst watching Netflix :)
You're right! I once took pleasure in sitting in my truck in Dallas and listening to KVOO-AM 1170 in Tulsa. They once had the best format in the country!!
For me, it's simple. If the station is targeting a local market, it should move to FM. AM should only be for clear channel broadcasters who want to cover wider areas than FM can reach. In the old days, I enjoyed listening to out-of-town broadcasts for the content I could not hear locally. What killed that is the same packaged programming being now carried by all of them.
At one time the clear channel idea was the rule and not the exception. I used to dx the entire medium wave band and loved the various stations available across the band all around the country and even a lot of the Western Hemisphere. The smaller stations went off at dusk to accommodate the clear channel stations. Agreed. This should come back and be the rule. The cellphone as a radio is a mistake and even flawed. If the internet goes down then you have no radio then. That’s really ridiculous. Over the air radio needs to be left alone. I have an HD radio and it doesn’t work well except in the larger cities where the stations are located. A digital format switch would be a great mistake and would just kill off the entire band. Again I say that the band should simply be expanded and the bandwidth of each station should be expanded to 25 kHz. This will solve problems.
Richard Tanguay true. LW and MW are wonderful for medium to long range use. And with the right bandwidth and noise reduction medium wave and long wave can become tremendous for specific reasons and needs.
Kent Teffeteller A widened, expanded MW band would help relieve some interference and may even have room for more channels. As I said there’s a lot of unused space at the bottom and top of this spectrum. Even a bandwidth of 15 kHz would definitely be a help.
I remember, many years ago, AM radio started an experiment broadcasting in stereo. However the big problem was people would have to buy a new AM stereo radio to hear full stereo sound. Very few people wanted to spend the money for a new AM Stereo radio so AM stereo was discontinued. I love AM radio!!! I listen to it all the time.
There are some AM radio stations broadcasting in stereo. But AM stereo took a hard hit when the FCC allowed corporations to buy as many radio stations as they wanted to. When the number of radio broadcasters went from a few hundred owners -to five, with deregulation, the owners made a gentlemen's agreement to turn AM stereo off.
@@kevinheatcoat2190 Nearly all the radio I listen to on my daily commute is AM. The FM stations have far too many commercials. In my case, I listen to an AM station in Windsor (Ont.) In the morning, and listen to an AM station in Sandusky (OH) driving back. Only FM station I listen to is NPR station WUOM, Ann Arbor.
I got a really nice 7 transistor radio once for Christmas when i was a kid. I was known as the local radio and tv fix it guy when I was younger and the sets could be repaired....usually with nothing more than a new tube or two and contact cleaner.
God, I hope not. That would kill off DX-ing entirely. I love being able to listen to AM radio stations from New York City in the evening on my CD Walkman that's also a radio and I'm in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, roughly 500 miles away from the transmitters on top of the Empire State Building or wherever else it is that they put the transmitter. *EDIT:* Apparently, the transmitters for the New York City AM blowtorches are mostly in New Jersey. That's not nearly as romantic an idea as listening to something broadcasting direct from the top of the most famous skyscraper in the world. :-/
I think the high powered "clear channel" stations will stay on analog. I think the whole proposition is targeted towards smaller stations that have to power down at night.
AM Towers are usually not located on top of tall buildings. Around here, the best place to put AM Towers are in river valleys and low-flat land areas. Alot of AM Stations need to use directional antennas, which would be impossible on top of buildings. Most of St Louis's AM Towers are in the American Bottoms. The flat, lower elevation lands of the Mississippi river valley. AM broadcasters benefit from rich ground soil for a good ground wave and the American Bottoms has some of that. FM & TV stations are known for broadcasting from building tops: Ex. Willis Tower & Hancock Buildings in Chicago. In St Louis, most TV-FMs broadcast antennas share space on 1,100-foot towers located on the city's edge. Not every TV-FM station can build it's own 1,100-foot tower. So they must share . Sometimes 12+ FM-TV stations share a single 1,100-foot tower. AM Towers can not share space with other AM stations. The entire AM tower is radiating signal. TV-FM broadcast antennas are mounted on the side of their tower structure at different elevations. So the tower itself does not radiate the broadcast signal.
@@ToddHa -Looking at a chart (from 2014, dunno if it's changed much since then), all that's broadcast from the Empire State Building is TV and FM anyway.- Correction, the chart's from 1967, the article is from 2014 so it's probably not accurate to what's up there now.
I’m not necessarily opposed to an all digital am world. I’m opposed to the adoption of ibiquity’s inferior closed source HD radio standard. DRM (digital radio mondiale) is much more efficient at using all 10khz. HD radios are so expensive and relatively inferior (in their price range) because of the massive royalties
Exactly! Just wait till you have to pay a fee to unlock an ATSC 3.0 video stream on your computer because the codec has a paywall. Remember back in windows XP and even early windows 7 when you had to pay for a codec to playback DVDs
Sports talk radio is HUGE on the AM bands. A very big market and if they discontinue am broadcasting and replace with FM , they will lose half their listeners because FM does not have the range of AM signals, especially at night.
If anyone wants to keep the smaller stations going in their own area, they need to get in contact with them to find out in what way, you the listener, can help
I remember when cellphone bands where on 800mhz. And I could tune in and listen to conversations Even 900mhz radio bands are going to at&t or Verizon. So I can no longer have anything to scan in analog. You now have to have just about every form of digital just to listen. And when it comes to tier 3 you need $$$. This radio hobby is very ,very expensive now. Just a uniden sds200 is now over 700.00 without any accessories. The cheapest solution i have found is sdr and rtl radio. And that is changing about every 3 monts.
I remember listening in on cordless house phones when they used 46 MHz back around the late 80s and early 90s. Good times. I always knew the gossip before arriving back at high school in the mornings because the girls were always on the phones as night.
The problem is not THAT so few listen to AM radio; it is that so few AM stations OFFER something enough people want to hear. In 1987 I bought a car stereo with AM stereo. The one stereo station I could receive that played music sounded very good, and I thought it had a chance of becoming a great thing. It didn't. The station gave up too soon. They stopped playing any music at all. Digital radio may have superior sound quality, but it is a bad method in all other respects. I favour a permanent return to 100% pure analog radio on both AM and FM --- no more HD, which causes interference --- and otherwise let the market sort things out.
this is very interesting if there is a mass power disruption and the Cell phones stop then what the A.M. radio works and works well this is another idea to control the masses there is no independence when all the radio will be stuck on a power demanding digital syncing this is an Idea that will probably lose steam fast and is some thing that should not even see more then the question thank you for the fun video s
New radios that have the AM band do it with poor circuits. Those 1 chip FM radios work fine for FM but suck for pulling in AM stations if they include the AM band. They are not built the way vintage AM only radios were. I've built Foxhole radios with a razor blade and a peace of pencil lead as the detector that worked better for local AM radio stations than any modern FM and AM single chip radio, which all of them are now. Google "Foxhole Radio" if you want to see how those are made and used. Obviously if the AM band goes digital those WWII era primitive crystal type radios would no longer work.
Craig Nehring I really like my XHData D 808. It’s one of these small radios that have the radio on the chip. This set is wonderful for long distance MW and SW transmissions. The FM is also very nice.
I've got a high end AM radio from the 30's. When they're perfectly tuned (Pronounced $$). They sound just as good as FM. It's only mono of course instead of stereo.
Actually, there are quite a few very good AM radios... that is AM and FM and some with shortwave, that have very good AM circuits still available brand new manufacture. CCrane and Sony come to mind immediately.
I don’t listen to AM or FM over the air anymore . Far too many commercials. The music is mostly crap and the play lists are too short. Even the oldies stations play too few songs. Radio isn’t run by radio people anymore. The bean counters are in charge. When I want to listen to talk radio I listen on line.
Does AM HD sound good? Yes, actually. But it's not practical because it doesn't travel well due to multipath and bouncing on the ionosphere (of course I'm talking about AM DX here). What they should have done is widen the channel for each AM station and keep analog AM stereo. That actually sounded pretty good. Instead of 10 KHz they could use 15 KHz spacings. Back in the AM stereo days circa 1986 I had a car receiver that had a "wide band" option and it sounded good! And AM stereo doesn't interfere with adjacent channels like AM HD does.
That’s exactly right!! I used to have a Sony multiple format analogue AM stereo receiver. It sounded great but at night I had to turn the bandwidth down to cut interference. Yes like I said: AM MW Should be expanded: 450-1800 kHz and each station should be 25 kHz apart from each other. That would cut interference and also widen the frequency response of each station. More efficient antenna design should also help. C-QUAM worked just fine for me.
KFYI 550 AM in Phoenix, Arizona is about all I listen to. I like conservative talk radio. I work from home so I mostly listen to KFYI thru iHeart Radio on my browser so in a sense I've been listening to their digital version for a long time. Would kind of suck hopping into my F-150 and no longer be able to listen to what I like because my radio only receives analog broadcasts.
I’m in Phoenix too. I regularly listen to KAZG an AM oldies station on an old transistor radio at my storage units. They’re also on FM, but their FM signal isn’t as clear. Steve Goddard is on in the afternoon.
Yet another technology being relegated to the dust bin of history 😢. So many things that were once mainstays of everyday life are disappearing or are already gone. So let's have a moment of SILENCE for AM radio, before we have Permanent Silence for AM radio.
There are good reasons for AM. Air traffic still uses it because of FM’s capture effect, among other reasons. Digital has problems. You either receive it all or nothing. No DXing.
HD Radio tried this, and it failed miserably. WBZ 1030 Boston was an HD Radio station, and even with a strong signal, it rarely could see digital content. When it did, it sounded like a low-bitrate audio stream of past days, for what few seconds it would work before reverting the muffled AM analog. I've had it be noisy, and it work, perfectly noiseless, no-go. It was a crap-shoot, and failed.
Yep, go watch Techmoan's channel who is based in the UK, and has done a few reviews on various radios, and they have digital radio there, and even in a country that small it's a mess with some of it being in 64Kbps mono.
Oh, I don't know about that. When I lived in FL I was able to pick up WBZ's HD signal at night with remarkable clarity. I loved listening to the guy who was hosting in the wee hours. It's been so long I forgot his name.
@@zoppie Bradley Jay? He had a good show, then it went away when Covid-19 was all they talked about in news-related content. The show still has not come back, just recycled news plays now. I'm surprised it can be received there. I know it can go halfway into Canada, and down the Carolinas with decent clarity, but good enough for HD Radio to work where you are? That's amazing. Doesn't work here, or anywhere it comes in perfect. Maybe overmodulated enough? Weird thing is, even 20 miles from the tower, there's places where the station as a whole doesn't seem to exist.
@@diamonddave45 I always hear something interfering with BZ, I hear some tone on the hour, found it was on 1020. Maybe that's it. Too close together to co-exist.
