Truthy Article About AM
I understand and concur with the POV expressed in the piece which cuts right to the main points about the AM broadcast situation.
This concluding question is one we've all asked:
"With spectrum in short supply couldn’t we just repurpose this band? And if so, to what?"
I can tell you, not likely be hobby broadcasting.
Ya But
Mark thinks this: "Not likely be hobby broadcasting."
The FCC and the corporations they serve will have 1st pickings if there's a way of turning the medium wave band into cash, but if there's no such use that they can come up with the radio hobbyists might get it by default... like being near a dumpster when something old is thrown away.
It's an interesting and well written article, but like most any of them it tends to rehash popular topics and views for the purpose of readership. Everything has to be taken with a grain of salt because there's always more to the story.. where am I going with this?..
Anyway, for example, the numbers they use when they say: "AM is dying for a lack of listeners. Only 10 to 20 % of all radio listeners listen to it, and that depends upon the locale." -That statement appears to be based on the 2017 Neilson Ratings, and Neilson tells you that "over that same period the number of AM stations reporting to Nielsen has been completely flat,” Miller says. “There are around 4,800 AM stations in the Nielsen database [self-reported] compared to more than 11,000 FM stations.”
(from: Who’s Listening? AM Radio By The Numbers.)
That appears to say that AM stations simply did not report to Nielsen while to statistics where being calculated, so naturally the numbers are skewed.
I don't know.. I just don't see AM radio to be as unpopular as many articles suggest. The way I see - generally speaking - is that listening to AM is a totally different experience then listening to FM.. FM most commonly provides music while we work, drive, play, or relax, whereas AM generally provides political, religious, and entertainment talk programming as well as sports and news while we work, drive, play, relax.
They're both popular, but FM takes the lead because music usually makes a better mindless background accompaniment throughout daily task.
I'm not really going anywhere with this, just casually talking..
"AM radio stations reach nearly 58.8 million people during a given week according to the latest Nielsen data based on the ratings company’s June 2017 RADAR estimates. To put that into perspective AM’s weekly cume is one-third bigger than the 38 million Americans who read a Sunday newspaper according to Pew Research."
I agree with you as I've said before that if not to many were listening and in the age group the advertisers target(the 18 to 49 age group) there wouldn't be a whole string of commercials every 7 or 8 minutes. The advertisers wouldn't be spending billions to advertise there.
But if the translator gets the listeners broadcasting the same feed on FM does the AM station get credited with the listeners?
But if the translator gets the listeners broadcasting the same feed on FM does the AM station get credited with the listeners?
It took me awhile before I could even make sense of giving AM station FM channels to help save AM.. but eventually realized it was in hopes of boosting ad revenue. But from what I've observed.. at least around the Savannah Georgia area, is that the AM stations are not broadcasting the same feed on their FM repeaters, the programming is entirely different, so essentially they are like two stations.
Regardless, if it comes in through their AM or FM repeater, the ad revenue goes to the station - so they get the credit in that way. I have no idea how they go about determining actual listenership.
The AM gets the credit for translator listeners.
Giving AMs translators is a good start for what appears to be, possibly, true AM revitalization. Listeners won't lose the AM station's content because it's also on FM. AMs can then transition to all digital transmissions. Right now, there's seems to be a big push by the industry to have the FCC consider allowing full time all-digital AM transmissions. The current hybrid IBOC method in use now is problematic, but full digital seems promising. MA3 seems to offer more robust reception than the current HD Radio coding (MA1) offers. Of course, all of this doesn't help the Class D day timers. They'll probably just stay on FM and turn in their AM license. That will thin the heard some.
This could be good for the hobby. Analog AM receivers will be around for a long time. Right now, HD Radio receiver penetration is said to be around 20% in many markets, primarily in cars. Over time, I could see new radios for consumers having hybrid reception ability for while before they are made into digital-only receivers. There are millions of analog AM radios out there. Hobbyist using analog transmissions will have an edge and be easy to find on analog only and hybrid radios because the all digital AM stations will all sound similar to what a connected 56k modem used to, a constant hiss and buzz of data.
I don't see digital AM in hobby broadcasting's future. One company owns the patents for this HD Radio system and they license their proprietary software and chipsets to transmitter manufacturers, receiver manufacturers, and the broadcasters. Interesting to note, however, that presently they are willing to waive their licensing fees for any FCC licensed AM broadcast station that wishes to operate fully digital.