In his recent post "Why I have Not Blogged in Awhile", Paul Thurst does an interesting summary of where things stand in the radio engineering field and what is possible for the future.
He holds some hope for LPFM and seemingly little hope for the future of AM.
With regard to better enforcement of the interference problem, Mr. Thurst mentions enforcement of Part 18, which I thought maybe was a typo, since Part 15 deals with limits of interference by radio devices, but upon closer study we see that Part 18 deals with interference from industrial, scientific and medical equipment, no doubt the largest of all interference issues.
http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/
Mr. Thurst presents interesting points as does Mr. Imly regarding interference to AM signals but the reason I no longer listen to AM (or FM for that matter) is the programming. If there is an AM station I want to hear I can always find a way to do so in spite of the noise. When mobile my experience has been that noise is not an issue.
My wife and I are not in the "prime demographic" for broadcasters so our opinions on programming may be out of touch but if so then why are there discussions about the death of AM which indicate a general decline. Maybe we are not the ones who are out of touch.
Neil
Are still on the air.
As an AM dxer and listener, I tune the dial at night. So
I'll stop on 1400 or 1450 kHz, or one of the other local
channels where the stations don't protect each other at
night, and each channel has at about 150 stations running
1000 watts at night, all spaced about 40 or 50 miles from
each other, all interfering with each other. You tune in
and the channel is eight stations deep, and the stations in
the pile are changing to other stations every once in a while.
What a mess. Of course, for me, the reward is bagging an
ID at the top of the hour, and I have heard quite a few. (It's
best to record and playback later, so you can take a really
good listen.)
But DXing is beside the point. Why are so many of these
stations still even on the air?
The Low Power Hour item about KAAY/1090/50 kW going
silent was sort of a big deal for me. When our local WTIC
1080, Hartford, went off the air for tests early Monday
morning, when I was a kid, I tried to hear as many
stations as I could on 1070, 1080, and 1090. KAAY
was one of my big targets. I never ever heard it, but
trying to hear it was a big part of my past.
Oh well, my office is going away, too. They
are towing this whole side of the building over
to a huge dumpster, so I have to go. They will
be putting in a new SuperMarket. (We only have
about 9 of them in this town already.)
Actually, I'm only kidding about this last past, it's
just a joke and not true. Maybe I should be on
the Phil Hendrie show.
Bruce, The Dog Radio Group
...1450, and 1490 kHz:
On these 6 crowded local channels, there are a grand total of
1232 stations in the U.S. and Canada. The most crowded channel
is 1340, which tops out with 222 stations.
How can these stations survive? I know many many of them
are parts of clusters, where the revenue is coming from
elsewhere, but there must be a few "stand alone" AM locals.
They do they do it? How do they keep going?
Bruce, The Dog Radio Group
I wonder the same thing Mr. Group, about the stations near here.
I sincerely don't think they even listen to themselves, they are so monumentally boring, yet they are there everyday.
I have a plan if I ever get a small AM station. I will hire myself out as a high paid male escort and after my lady clients have enough wine, I will invite them to invest. In the station, I mean.
The first radio job I ever had was at one of these "graveyard channel" stations, where at that time it was 1kw-day, 250 watts at night. They used to joke that the owner couldn't hear his own station at home when it was on low power.
That was 1979. The station was a full service AC/oldies/country crossover music station with ABC News, Paul Harvey, high school and some college sports..and had over a 4 share.
The station is still on the air as of March 2013 but is a shell of what it once was. It airs a satellite gospel network. Runs on occasion with a dead carrier...for days.
It is still a standalone. I guess I will always have kind of a soft spot for this station, where I got my start by being a board op for the overnights and the Larry King show. I moved up from that within a few months at which time they dumped King and began signing off at midnight. They moved me to evenings plus weekends..I had a great time there.
Radio is not what it was. It is cold and impersonal, in many cases. And that is a shame. It seems like the actual product is not important any longer.