I used to listen exclusively to FM music stations in my teenage and young adult years. Now the radio station I've been listening to the most is a local AM news radio. I'm not 60, not even 35 yet. People do change and so do listening habits. And on the note of audio quality, I've always hated listening to talk radios on FM or on digital. Such a waste of audio quality (FM HiFi stereo for speech?), and so annoying to hear people spitting in their microphones in HD. I guess I could buy a cheap digital receiver that has horrible audio quality, but then hey, why not just keep those AM stations and not force the population to buy new receivers?
You're in/near Ottawa? I get much more than that on AM in Ottawa on my CD Walkman that's also a radio, albeit mainly at night and I don't mind listening through a heckuva lot of static. I used to be able to listen to stations in Massena NY in the daytime but I can't seem to pick them up anymore.
It is weird that during the day my local AM station transmits at 50,000 watts loud and clear but reduces power at night to 10,000 to get drowned out by DX stations 1,000 to 2,000 miles away.
thaddeus mcgrath radio is a great but very strange thing. At night more the atmosphere is more conducive to long distance stations. That’s what I mean. It’s actually meant to do that. In a true emergency like a power or telephone failure that’s why mw radio is great especially at night. FM is limited and local only.
I treat AM DX listening as a hobby, as well as an emergency lifeline. When there is an emergency in a distant state such as an earthquake, I can search for the stations in that area using my reception logs. Weather events are also closely monitored. The hobby of DX listening can give one several hours to maybe a couple of days to prepare for a serious weather event. OK, I'm 66 years old, and I just like to hear from other parts of the country, and to share in their experiences. It's fun!
Like with television, broadcasters want to dominate a specific market, disallowing listeners to hear out of the market stations. This is not about improving AM, it's about controlling it. Maybe we need another Radio Caroline.
I love AM radio. We have a 50,000 watt radio station where I live operating 24 hours a day that has fabulous sound for over 100 miles from the city. I listen to it a lot on a boom box, plugged into home AC power, while I am using my PC computer at home. Long live AM radio.
Throw a wire on the radio and tune around at night! If it doesn't have an antenna jack, just wrap it around/clip it to the telescoping antenna and stretch it out. Into a tree if possible. See if you can hear WWL 870, KSL 1160, or KOMO 1000. Have some fun!
I'm a millennial and let's be honest here the last time I ever listen to AM radio was the night before Radio Disney went off the air in my area which then Radio Disney became and some random Mexican station
I can't see this happening in places like New York City where AM stations are still big business. One notably is the legendary news station 1010 WINS. Tons of people still rely on it for traffic, weather and the quick headlines. Then there is WCBS, WABC, WOR and WFAN which I recall as being the top billing station in the area. Not to mention the huge audiences of the many ethnic stations in the city. The NY broadcasters aren't about to cut their audience out for Digital AM....again. It's been tried already and the audience and the broadcasters rejected it. The whole proposal is as ridiculous as the FCC proposal to charge Amateur radio operators $50 renewal...
There is an AM "revitalization" going on in the NYC, Long Island area. Ive noticed a lot more variety in ads on many of the stations (which means companies are interested in advertising on am) and stations are being rethought and changed for the better such as 77 wabc going back to "Music Radio 77 WABC" every Saturday evening. And 1100 whli getting ads from larger companies like dove and target.
You're right that WINS and WCBS are holding respectable size audiences on AM, but the last time I checked the NYC Metro radio ratings WABC and WOR, which likely share most of their audience, were only attracting a small fraction of the audience size they used to, and most of the listeners were over the age of 55, many way over, and that means they are not that attractive to major advertisers. Meanwhile, WFAN is on FM too, and ESPN moved their sports talk to FM years ago because the AM audience for sports talk just wasn't what they needed.
WDBO has both 580 AM and 107.3 FM. Both suffer from poor signal quality and interference. In the past when they reformatted the 580 AM to sports radio and WDBO 96.5 FM the signal quality was excellent and no interference. Who remembers when the AM stations went to stereo broadcasting and you didn’t have upgrade to listen to the regular signal? If they change AM to digital I would not like to have to purchase new equipment to listen to any of it.
I listen to AM radio from local talk show hosts, Rush, and Hannity. Also for some reason Baseball games sound great on AM radio. Even this year when there was no one in the stands and recorded crowd sounds were used, on AM radio it sounded like there was people in the stands cheering the Baseball teams and it sound great and natural.
When I listen to AM at night, I can hear eight to a dozen stations broadcasting the *same exact talk show* . There's not a wide variety of content on AM radio anymore.
@@scottlarson1548 Exactly. The golden age of AM was back in the 30's and 40's, when there was no TV and the only other news was in newspapers (and newsreels at the movie theater). There were also radio dramas and comedies for entertainment (which stirred your imagination more *because* you couldn't see the story unfold), also because there was no TV and certainly no internet.
Many AM stations already broadcast their content on their HD FM station counterpart. For example in NYC "News Radio 880" is also broadcast on one of the sub-channels of WCBS FM HD. I think in most metropolitan areas, AM sound quality is very good, it's just that many of the modern AM tuners are crap. Get an old Pioneer receiver and listen to the AM section. It will blow you away with how good in sounds compared to the AM radio in you car.
There are many of us that are radio collectors, some radios dating back close to 100 years old. Yes a converter would work but would defeat the purpose of tuning in stations which is part of the enjoyment. I frankly would not buy a AM radio to pick up digital stations.
Sorry for the late comment. When I was a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s my Dad would take us out for a drive and we could hear AM stations from all over the country. If you remember the subplot of American Graffiti one of the main characters was trying to see his idol - radio jock Wolfman Jack who was broadcasting from a strong Am station across the border in Mexico.
I'm a millennial (1992) and I listen to AM radio every day multiple times a day. My local station, WTIC 1080, is a clear-channel station and the reception is excellent. I'm also fascinated by the technology in general so I think it's interesting when certain things like lightning affect the signal. This video made me so upset I'm definitely about to follow this link you speak of.
I listened to Rush Limbaugh in the very beginning when he had 5? stations network. I even built an AM antenna amplifier to get a clearer signal in Delaware from New York WABC. DX AM & domestic Short Wave are still a good alternative to mainstream monopoly media. NY Post Hunter Biden story CENSURED on Twitter & Facebook. Big Bro uses computer robots to censure digital media, AM radio is a little more difficult to control.
FM digital has been around for over a decade... yet FM analog still exists. Yes, I know that FM can multiplex many frequency carers within it, but it's still available in Analog. AM digital had been around for quite a while also. It uses the side bands to carry the data. They can still coexist. AM stereo has been around since the 1980s, multiplexed in similar to FM. I don't see why this proposal is needed. And, AM isn't all that bad... depends on the receiver.
The only thing I would miss about AM radio is the radio signal drifts from other states and countries. Which reminds me - I havent fiddled around with my AM radio to look for that stuff since I was a teen - way back in circa 1970s AD. Now THAT my friend is history! Dinosaurs almost wiped us out, maaaan. Yeah they hated rock-n-roll on the AM dial.
AM has been around for years & I love it, AM will come in where fm won't in a lot of areas, it's still # 1 in & around the globe like a good ol' baseball game, so fcc pound sand & leave us ALONE 😆
No one is forcing anyone to buy new TVs, you can just connect new tuners to any TV. It's much worse for radio stations to shut down because it will make many radios obsolete and unusable! (This will also mean more electronic waste poisoning our environment over this decision!)
Brodie Gamboa this is truly the best way to get the point across. Even those old CRT TVs have a lot of material in them also dumped unceremoniously everywhere on peoples yards. We have one too but have to admit I would rather turn it in to be properly recycled. Save for the CRT itself many parts can be recycled. I really don’t like the idea of zeroing out all this band space at some company’s whim.
You don't have to be old to listen to AM. Lots of young people listen to AM. AM gets a bad rap because FM controls the narrative, not because there is anything wrong with AM.
I'm surprised the FCC is going in this direction. Heck, the band was EXTENDED beyond 1610 KHz all the way up to 1700 KHz. Is this the act of a regulatory body that wants to end the present mode of operation? If operators of AM broadcast undertakings see them wither on the vine let them do so organically. I never thought of HD radio as a practical solution to a richer AM audio experience. Think of the implementation model; it's a digital subcarrier that needs to be hosted on an existing ANALOG FM service. Why? Now if the FCC is keen on more digital modulation to enhance the listener experience they should seize the opportunity to EXTEND the FM band DOWNWARD from 88 MHz to 76 MHz, swallowing up the old frequencies occupied by analog VHF TV channels 5 and 6 which are immediately adjacent to the FM band and in a frequency range which doesn't serve digital over-the-air TV well anyway. Let digital TV operate on channels 7-13 VHF and 14 UHF and up to wherever the end channel will be (35 or 36) leaving a good chunk of 700 MHz which is being sold off to the wireless carriers. 76-108 MHz would line up well with the FM band in many European and Asian countries whose FM bands start at 76 MHz. That lower 12 MHz block could be allocated to pure 100% all digital FM. No subcarrier hosted on an analog FM provisioned for SCMO operation; just pure stand-alone all-digital signal and, as is the case with digital OTA TV, provision for multiple virtual channels. At those frequencies it's much cheaper and easier to install and put a digital FM on the air. Now that's a solution I could get behind.
It's the act of an agency who saw, much like the UHF TV band, digital means tighter packing. Which then leaves more free space to spin off chunks of the band to reallocate and SELL to the highest bigger. Why do you think UHF TV only has 36 channels now? Someone paid big bucks to have that spectrum reallocated.
KNX 1070 News Radio is still popular in Los Angeles/Southern California. At night it's possible to pick up AM radio from stations very far away. Anyway, if it goes, my pile of transistor radios will become worthless on AM. Will I survive? Yes. Will I miss it? Also yes.
I have worked in radio for 16 years. Let me tell you something this will not work, This proposal is voluntary, not mandatory, first off going all digital will not work. There are so few digital ams that will be able to do so successfully otherwise for most stations it will be a wasted investment and most stations will fail under the new digital format because most people do not have an am hd receivers. The economics isn’t there to do this. This is what I think the fcc should do. 1. Create a new standard for all am radios made in the USA or imported from else where. 2. Ban all the import radios that from China until they start making radios that meet the new standard and only accept imported radio with the new standard. Because most of these radios that have real bad am radio tuners in them with bad interference most of them not up to part 15 standards and most only go to 3-5 kilohertz and only allow import radio receivers to have 13 kHz bandwidth and with am stereo decoders. 3.They should make all am stations mandatory broadcast in am stereo. 4.They also need to abolish the nrsc 10khz requirement and allow stations to broadcast in full 13 kHz bandwidth audio real hi fi audio that’s fm like. Plus the primary entry point radio stations are mostly am station and provide a vital lifeline during an emergency and those would have to remain in analog as the system can’t be upgraded to digital. I’m sure there are more things I could add to this list but can’t think of it right now however if the fcc does these 4 things then am has a real chance at being saved from death. If they go to all digital wether voluntary or mandatory it will leave am in worse condition that what it already is. Now in some cases in special circumstances for some stations going digital would be beneficial for some. I just don’t see going going digital for all or the majority of am radio stations to do so it just a waste of money.
Why are AM stations spaced 10 KHz a part in the Americas, but 9 KHz a part in the rest of the world? When I was young, and even up through high school I would occasionally tune into AM. However, the things to listen to that I was interested in were mainly on FM, with some stations simulcasting AM and FM. What got me interested in AM in the late 80’s and early 90’s were that there were still a lot of AM stations that played rap and urban AC. However, many of those stations went off altogether at night, and depending on the time of year pretty early. One example of this is WXLA AM 1180 in Lansing, Michigan. They now are adult standards, and because OF WHAM in Rochester, Ny they have to sign off at sunset. I know of other stations that were in that situation.
@@jeffk7734 that’s because of the itu I think the main reason was to avoid mass interference around the earth on am at night. I’m sure there are other reasons but that’s all if I can think of right now.
Digital radio via cell phone works great. No need for shutting down analog. Switching to digital AM wouldn't do anything positive for the listener base, but would lose a lot of folks who do listen.
6:09 The 2nd radio station that I every worked at was KENI in Anchorage, Alaska (and now you know why my screen name is "totallyfrozen"). It was kinda cool to see it up there on screen. Before it was 650 AM, it was 550 AM (as if anyone here cares). My first radio DJ gig was on an AM station. I've worked in AM music, AM talk, and FM talk. I have a soft spot in my heart for radio. In many areas, AM broadcast has been essential to delivery of government information during emergencies.
Tyler -- Even though I disagree with you, you have done an excellent job in highlighting the issues which have been plaguing AM Radio for quite some time. What needs to be pointed out here is that the entire AM bandwidth in North America is 1.17 Mhz (The bandwidth between 88.1 Mhz and 89.3 Mhz is 1.2 Mhz which is only seven stations at best on the FM dial). Even though AM presently doesn't have the same sound quality as other radio media (excluding CB and Short Wave) it does an excellent job at doing what it does quite efficiently. AM Radio does need to be improved, but I do not believe digital is the way to go given its place on the spectrum and how far the current AM signal can travel -- especially during the night. AM does need to reinvent itself -- it just has to figure out how.
Antenna Man each station is 10 kHz wide. An expansion sounds more in order. LW is not used and nothing is on above 1700 to 1800. Yes it could be expanded. 400 to 1800 kHz. 25 kHz bandwidth. Plenty of space to keep things from interference with each other.
@@RJDA.Dakota uh, no. Look at FCC band allocation. Expanding AM is not necessary. In fact, digital can allow a station to achieve high fidelity in much less bandwidth. Right now there are stations using their allocation to transmit HD AM next to analog AM. FCC has to do a much, much better job in HD Radio adjusting power authorizations. Currently it is done incrementally on a complaint or lack thereof basis.
at night you can pick up am stations from 100s of miles away, far outside their intended coverage area, and those "unofficial" reception areas would just lose the signal entirely
Can confirm AM radio travels very far distances. I sometimes listen to CFZM 740 from Toronto at night from Baltimore. Granted I can only receive it at night. On a side note, I have an HD radio in my truck. Some of our AM stations already have HD signals. I was flipping through and caught myself wondering why it sounded so clear.
The only time I listen to AM radio is when I want “traffic and weather together on the 8’s” other than that I rarely listen to AM because the news these days is all negative, and I don’t care much about sports
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UPDATE: This rule change passed. While I don't see analog AM radio going away for a while I can see more and more stations converting to all digital operations as time goes on. Maybe 10-20 years down the road.
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Ya sure let's make all AM radios useless... not... it's 1 frequency like seriously what's the big issue with that
Well, if the clear channel stations remain analog I will still be able to enjoy tuning them in at night on my 1939 Zenith Chairside radio (and my 1938 Montgomery Ward and 1942 Philco radios).
NO. AM radio is crucial when you need it. AM radio signals travel further, especially at night, or even when there is heavy cloud cover. AM signals also penetrate and bend around obstacles. FM has a much harder time penetrating or bending around obstacles and work best with line of sight. If you’re in a car in the middle of nowhere, you are far more likely to pick up an AM radio station than an FM station. ADDENDUM: Someone has argued that it’s still AM, only digital. The problem with that is that with digital, it’s an all or nothing proposition, like digital TV. With analog, you can pick up a distant, faint signal. It may be staticky, or it may fade, but you can hear it. Not so with digital.
This is why in a lot of European countries DAB that’s used doesn’t go over too well. The terrain almost forbids it because the wavelengths are way too short.
AM wouldn't be going away, the signal would just be in digital form rather than analog.
@@LG123ABC which will make every vintage radio obsolete.
@@LG123ABC , I believe the CARRIER is the issue here . I live well away from ANY digital transmitters and Ampitude Modulation is my only choice when traveling to even more remote destinations . To abandon AM would be a great disservice to future generations .
My two cents ; In the '09 digital changeover , many found that usable weak signals they enjoyed were no longer available to them . Our Government and Federal partners decided to consolidate all TV stations into a relatively small and narrow width of band space no longer allowing us to "fine tune" a desired station .... and here , because of the precise bandwidth and virtually line of sight transmission lies the problem ..... YEARS AGO , As a contractor for the DOD , I helped with a research study named "Dust Lofting and Survivability" , a program to determine how our communications would survive in the case of a nuclear strike , volcanic eruption or a possible earth strike from an astral body with debris suspended . Beyond that , many transmitters , reluctors and repeaters have precise targeting with little forgiveness with misalignment and dust and debris build-up .
I say keep operational ALL manner of analog AM transmitters in the very real event of digital failings .
Lyle G one that you’ll have to buy all new receiving equipment for. It may be a little clearer but with a lot of bugs. Pure greed, that’s what it will be turned into.
I also forgot to add that AM can't be beat for emergency broadcasts, especially in an SHTF situation. Imagine most cell phone towers and internet down. A situation like the wild fires in CA or hurricane Katrina, or even a massive grid down extended power outage. It can get through when almost no other higher frequency signal, cell signal, cable, wire, or fiber based communication can and at lower power than FM, and is the simplest to receive. Some high power AM stations should always remain on air if only for emergency preparedness, even if those stations are government stations.
Not to mention an analog radio is the easiest radio to make.
@@fwingebritson Another advantage to analog AM is that a crystal set requires no batteries or external electric power. Ideal for SHTF emergencies.
@@stuarthirsch a razor blade with a safety pin can work too, Actually, I am a little foggy at remembering that technique and will have to look up and practice that again.
The government is the entity trying to turn America into a one-party Democrat state.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Politics notwithstanding, I would consider the government AM analog transmitters part of the emergency broadcast system and a necessary part of homeland security and FEMA. They could also be used for things like local information such as weather and traffic and road conditions, such as school closings in blizzards, public service announcements, even music and high school and Jr. college training and broadcast experience for students when not need for emergencies.Things that restricted are apolitical broadcasting..The rest of the AM analog band should be given to amatures, hobbyists, nonprofits such as churches, but restricted to 1 KW power output. You could however have repeater stations on different AM frequencies.
Living in the country, forced digital am would probably kill am for me.
The FCC is not forcing radio stations to convert to digital. It just gives them the choice to do that
@@bazil4146 FCC doesn't ''give'' people a choice on a new invention, they just regulate.
@@gregnulik1975 YEAH ,like the American Public "needs" more Regulation. Ilove my AM radio -it just stinks that there is lessMuisc on it than Ever!!
@@gregnulik1975 watch it happen... they are going to force them to go digital because of "frequency bandwith problem"... and AM just uses 1 frequency
They said that analog TV took up to much frequency waves and yet the video and audio was just 1 frequency... I'm tiered of the FCC lieing
I’m 19 and I just like seeing how many distant AM stations I can pick up using my tecsun radio with a loop antenna
It's a great hobby and since we're still at the bottom of the solar cycle you should get some catches this winter. Happy DX!
WHen you log them, contact them and ask for a card. Provide a signal report. They will be happy to mail you one. (QSL Card)
Did the same thing when I was in high school 40 years ago. Also did the same thing with UHF TV in the summer. I think the farthest I got from LI NY was St Louis. Was a lot of weird talk shows and religious shows. Also managed to get as far as ch 20 Washington DC a few times. Must have been a heck of an atmospheric night. Used to get PBS Wilkes-Barre PA in the summer circa 1980. Got a decent picture.They used to show Dr. Who on Sat Night.
Also forgot to mention Short Wave back then. Another thing gone. Some how it was a little sinister to listen to Radio Moscow back then. Yes the internet gets us basically almost anything in an instant from around the world. But there was a level of fun searching out something on AM or SW.
Thanks everyone for replying, I didn’t even think of asking for a qsl card but I’ll definitely have to try that! I also have just recently got my technician amateur radio license and haven’t made a contact yet but I will, little mic shy lol
I am 19 years old and I don't think there is anything more fun, than to pick up a radio and start scanning through the channels on both AM and FM day or night to see what I can find. Some of the best music channels are on AM in my opinion, whether the signal is strong or not. Sadly I am one of the few younger people to actually enjoy radio and things that surround it, while 98% of other kids my age just play with their cellphones or other gadgets around now. It really is sad to see radio basically go down the drain, AM now, FM next. Soon it will be all just streaming music and news.
Fully Agree as Here in Buffalo NY & at Many Many Many out of State Radio signals can be picked up as Far away as St Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Minneapolis, Louisville,Detroit, Philly Many Stations out of NYC come in Crystal Clear. Considering also when You hear these Stations on Apps or Streams have a serious delay where they do not on the Direct Station. Live Sporting events are also the Prime source for Local Stations.
I tried to get phones with FM radios for my family. One of them is a flip phone with a talk and text plan, so FM is helpful and we save money. Another phone is an Android, and while I saw FM radio support on the spec sheet, the phone doesn't support it. I'd like to see more phones with FM, and AM if possible.
@@DanceDanceNorth That definitely needs to happen.
I just love the simplicity of AM (and shortwave) radio. A transmitter, the ionosphere and a receiver. When things go pear shaped, you can always rely on an AM signal.
The BIG issue that AM (and shortwave) radio faces is interference from poorly designed electronics. The FCC (and other worldwide governing bodies) have dropped the ball with this... and it's probably impossible to fix it properly.
Rest assured, when RFI from crappy electronics stops people from using WiFi or their cellphone.. something might get done about it!
I know., I have an FTDX-3000 in an urban area and cannot hear much. Noise is well over S9 on most bands.
I use AM radio to predict the weather when camping. Every time lightning flashes there is a crack that can be heard on the radio if tuned between stations and by judging the volume of the crack I can tell how close a thunder storm is long before hearing the first clap of thunder. Now a days wimps use their cell phone and look at the weather radar. What's the fun in that?
I actually used to do this on my car stereo. I listened for the pops!
When you mention about the radar, you mean the news? Me? Zero interest in that garbage. Yeah, I have my phone, but still, I am not interested in the news.😒
@@morganrussman My phone has an App that came on it that say's Weather1. It has weather radar in that app as well as temp and hour by hour forecasts.
@@rextex4222 yeah, I've been able to do the same with using my default phone weather app, I've been pretty successful with that method so far.
It will still pick up lightning. Arjit Pai gets no money from God so won't mandate digital atmospherics
Who the heck is going to buy a NEW radio just to listen to digital AM? My parents listen to AM stations through their Google device. They don't realize it, but they're getting that station through the Internet.
Internet does go down and is unreliable... Buffering .....
@@harryparker9452 Yeah, nothing is more reliable than AM transmissions.
A whole lotta people.
If most new cars come with HD AM/FM radios, then there will be a market, but ONLY for people in cars.
I can see it coming "pay radio"
In Australia's capital cities, AM Radio still commands an enormous audience share. Govt owned ABC and the commercial talk radio stations still top the ratings. They simulcast on DAB+ but most listeners haven't shifted away from AM.
I love my local AM station, it’s a small station in a small town and it’s really our only source of good local news since the paper got bought out and is now getting too big for their britches. The FM stations from the neighboring cities are all run by robots or something and they don’t care about any local issues. FM morning shows talk about Hollywood or some news story from another state that everyone has already seen on tv.
Our AM station is supported by local business ads,. You get to hear about all the people you know who got arrested over the weekend, all the town’s obituaries, a free daily swap shop that you can call in and buy and sell junk. Plus they play Carolina Beach Music that is hard to find elsewhere and they broadcast several area church services on Sundays. On Saturday mornings they give the listeners a voice, you can call in and tell them what you think about anything going on in town.
Losing the station would be a blow to our community, I hope they don’t change a thing.
You have a real gem there. That type of station is super rare nowadays.
You wouldn't lose the station. They would simply be broadcasting a digital signal instead of an analog one.
@@LG123ABC IF!! They can afford the equipment!!!
Lyle G I’m not too worried about loosing because of this yet, if I understood the video this would be optional so they could keep on like they are. If they do make it mandatory I would start worrying because the station probably couldn’t afford it unless the government stepped in to help. I do worry about what will happen when the owner or the main “dj” lady retires.
Dave Webb I believe that! Whenever I travel I try to find a similar station in other towns but I haven’t yet.
The FCC is a joke. Long live AM radio!
The FCC is doing what the station owners want. Seriously, the FCC doesn't care about the AM spectrum. It is useless for anything else.
I think the government needs to do away with the FCC
you can blame this guy Ajit Varadaraj Pai he heads the FCC
is an American lawyer who serves as Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Without the FCC, AM stations could just choose to make this transition if they wanted to (I'm still not sure why they'd want to).
I think as a radio listener and Shortwave radio listener, Thinking that AM radio going HD is going to change something about it's decay, I think it's not understanding why AM radio is dying, the biggest problem today is RFI from all the digital equipment we use. I think it is a big problem related to radio in general even FM radio
Radio cannot go HD, that is impossible because lack of a picture. It can go digital and have the same shitbag reception OTA TV has with signals cutting off or freezing.
@@Elfnetdesigns Sorry to hear that you are having trouble receiving ATSC broadcasts.
If you listen to shortwave tune into WBCQ (7.490 and 6.160) and WRMI (9.455) weeknights 9pm-10pm Eastern US time; Wednesdays 9-11pm
What about emergency broadcasts? Isn't the AM band the "reliable" source for these announcements?
You could have said the same thing about analog TV but that didn't stop the FCC from axing that.
Antenna Man In an emergency, radio is far more reliable and portable than TV, with signals that are also easier to receive and travel further. Big difference between radio and TV. If you need to evacuate, you’re going to take a a portable radio with you. You’re not going to lug a television with you.
plus batteryless systems like crystal radios wouldnt work with digital
@@AntennaMan Digital TV was about freeing up spectrum space for other services, like 4 and 5G wireless and Wi-Fi., etc.. Digital AM radio doesn't free up spectrum space.
Most primary emergency radio stations are FM
AM Radio is king at night....and when it all goes wrong, it is an old standby. But yeah, younger crowd have no clue it exists.
I remember driving to Florida from NY and being able to listen to WNBC all the way at night
I'm in my 40s and I don't remember ever listening to AM radio. Honestly the "younger crowd" today are hardly aware that FM radio exists.
I agree. I love AM
One thing this can ruin listening to DX stations at night. When I lived in NY I would tune to 650 for the grand ol opry. We have plenty of digital stations on satellite and PC without messing up the AM band. You still can't beat AM for emergencies with a good radio.
I sometimes listen to wsm in nj when i am in bed for the night .
I listen to AM radio every day, am a senior & buy a lot of stuff.
Screw the FCC.
I'm a 30-year-old blind man and can't get enough of the wonderful stuff. Yeah screw the FCC update it's now in currently voluntary stage then again so was TV and the repackaging. That's just underhanded.
It isn't the matter of whether or not you like it. Try selling advertising on an AM station.
Yes I'm an AM listener as well. I listen to music AND talk on AM. Here's why I like it; I have several 1000-5000 watt stations I like which are maybe 30 miles away. I can't pick up their FM signals, so I need to hear them on AM.
@@foureyedchick No it is a business decision that will not work. AM radio is dead.
@@foureyedchick The content is fine, AM radio is not. It has serious interference problems caused by modern day devices. Digital will make very little difference when it comes to reception.
Here up North, I like to listen to talk radio at night. It helps me sleep. Coast To Coast AM! Talking about aliens coming into people bedrooms and abducting them and doing experiments on them. On second thought it is probably not good to listen to that at night when I am trying to sleep.
But it would be interesting to see how the AM skip would sound in digital. Would it brake up a lot? Would it be better?
No. The digital signal wouldn’t travel very far. Digital radio is a failure in Europe. It’s just another excuse. An interesting example is shortwave. Some stations use a digital format called DRM. It doesn’t work very well for these external services. Some AM MW stations like to use C-QUAM and I had a set that picked this signal up. It worked well but at night the drifting made this format intolerable. A digital format would just kill off the MW band. A band expansion should actually be in order. If you separated station by 25 kHz instead of the 10 we have now and expand the MW band from 450 to 1800 the present MW mess could be solved. The powers that be would rather keep this mess the way it is. I used to build a crystal radio that worked very well for what it was. Several local radio stations have switched formats to a “rock-n-Americana” format. They seem to be doing not too bad for themselves. A band EXPANSION would work better than the proposed mess! Oh, and cellphones are lazy excuses for radio. If that internet goes down that’s it. You have nothing then.
@@RJDA.Dakota Digital Radio in Europe is called DAB. DAB is one of the worst radio system there is. Even when well within the broadcasting area. Audio would sound like mud bubbling in the background due to poor signal codec and error correction. Even Canada once propsed to use DAB quit using it due to unsatisfactory performance and choose HD Radio instead.
900Yugo yes I have heard that. Several dozen times. Shortwave radio is a big hobby of mine and I am interested in most aspects of it. I’ve listened to shortwave and medium wave band for decades.
My dad used to (or perhaps still does) listen to Coast to Coast. He used to talk about Art Bell all the time.
@@caseyhartman7094 After Art Bell it was George Noory! I haven't listened in a wile!
still irritated that they want to kill analog off for good
This proposal isn't set in stone yet. Make sure to contact the FCC to give your input. Even if it takes off I don't see all stations going all digital - only the small ones that are suffering.
Well, I mean, not that I'm either for or against on the idea of analog anything shut off, but, it's bound to happen eventually. analog everything is going to be shut off eventually. Progress is going to strike everything analog one day.
TsunamiFPS it’s the same thing here in my area. Turn them all off only to be forced back on. Makes no sense to me either.
morgan russman with digital the authorities can control more than you think.
@@RJDA.Dakota yeah, I get the whole idea of computerized tracking, I know a thing or 2 about computers since I'm into them. But, as I mentioned, I'm thinking modernization and progress, and also the government and the FCC will eventually knock on the door of whatever isn't under the prefix of digital eventually.
Something most people don't know about AM radio:
The quality of the sound on an AM radio can vary vastly from one AM radio to another. It is even possible to build an AM radio that sounds as good as a fine FM radio. An old AM radio will often sound better than a new one.
The reason most modern radios sound awful on AM is due to selectivity - how narrow the bandwidth of the radio is. A narrowband AM radio will reduce noise by blocking the frequencies far below and far above the carrier. Problem is, most modern AM radios have telephone-quality sound, because it takes out any brilliance from the audio before detection.
A fifty-year-old AM radio will almost always sound better than a brand new one - because most listening back then was to AM radio - even for music.
Too, when radios were all mechanically-tuned, listeners could improve the quality of the sound, by turning the tuner slightly to the left or the right.
Now that nearly all new radios are digitally-tuned, you can no longer use that trick to improve AM audio quality.
There were wideband AM radios. Some had a switch, that offered WIDE mode for excellent sound from good signals, and NARROW mode for signals that are hampered by noise.
A crystal radio, that uses no power source, is inherently a wideband radio. People would buy crystal radios to hear AM broadcasts in high quality, though the signal would need to be strong.
As for "Digital AM radio" (actually a misnomer - the correct term would be QPSK digital MW radio), It's dead in the water. If voluntary, almost no AM station would adopt it, because an extant AM radio would only sound like a strong noise, and mandating digitization would be politically impossible.
Not impossible in this current regime.
It's almost impossible to buy an analog radio with a decent tuner anymore.
Don't do it ! we've gone full digital TV here in the UK ( it's crap BTW ). And they've had to postpone the radio Digital 'cos the reception is diabloodybolical ( It's crap BTW ). even a slight change in the weather messes with the signal !
Can't even watch a portable TV during a hurricane anymore because DTV is unreliable..
If this happens, almost every tube radio will be useless, and that will be a very sad day D:
They will still be valuable, especially the way things are going.
@@fwingebritson Right now, tube radio values are dropping like a stone. Nobody wants them, except for highly collectible Scotts, McMurdos, and few Zeniths. The only thing they might be useful for is in a nuclear war, which will probably fry most solid state radios. But who will be left to broadcast, and where will you get the AC power to play the radio?
@@johnstone7697 I am not talking value in money, but value in use. Right now hardly anything is of value monetarily. There are more things that can happen than a nuclear war.
@@fwingebritson But how many people have a working tube radio in their possession? The capacitors in those are all dried out and most of the later models have silver mica disease in their IF transformers. As for those other things that can happen, please elaborate. It sounds like we're drifting into some kind of "prepper" discussion here. I don't think far fetched disaster hypotheticals are going to be persuasive...sorry.
@@johnstone7697 I am not saying go out and get one by any means, but if you have one then why get rid of it? Nor do I wish to get into a "prepper" discussion because I refuse to live a paranoid life. However, if SHTF and I am stuck wondering what is going on with the outside world, I would rather choose a tube am radio because they have excellent signal range, and there will likely be an AM radio station in service if things haven't gone too far. A person can argue that SW would be better, however radios do not often come with SW bands these days and when they do they are dodgy as hell.
AM Radio is great, no better place to receive live sports broadcast, I live in Southwest Michigan, and can receive station that broadcast Notre Dame, Michigan State, Michigan, Colts, Lions, Bears, Green Bay Packers, Cubs, Tiger's, White Sox, Brewers! AM Radio is the future of sports entertainment!
Yeah, I usually listen to Big10 (Ohio State) on the radio while I'm working, instead of watching the tv and getting nothing else done.
Daytime AM I can receive stations from MI, IN, IL, WI, I enjoy outdoor actives, and AM radio is the best way to listen to all the live ballgames from stations that can be over 100 mi away! FM, or TV can't even come close to AM radio
I love to listen to distant sports on AM too. Unfortunately, they are figuring out more ways to make you pay, even for audio coverage. High power AM stations blasting through the midwest? I'm afraid their days are numbered. It will be a sad time when the plug is pulled through some new regulation or legislation that ignores rural people. Just another example of why so many rural voters cast their ballots as they do. They dislike being ignored and forgotten.
@@arise2945 The AM band has not changed fundamentally in many years. There's nothing inherently different about it today that has contributed to this decline. The frequencies haven't changed, the propogation characteristics are all as they were. Clear channels have been with us for many decades. What has changed is the tremendous increase in the alternatives, offering far more options, better sound quality, etc. The push to digitize the AM band is not coming from the FCC or any other government agency. It's coming from the station owners themselves who see the writing on the wall for this obsolete broadcast format. It all comes down to dollars and cents. The AM band has been in a long decline, and profits for the station owners are harder and harder to achieve. That's the impetus behind this push. As for how rural voters cast their ballots, you seem very confused. The person in charge of pushing this proposal was picked by the person who is now president. This person claims to be an expert business man. AM stations are private businesses. This proposal is coming from the people you voted for.
@@arise2945 How do you think voting could save AM? Do you want to government to subsidize failing AM stations? To mandate that people listen to AM stations to prop up ad revenues? To forbid competing content on the internet or Satellite radio? If your AM stations are failing then the only thing that could save them would be the type of government overreach you're complaining about.
I sure hope AM doesn't go digital. This is a crazy proposal.
Funny how they kept vinyl records analog (rather than trying to replace grooves with pits and lands on vinyl records!), but they want to change AM radio to digital.
If George Bush and the FCC can destroy analog television, killing thousands of independent stations, then nothing is sacred to them lol.
@@ebinrock They actually did that. That's what a CD is. A disc with lands and pits instead of grooves. Frankly, I think they should leave AM alone. It will die a natural death within 15 years anyway. It is no longer commercially viable.
AM isn't going to go digital. It's just going to go.
Everything can't be digital... and I KNOW what your thinking "FM is analog" that's going to be digital to someday because the FCC is blind... and AM is litteraly just 1 frequency instead of like 30 different frequency on FM and yet the FCC complains about radio bandwidth... not feeling it
Going complete digital on AM radio would kill the antique radio hobby. Those are pretty much just limited to AM radio, but they are fun to use and often have superior sound quality to the cheap radios of today. In my opinion, AM radio should be left grandfathered for analog broadcast. Digital probably would kill AM radio altogether as digital can't work with any interference. Also, classic music gets dumped on AM, and that will move down the line as people age. Eighties pop is already getting dumped on AM. Soon, your '90s music will follow suit as will 2000s music. It's the old timer's radio, and we just won't have any radio as we age if we don't protect the AM band. Besides, it's the older people that pay the most in taxes, so ignoring their needs would be political suicide.
Tyler, I still listen to AM Radio all the time and I am in your media market. However, I like talk radio such as 1060 and 1210. Years ago in our market, 640 had Radio Disney which was a great alternative to regular radio playing a lot of unknown b-side music (if you can deal with the kid stuff in between). I think the biggest problem with AM Radio is that most broadcasters don't want to put good quality content on AM. Besides news/talk, political talk, and sports talk... a lot of it is religious and other language radio. If some local FM radio stations would simulcast on AM (the opposite of what you were saying) in the more fringe areas, it would get more listeners and also more coverage, depending on the time of day and terrain. For example, MMR. The station fades when you get up to your neck of the woods in Allentown. If they transmitted on AM up in that area, it would be great to continue listening to it. I wouldn't support an AM digital transition as a DXer but I don't think we as the public unfortunately have a choice in the matter.
For those of us that actually learned to build a crystal radio long ago, a few scraps of wire and a "crystal" can get us critical information if things ever get that bad even if there's no electricity or batteries.
I'm thinking that making a digital receiver from scratch is going to be a lot more challenging given only junk you have laying around in the basement and no readily available power source.
Plus, what am I going to listen to when and if I ever get my 1966 (EMP proof) Oldsmobile back on the road?
монополия на цифровые кодеки и принципы кодирования будет в руках узкого круга а вы просто будете платить им!
@@erwe1054 Yes, the great digital divide. Those with the money will control the access to all of the information. It's kind of like the days where the nobility spoke Latin and the serfs were never taught to read even their own language.
@@RJ-vb7gh Удивляют люди, которые говорят "ой как же это хорошо, теперь мы будем слушать AM без шумов это же так удобно" , не понимая того, что правительство борется так же с альтернативной точкой зрения, которая может быть высказана на пиратских радиостанциях. Аналоговое радио будет выброшено на свалку и никто не сможет прослушать информацию, кроме официально одобренной.
@@erwe1054 Agreed. But always ask yourself who the government actually is.
Kill analog? WTF are they serious? Well the FCC is as serious as a heart attack so yea.
That's sort of like turning off the lights
Make sure to contact them and voice your input on this proposition.
Let’s all stumble and fall in the dark!
@@AntennaMan FCC's site is sorta vague
I wish we could have kept analog tv and i hope they don't make radio digital. Back when everything was analog even if the signal wasn't strong you could still watch it but now its all or nothing so i hope it doesn't become all or nothing with radio.
The 32-bit guy .. I couldn't have said it better .
Can we please update the weather band (140Mhz?)
@Richard Tanguay That why we have HD radio on FM as a digital radio standard. The problem is that there are not many portable HD radio receivers available for sale at an affordable price. The most I have seen are car recievers.
NTSC analog tv sucked. It was a major technical compromise dating all the way back to 1953 when compatible color was added to it. Nobody misses it except those that can't or don't want to access programming via the internet or cable. Well over 90% of the country has those other options available. Sometimes formats become obsolete and just die. It's the reason why we no longer use 8 tracks or cassettes. And the vinyl craze is strictly for nostalgia or for hipsters to brag about.
@@johnstone7697 yea i suppose im just saying that because all of atsc 1.0 signals being so fragile
I've bought 3 Eton radios in 2020, mainly for AM DXing. Love it.
It’s not just the listeners, it’s the vintage radios. Choice.
I have a 1956 RCA tube radio that I use on occasion along with several other AM only radios. It would be awful for them all to be obsolete
Excellent point, all those vintage AM radios that have been with three different generations of technology - - tubes, xsistors, analog microchips - - - will now have to be discarded
@@whaduzitmatr I also have several restored tube radios from the 1920s and 1930’s, that would be the end of them.
@@CalumetVideo They could still have a use, they sell AM transmitters on ebay with which you could play your own music and broadcast it to your radio, but that wouldn't be the same as listening to a real AM station
@@whaduzitmatr why bother with a transmitter. Old AM radios can be wired as an audio amplifier in which no more (While whee's) heterodyne noise. Just tap into the volume control and ground. You can even remove or not replace the RF and IF tubes only.in radios that have power transformers. Series sets you cannot remove tubes and still use the audio. I know some troll will say just wire the tubes used which also can be done.
The Thing I like is AM Radio because it reaches out thousands of miles unlike the Weak Digital FM and all the rest of the garbage .
I was listening to KGO in San Francisco in HD Radio a few years ago. That's about five hundred miles away from me.
True. Growing up in mountains of Colorado I listened to KFI (Los Angeles) and WLS (Chicago) every night on a small radio.
To get some FM stations from Colorado Springs (I was in the San Luis Valley) I had to use a 12 foot FM antenna.
AM radio when FM stations are out of range.
I listen to radio stations thousands of miles away all of the time. It's called the internet.
Mark my words. This will be a disaster. If you thought atsc 1.0 was bad this will be a whole lot worse.
Exactly. I can't see it ever working out....especially on the current AM band.
Contact the FCC and make your voice heard
I’m Canadian though. But I do live very close to the state of Maine and can pick up am stations in Boston both day and night because the ocean makes the daytime ground wave signal travel farther.
SpaceGhost 4k agreed
Stations are being given a choice.
During the Cold War, AM radio was a *critical link* in the CONELRAD system.
Digital FM radio (HD) went over like a lead balloon. Why would AM be any different.
I remember WMCA in NYC. (Good Guys!)
You are talking DAB? Yeah - Things like this are consumer driven. So if you aren't putting the receivers into cars, you aren't going to get the listeners. Plus - it's only an add-on to existing stations. It's not like the FM transition - where stations migrated over the course of a few years. The broadcasts are largely the same.
Rush Limbaugh single handedly saved AM radio.
He can't live forever!
@@AntennaMan That is sad.
Big city stations like WLS didn't need Limbaugh. But his low cost syndication package might have saved some small stations in rural areas with declining populations. When the small stations lose Limbaugh and go digital, I guess they can bring back trade-io in the afternoon.
That and Reagan's deregulation of AM radio broadcasting
Rush has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Sad days.
I personally love listening to the AM radio band. Here in Pahrump, a mere 60 miles due west of LVNV I can hear nothing on the AM other than KDWN. Mount Charleston Peak at 11,000 ft + is between us. I mostly listen at night when KCBS, KNX, KOMO, KOA and KKOB, as well as KTNN from the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, all boom in. I also hear many stations from Mexico. Once on Bora Bora in French Polynesia, was able to listen to WWL from NOLA - over 5,500 miles away! Growing up in Chgo, Radio Havana Cuba would occasionally overtake the 720 signal from WGN. I always loved listening to WBZ and KDKA and WABC. Now over the net I mostly listen to WNYC. Funny, however, the commercials are all about products + services here in LV - go figure?
Thanks for your channel,
Mike in Pahrump, Nv.
Ack ack!
Thank you for informing us - you are the only one I have heard address this issue!
This will be a sad day for us radio collectors! I guess we will have to make our own low power AM transmitters to allow our vintage tube AM sets to live on.
I'm sure someone will come up with a converter box that picks up the digital signal with a display, and broadcast its own low power signal over AM/FM like some of the toy mics back in the 70's, and 80's did.
The FCC is voting on this soon so make sure you contact them to make your voice heard.
@@CommodoreFan64 I plan on building a low power transmitter anyways. The FCC narrowed the side bands on AM to 10KHz in the 70s to allow for more stations on the dial. I'd love to hear how AM truly sounded before this. I have a few 1940s console radios with 12" and even 15" speakers in them that need restoration.
ESDI80 the spacing on medium wave in North America has always been 10 kHz.
ESDI80 the spacing on medium wave in North America has always been 10 kHz.
Kids this day will never know the pleasure of AM DXing at night, never!
The majority have no interest. No flashing lights and media. No chat windows.
Nah - they just play amazing video games on their multi-million transistor GPU'd game consoles, whilst talking to their friends over the Internet, whilst watching Netflix :)
I still play ps2 GameCube and use digital radio
Used to do it from time to time. TBH can't say I ever missed it past the age of maybe 15.
You're right! I once took pleasure in sitting in my truck in Dallas and listening to KVOO-AM 1170 in Tulsa. They once had the best format in the country!!
For me, it's simple. If the station is targeting a local market, it should move to FM. AM should only be for clear channel broadcasters who want to cover wider areas than FM can reach. In the old days, I enjoyed listening to out-of-town broadcasts for the content I could not hear locally. What killed that is the same packaged programming being now carried by all of them.
At one time the clear channel idea was the rule and not the exception. I used to dx the entire medium wave band and loved the various stations available across the band all around the country and even a lot of the Western Hemisphere. The smaller stations went off at dusk to accommodate the clear channel stations. Agreed. This should come back and be the rule. The cellphone as a radio is a mistake and even flawed. If the internet goes down then you have no radio then. That’s really ridiculous. Over the air radio needs to be left alone. I have an HD radio and it doesn’t work well except in the larger cities where the stations are located. A digital format switch would be a great mistake and would just kill off the entire band. Again I say that the band should simply be expanded and the bandwidth of each station should be expanded to 25 kHz. This will solve problems.
Richard Tanguay true. LW and MW are wonderful for medium to long range use. And with the right bandwidth and noise reduction medium wave and long wave can become tremendous for specific reasons and needs.
Kent Teffeteller A widened, expanded MW band would help relieve some interference and may even have room for more channels. As I said there’s a lot of unused space at the bottom and top of this spectrum. Even a bandwidth of 15 kHz would definitely be a help.
Richard Tanguay 👍🏻👍🏻📻‼️
@Kent Teffeteller Switching from analog to digital would quadruple the number of available channels on FM.
I'm a GenX and listen to 660 News (CFFR) when I'm out and about to get a quick update for traffic and news all in ten minutes.
And I certainly hope that someone that works for the FCC stumbles across this article on TH-cam.
I'm sure they'll get some comments. I attached the FCC's contact info in the description.
I remember, many years ago, AM radio started an experiment broadcasting in stereo. However the big problem was people would have to buy a new AM stereo radio to hear full stereo sound. Very few people wanted to spend the money for a new AM Stereo radio so AM stereo was discontinued. I love AM radio!!! I listen to it all the time.
There are some AM radio stations broadcasting in stereo.
But AM stereo took a hard hit when the FCC allowed corporations to buy as many radio stations as they wanted to.
When the number of radio broadcasters went from a few hundred owners -to five, with deregulation, the owners made a gentlemen's agreement to turn AM stereo off.
@@1L6E6VHF Nobody Listens To AM Radio Anymore.
@@kevinheatcoat2190
Nearly all the radio I listen to on my daily commute is AM. The FM stations have far too many commercials.
In my case, I listen to an AM station in Windsor (Ont.) In the morning, and listen to an AM station in Sandusky (OH) driving back.
Only FM station I listen to is NPR station WUOM, Ann Arbor.
@@1L6E6VHF I Listen To Rock Music Radio But There is Too Many Commercials On Rock Stations And No Commercial Free Rock Music.
Same here your not alone
KNX Newsradio is all I listen to on AM. They have a digital FM station too, but I have a traditional AM/FM GM car radio.
I got a really nice 7 transistor radio once for Christmas when i was a kid. I was known as the local radio and tv fix it guy when I was younger and the sets could be repaired....usually with nothing more than a new tube or two and contact cleaner.
God, I hope not. That would kill off DX-ing entirely. I love being able to listen to AM radio stations from New York City in the evening on my CD Walkman that's also a radio and I'm in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, roughly 500 miles away from the transmitters on top of the Empire State Building or wherever else it is that they put the transmitter.
*EDIT:* Apparently, the transmitters for the New York City AM blowtorches are mostly in New Jersey. That's not nearly as romantic an idea as listening to something broadcasting direct from the top of the most famous skyscraper in the world. :-/
I think the high powered "clear channel" stations will stay on analog. I think the whole proposition is targeted towards smaller stations that have to power down at night.
Antenna Man no I have als heard that the entire band may go DRM 30 or HD; something like that to keep the continuity of the band the same throughout.
Yeah. I like French Canadian stations.
AM Towers are usually not located on top of tall buildings. Around here, the best place to put AM Towers are in river valleys and low-flat land areas. Alot of AM Stations need to use directional antennas, which would be impossible on top of buildings. Most of St Louis's AM Towers are in the American Bottoms. The flat, lower elevation lands of the Mississippi river valley. AM broadcasters benefit from rich ground soil for a good ground wave and the American Bottoms has some of that. FM & TV stations are known for broadcasting from building tops: Ex. Willis Tower & Hancock Buildings in Chicago. In St Louis, most TV-FMs broadcast antennas share space on 1,100-foot towers located on the city's edge. Not every TV-FM station can build it's own 1,100-foot tower. So they must share . Sometimes 12+ FM-TV stations share a single 1,100-foot tower. AM Towers can not share space with other AM stations. The entire AM tower is radiating signal. TV-FM broadcast antennas are mounted on the side of their tower structure at different elevations. So the tower itself does not radiate the broadcast signal.
@@ToddHa -Looking at a chart (from 2014, dunno if it's changed much since then), all that's broadcast from the Empire State Building is TV and FM anyway.- Correction, the chart's from 1967, the article is from 2014 so it's probably not accurate to what's up there now.
I’m not necessarily opposed to an all digital am world. I’m opposed to the adoption of ibiquity’s inferior closed source HD radio standard. DRM (digital radio mondiale) is much more efficient at using all 10khz. HD radios are so expensive and relatively inferior (in their price range) because of the massive royalties
Yes, DRM would be a better choice, if they must go digital.
This
Exactly! Just wait till you have to pay a fee to unlock an ATSC 3.0 video stream on your computer because the codec has a paywall. Remember back in windows XP and even early windows 7 when you had to pay for a codec to playback DVDs
@@thedude5040
Exactly. This is outrageous. Everybody, especially government entities should be rejecting proprietary malware.
The good thing about HD though is that it preserves the analog broadcast, and DRM does not. That means my radio still works.
Sports talk radio is HUGE on the AM bands. A very big market and if they discontinue am broadcasting and replace with FM , they will lose half their listeners because FM does not have the range of AM signals, especially at night.
If anyone wants to keep the smaller stations going in their own area, they need to get in contact with them to find out in what way, you the listener, can help
I hope AM Still stays Bcause I Still Listen To AM Radio I'll miss it allot I listen to talk radio on it and it's funny
@Ritchie Navarro if I can I want to sue the FCC
I remember when cellphone bands where on 800mhz. And I could tune in and listen to conversations
Even 900mhz radio bands are going to at&t or Verizon. So I can no longer have anything to scan in analog. You now have to have just about every form of digital just to listen. And when it comes to tier 3 you need $$$. This radio hobby is very ,very expensive now. Just a uniden sds200 is now over 700.00 without any accessories. The cheapest solution i have found is sdr and rtl radio. And that is changing about every 3 monts.
I remember listening in on cordless house phones when they used 46 MHz back around the late 80s and early 90s. Good times. I always knew the gossip before arriving back at high school in the mornings because the girls were always on the phones as night.
The problem is not THAT so few listen to AM radio;
it is that so few AM stations OFFER something enough people want to hear.
In 1987 I bought a car stereo with AM stereo.
The one stereo station I could receive that played music sounded very good,
and I thought it had a chance of becoming a great thing.
It didn't. The station gave up too soon. They stopped playing any music at all.
Digital radio may have superior sound quality, but it is a bad method in all other respects.
I favour a permanent return to 100% pure analog radio on both AM and FM ---
no more HD, which causes interference --- and otherwise let the market sort things out.
I’m quite fond of HD on FM, but AM should be left alone
this is very interesting if there is a mass power disruption and the Cell phones stop then what the A.M. radio works and works well this is another idea to control the masses there is no independence when all the radio will be stuck on a power demanding digital syncing this is an Idea that will probably lose steam fast and is some thing that should not even see more then the question
thank you for the fun video s
I used to listen to AM radio some years ago, I still do occasionally.
New radios that have the AM band do it with poor circuits. Those 1 chip FM radios work fine for FM but suck for pulling in AM stations if they include the AM band. They are not built the way vintage AM only radios were. I've built Foxhole radios with a razor blade and a peace of pencil lead as the detector that worked better for local AM radio stations than any modern FM and AM single chip radio, which all of them are now. Google "Foxhole Radio" if you want to see how those are made and used. Obviously if the AM band goes digital those WWII era primitive crystal type radios would no longer work.
Tivoli Radios have good AM reception.
@@Toast0808 Yes many new radios have DSP chips that ARE the radios "radio" and have great reception
Craig Nehring I really like my XHData D 808. It’s one of these small radios that have the radio on the chip. This set is wonderful for long distance MW and SW transmissions. The FM is also very nice.
I've got a high end AM radio from the 30's. When they're perfectly tuned (Pronounced $$). They sound just as good as FM. It's only mono of course instead of stereo.
Actually, there are quite a few very good AM radios... that is AM and FM and some with shortwave, that have very good AM circuits still available brand new manufacture. CCrane and Sony come to mind immediately.
I don’t listen to AM or FM over the air anymore . Far too many commercials. The music is mostly crap and the play lists are too short. Even the oldies stations play too few songs. Radio isn’t run by radio people anymore. The bean counters are in charge. When I want to listen to talk radio I listen on line.
I agree
Does AM HD sound good? Yes, actually. But it's not practical because it doesn't travel well due to multipath and bouncing on the ionosphere (of course I'm talking about AM DX here). What they should have done is widen the channel for each AM station and keep analog AM stereo. That actually sounded pretty good. Instead of 10 KHz they could use 15 KHz spacings. Back in the AM stereo days circa 1986 I had a car receiver that had a "wide band" option and it sounded good! And AM stereo doesn't interfere with adjacent channels like AM HD does.
That’s exactly right!! I used to have a Sony multiple format analogue AM stereo receiver. It sounded great but at night I had to turn the bandwidth down to cut interference. Yes like I said:
AM MW Should be expanded: 450-1800 kHz and each station should be 25 kHz apart from each other. That would cut interference and also widen the frequency response of each station. More efficient antenna design should also help. C-QUAM worked just fine for me.
AM analog radio can sound even better than FM ! ALL DIGITAL FORMATS ARE WEAK AND THE SOUND IS FULL OF HOLES!!!
@@DOCTOR_SONG if implemented correctly this can work. A wider bandwidth and a much wider “band” would be great.
If you know, a person from UK was so close to catch an transantlantic AM HD radio
KFYI 550 AM in Phoenix, Arizona is about all I listen to. I like conservative talk radio. I work from home so I mostly listen to KFYI thru iHeart Radio on my browser so in a sense I've been listening to their digital version for a long time. Would kind of suck hopping into my F-150 and no longer be able to listen to what I like because my radio only receives analog broadcasts.
You can get a Bluetooth receiver that retransmits on fm. Search ebay for baseus fm Bluetooth
I’m in Phoenix too. I regularly listen to KAZG an AM oldies station on an old transistor radio at my storage units. They’re also on FM, but their FM signal isn’t as clear. Steve Goddard is on in the afternoon.
Good
Yet another technology being relegated to the dust bin of history 😢. So many things that were once mainstays of everyday life are disappearing or are already gone. So let's have a moment of SILENCE for AM radio, before we have Permanent Silence for AM radio.
Presumably I'll still be able to listen to ZNS on 1540 kHz in the evenings, as the FCC has no jurisdiction in the Bahamas.
Everyone needs to let the FCC know that this is a "NO!" -- Radio without fading, is not radio at all.
There are good reasons for AM. Air traffic still uses it because of FM’s capture effect, among other reasons. Digital has problems. You either receive it all or nothing. No DXing.
HD Radio tried this, and it failed miserably.
WBZ 1030 Boston was an HD Radio station, and even with a strong signal, it rarely could see digital content. When it did, it sounded like a low-bitrate audio stream of past days, for what few seconds it would work before reverting the muffled AM analog. I've had it be noisy, and it work, perfectly noiseless, no-go. It was a crap-shoot, and failed.
Yep, go watch Techmoan's channel who is based in the UK, and has done a few reviews on various radios, and they have digital radio there, and even in a country that small it's a mess with some of it being in 64Kbps mono.
Oh, I don't know about that. When I lived in FL I was able to pick up WBZ's HD signal at night with remarkable clarity. I loved listening to the guy who was hosting in the wee hours. It's been so long I forgot his name.
@@zoppie Bradley Jay? He had a good show, then it went away when Covid-19 was all they talked about in news-related content. The show still has not come back, just recycled news plays now.
I'm surprised it can be received there. I know it can go halfway into Canada, and down the Carolinas with decent clarity, but good enough for HD Radio to work where you are? That's amazing.
Doesn't work here, or anywhere it comes in perfect. Maybe overmodulated enough? Weird thing is, even 20 miles from the tower, there's places where the station as a whole doesn't seem to exist.
WBZ's HD radio was awful. It interfered with KDKA 1020 in Pittsburgh. So glad that WBZ turned off their HD. Ugh.
@@diamonddave45 I always hear something interfering with BZ, I hear some tone on the hour, found it was on 1020. Maybe that's it. Too close together to co-exist.
I must be the youngest AM radio listener in denver, 18 years old. was 16 when I found it
I used to listen exclusively to FM music stations in my teenage and young adult years. Now the radio station I've been listening to the most is a local AM news radio. I'm not 60, not even 35 yet. People do change and so do listening habits.
And on the note of audio quality, I've always hated listening to talk radios on FM or on digital. Such a waste of audio quality (FM HiFi stereo for speech?), and so annoying to hear people spitting in their microphones in HD. I guess I could buy a cheap digital receiver that has horrible audio quality, but then hey, why not just keep those AM stations and not force the population to buy new receivers?
I'm wondering if this situation will impact Canadian AM radio. I only get talk radio. I get 580CFRA and TSN1200 and one more but that's about it.
You're in/near Ottawa? I get much more than that on AM in Ottawa on my CD Walkman that's also a radio, albeit mainly at night and I don't mind listening through a heckuva lot of static.
I used to be able to listen to stations in Massena NY in the daytime but I can't seem to pick them up anymore.
Try listening at night. A lot of regional and large national stations will appear.
FM Radio travels 20 to 30 miles.
AM Radio travels 10 to 1,000 miles.
.
This has been my case the whole time.
It is weird that during the day my local AM station transmits at 50,000 watts loud and clear but reduces power at night to 10,000 to get drowned out by DX stations 1,000 to 2,000 miles away.
thaddeus mcgrath radio is a great but very strange thing. At night more the atmosphere is more conducive to long distance stations. That’s what I mean. It’s actually meant to do that. In a true emergency like a power or telephone failure that’s why mw radio is great especially at night. FM is limited and local only.
Hmmm, i regularly listen to FM stations from 40 - 60 miles away. Even in my vehicle........
@@notajp you must have a very nice FM receiver. That’s the exception and not the general rule.
I treat AM DX listening as a hobby, as well as an emergency lifeline. When there is an emergency in a distant state such as an earthquake, I can search for the stations in that area using my reception logs. Weather events are also closely monitored. The hobby of DX listening can give one several hours to maybe a couple of days to prepare for a serious weather event. OK, I'm 66 years old, and I just like to hear from other parts of the country, and to share in their experiences. It's fun!
Like with television, broadcasters want to dominate a specific market, disallowing listeners to hear out of the market stations. This is not about improving AM, it's about controlling it. Maybe we need another Radio Caroline.
That would actually make sense. TV stations do the same thing.
I love AM radio. We have a 50,000 watt radio station where I live operating 24 hours a day that has fabulous sound for over 100 miles from the city. I listen to it a lot on a boom box, plugged into home AC power, while I am using my PC computer at home. Long live AM radio.
Throw a wire on the radio and tune around at night! If it doesn't have an antenna jack, just wrap it around/clip it to the telescoping antenna and stretch it out. Into a tree if possible. See if you can hear WWL 870, KSL 1160, or KOMO 1000. Have some fun!
I'm a millennial and let's be honest here the last time I ever listen to AM radio was the night before Radio Disney went off the air in my area which then Radio Disney became and some random Mexican station
That's nuts. Digital breaks up too easily with a weak signal when out in the sticks. Talk radio lives on AM.
Hands off!
Hence the reason they want to do away with it
I can't see this happening in places like New York City where AM stations are still big business. One notably is the legendary news station 1010 WINS. Tons of people still rely on it for traffic, weather and the quick headlines. Then there is WCBS, WABC, WOR and WFAN which I recall as being the top billing station in the area. Not to mention the huge audiences of the many ethnic stations in the city. The NY broadcasters aren't about to cut their audience out for Digital AM....again. It's been tried already and the audience and the broadcasters rejected it. The whole proposal is as ridiculous as the FCC proposal to charge Amateur radio operators $50 renewal...
There is an AM "revitalization" going on in the NYC, Long Island area. Ive noticed a lot more variety in ads on many of the stations (which means companies are interested in advertising on am) and stations are being rethought and changed for the better such as 77 wabc going back to "Music Radio 77 WABC" every Saturday evening. And 1100 whli getting ads from larger companies like dove and target.
You're right that WINS and WCBS are holding respectable size audiences on AM, but the last time I checked the NYC Metro radio ratings WABC and WOR, which likely share most of their audience, were only attracting a small fraction of the audience size they used to, and most of the listeners were over the age of 55, many way over, and that means they are not that attractive to major advertisers. Meanwhile, WFAN is on FM too, and ESPN moved their sports talk to FM years ago because the AM audience for sports talk just wasn't what they needed.
@Tom Sherwood
When is KDKA's centennial?
WDBO has both 580 AM and 107.3 FM. Both suffer from poor signal quality and interference. In the past when they reformatted the 580 AM to sports radio and WDBO 96.5 FM the signal quality was excellent and no interference.
Who remembers when the AM stations went to stereo broadcasting and you didn’t have upgrade to listen to the regular signal? If they change AM to digital I would not like to have to purchase new equipment to listen to any of it.
I listen to AM radio from local talk show hosts, Rush, and Hannity. Also for some reason Baseball games sound great on AM radio. Even this year when there was no one in the stands and recorded crowd sounds were used, on AM radio it sounded like there was people in the stands cheering the Baseball teams and it sound great and natural.
The issue with AM is lack of interesting content in a age where everyone has an internet connection in their hand, not signal quality.
When I listen to AM at night, I can hear eight to a dozen stations broadcasting the *same exact talk show* . There's not a wide variety of content on AM radio anymore.
@@scottlarson1548 Exactly. The golden age of AM was back in the 30's and 40's, when there was no TV and the only other news was in newspapers (and newsreels at the movie theater). There were also radio dramas and comedies for entertainment (which stirred your imagination more *because* you couldn't see the story unfold), also because there was no TV and certainly no internet.
AM doesn't have alot on it... thats why it's dieing... there is barely any music on it
Considering this is the most interesting content on the internet, I beg to differ.
Many AM stations already broadcast their content on their HD FM station counterpart. For example in NYC "News Radio 880" is also broadcast on one of the sub-channels of WCBS FM HD.
I think in most metropolitan areas, AM sound quality is very good, it's just that many of the modern AM tuners are crap. Get an old Pioneer receiver and listen to the AM section. It will blow you away with how good in sounds compared to the AM radio in you car.
There are many of us that are radio collectors, some radios dating back close to 100 years old. Yes a converter would work but would defeat the purpose of tuning in stations which is part of the enjoyment. I frankly would not buy a AM radio to pick up digital stations.
Sorry for the late comment. When I was a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s my Dad would take us out for a drive and we could hear AM stations from all over the country. If you remember the subplot of American Graffiti one of the main characters was trying to see his idol - radio jock Wolfman Jack who was broadcasting from a strong Am station across the border in Mexico.
Wolfman Jack has played out & and I should know because I came of age during the mid '60s and mid-'70s!
I'm a millennial (1992) and I listen to AM radio every day multiple times a day. My local station, WTIC 1080, is a clear-channel station and the reception is excellent. I'm also fascinated by the technology in general so I think it's interesting when certain things like lightning affect the signal. This video made me so upset I'm definitely about to follow this link you speak of.
Live long and prosper ‘AM Pirate Radio’! “I have a friend” who I know for certain won’t be digitizing any time soon!
I'm surprised that small-market AM didn't disappear 30 years ago. Rush Limbaugh literally saved AM radio at one point.
Everyone's into comedy.
I listened to Rush Limbaugh in the very beginning when he had 5? stations network. I even built an AM antenna amplifier to get a clearer signal in Delaware from New York WABC. DX AM & domestic Short Wave are still a good alternative to mainstream monopoly media. NY Post Hunter Biden story CENSURED on Twitter & Facebook. Big Bro uses computer robots to censure digital media, AM radio is a little more difficult to control.
@@classiccom1953 Yer a tool.
FM digital has been around for over a decade... yet FM analog still exists. Yes, I know that FM can multiplex many frequency carers within it, but it's still available in Analog. AM digital had been around for quite a while also. It uses the side bands to carry the data. They can still coexist. AM stereo has been around since the 1980s, multiplexed in similar to FM. I don't see why this proposal is needed. And, AM isn't all that bad... depends on the receiver.
The only thing I would miss about AM radio is the radio signal drifts from other states and countries. Which reminds me - I havent fiddled around with my AM radio to look for that stuff since I was a teen - way back in circa 1970s AD. Now THAT my friend is history! Dinosaurs almost wiped us out, maaaan. Yeah they hated rock-n-roll on the AM dial.
AM has been around for years & I love it, AM will come in where fm won't in a lot of areas, it's still # 1 in & around the globe like a good ol' baseball game, so fcc pound sand & leave us ALONE 😆
I'm glowing mad and will express my comments to the FCC. First, we are forced to buy new TVs. Now this. This stupidity has to end!
They do that because they can only make money forcing you into conformity. I agree with that.
And since the conversion to digital tv, I receive LESS channels now. Forcing digital AM radio on us is a load of horseshit.
Ken Layton it will be the same with the digital radio.
No one is forcing anyone to buy new TVs, you can just connect new tuners to any TV.
It's much worse for radio stations to shut down because it will make many radios obsolete and unusable! (This will also mean more electronic waste poisoning our environment over this decision!)
Brodie Gamboa this is truly the best way to get the point across. Even those old CRT TVs have a lot of material in them also dumped unceremoniously everywhere on peoples yards. We have one too but have to admit I would rather turn it in to be properly recycled. Save for the CRT itself many parts can be recycled. I really don’t like the idea of zeroing out all this band space at some company’s whim.
You don't have to be old to listen to AM. Lots of young people listen to AM. AM gets a bad rap because FM controls the narrative, not because there is anything wrong with AM.
I'm surprised the FCC is going in this direction. Heck, the band was EXTENDED beyond 1610 KHz all the way up to 1700 KHz. Is this the act of a regulatory body that wants to end the present mode of operation?
If operators of AM broadcast undertakings see them wither on the vine let them do so organically.
I never thought of HD radio as a practical solution to a richer AM audio experience. Think of the implementation model; it's a digital subcarrier that needs to be hosted on an existing ANALOG FM service. Why?
Now if the FCC is keen on more digital modulation to enhance the listener experience they should seize the opportunity to EXTEND the FM band DOWNWARD from 88 MHz to 76 MHz, swallowing up the old frequencies occupied by analog VHF TV channels 5 and 6 which are immediately adjacent to the FM band and in a frequency range which doesn't serve digital over-the-air TV well anyway. Let digital TV operate on channels 7-13 VHF and 14 UHF and up to wherever the end channel will be (35 or 36) leaving a good chunk of 700 MHz which is being sold off to the wireless carriers.
76-108 MHz would line up well with the FM band in many European and Asian countries whose FM bands start at 76 MHz. That lower 12 MHz block could be allocated to pure 100% all digital FM. No subcarrier hosted on an analog FM provisioned for SCMO operation; just pure stand-alone all-digital signal and, as is the case with digital OTA TV, provision for multiple virtual channels. At those frequencies it's much cheaper and easier to install and put a digital FM on the air.
Now that's a solution I could get behind.
It's the act of an agency who saw, much like the UHF TV band, digital means tighter packing. Which then leaves more free space to spin off chunks of the band to reallocate and SELL to the highest bigger. Why do you think UHF TV only has 36 channels now? Someone paid big bucks to have that spectrum reallocated.
KNX 1070 News Radio is still popular in Los Angeles/Southern California. At night it's possible to pick up AM radio from stations very far away. Anyway, if it goes, my pile of transistor radios will become worthless on AM. Will I survive? Yes. Will I miss it? Also yes.
I have worked in radio for 16 years. Let me tell you something this will not work, This proposal is voluntary, not mandatory, first off going all digital will not work. There are so few digital ams that will be able to do so successfully otherwise for most stations it will be a wasted investment and most stations will fail under the new digital format because most people do not have an am hd receivers. The economics isn’t there to do this. This is what I think the fcc should do.
1. Create a new standard for all am radios made in the USA or imported from else where.
2. Ban all the import radios that from China until they start making radios that meet the new standard and only accept imported radio with the new standard. Because most of these radios that have real bad am radio tuners in them with bad interference most of them not up to part 15 standards and most only go to 3-5 kilohertz and only allow import radio receivers to have 13 kHz bandwidth and with am stereo decoders.
3.They should make all am stations mandatory broadcast in am stereo.
4.They also need to abolish the nrsc 10khz requirement and allow stations to broadcast in full 13 kHz bandwidth audio real hi fi audio that’s fm like.
Plus the primary entry point radio stations are mostly am station and provide a vital lifeline during an emergency and those would have to remain in analog as the system can’t be upgraded to digital.
I’m sure there are more things I could add to this list but can’t think of it right now however if the fcc does these 4 things then am has a real chance at being saved from death. If they go to all digital wether voluntary or mandatory it will leave am in worse condition that what it already is. Now in some cases in special circumstances for some stations going digital would be beneficial for some. I just don’t see going going digital for all or the majority of am radio stations to do so it just a waste of money.
Why are AM stations spaced 10 KHz a part in the Americas, but 9 KHz a part in the rest of the world? When I was young, and even up through high school I would occasionally tune into AM. However, the things to listen to that I was interested in were mainly on FM, with some stations simulcasting AM and FM. What got me interested in AM in the late 80’s and early 90’s were that there were still a lot of AM stations that played rap and urban AC. However, many of those stations went off altogether at night, and depending on the time of year pretty early. One example of this is WXLA AM 1180 in Lansing, Michigan. They now are adult standards, and because OF WHAM in Rochester, Ny they have to sign off at sunset. I know of other stations that were in that situation.
@@jeffk7734 that’s because of the itu I think the main reason was to avoid mass interference around the earth on am at night. I’m sure there are other reasons but that’s all if I can think of right now.
Digital radio via cell phone works great. No need for shutting down analog. Switching to digital AM wouldn't do anything positive for the listener base, but would lose a lot of folks who do listen.
6:09
The 2nd radio station that I every worked at was KENI in Anchorage, Alaska (and now you know why my screen name is "totallyfrozen"). It was kinda cool to see it up there on screen. Before it was 650 AM, it was 550 AM (as if anyone here cares).
My first radio DJ gig was on an AM station. I've worked in AM music, AM talk, and FM talk. I have a soft spot in my heart for radio. In many areas, AM broadcast has been essential to delivery of government information during emergencies.
I started at a small 10 watt FM Rock station that still exists 45 year later. . Salute!
Fun fact: KENI used to air children’s music in the mid 90’s as Radio AAHS KYAK.
News & traffic reports are popular in my area (Los Angeles) on KNX1070 AM
Tyler -- Even though I disagree with you, you have done an excellent job in highlighting the issues which have been plaguing AM Radio for quite some time. What needs to be pointed out here is that the entire AM bandwidth in North America is 1.17 Mhz (The bandwidth between 88.1 Mhz and 89.3 Mhz is 1.2 Mhz which is only seven stations at best on the FM dial). Even though AM presently doesn't have the same sound quality as other radio media (excluding CB and Short Wave) it does an excellent job at doing what it does quite efficiently. AM Radio does need to be improved, but I do not believe digital is the way to go given its place on the spectrum and how far the current AM signal can travel -- especially during the night. AM does need to reinvent itself -- it just has to figure out how.
That's very interesting that the entire bandwidth is 1.17Mhz. I knew it was small but didn't know it was THAT small!
Antenna Man each station is 10 kHz wide. An expansion sounds more in order. LW is not used and nothing is on above 1700 to 1800. Yes it could be expanded. 400 to 1800 kHz. 25 kHz bandwidth. Plenty of space to keep things from interference with each other.
@@RJDA.Dakota uh, no. Look at FCC band allocation. Expanding AM is not necessary. In fact, digital can allow a station to achieve high fidelity in much less bandwidth. Right now there are stations using their allocation to transmit HD AM next to analog AM. FCC has to do a much, much better job in HD Radio adjusting power authorizations. Currently it is done incrementally on a complaint or lack thereof basis.
Two words, music stations.
Ckdo
The dinosaur
Zoomer radio
The Rock FM's
Wche
The hawk
Etc etc
at night you can pick up am stations from 100s of miles away, far outside their intended coverage area, and those "unofficial" reception areas would just lose the signal entirely
Make AM radio great again it's going to be huge believe me
A-MEN. This is the system that at night used to send stations all over the country and shortwave around the world.
The H in huge is silent.
Can confirm AM radio travels very far distances. I sometimes listen to CFZM 740 from Toronto at night from Baltimore. Granted I can only receive it at night. On a side note, I have an HD radio in my truck. Some of our AM stations already have HD signals. I was flipping through and caught myself wondering why it sounded so clear.
The only time I listen to AM radio is when I want “traffic and weather together on the 8’s” other than that I rarely listen to AM because the news these days is all negative, and I don’t care much about sports
Found the Dallas guy...:)
Sean Peoples no, a dx listener in ia.
@@denisrhodes54 nice! I've never heard WBAP that far away, but I do get it reliably when in St. Louis, so I'm not surprised...:)
News Radio 950 WWJ Detroit
@@denisrhodes54 Lucky you can still receive dx because I can't.