What do AM stations have to lose--

Some AM stations have never left their music formats. I've spent the last 29 years on the air, doing the morning show at a 5,000 watt locally owned and programed 50's and 60's AM oldies station. We're amazingly successful and have continued to grow in audience and revenue the entire time I've worked here.  Our audience spans virtually all ages from 80 year olds to teenagers. I know because I do a lot of live call ins on the air, and we have a lot of station events and promotions with a cross section of people from all ages and walks of lives, from miners on the iron range to eye surgeons. 

The problem is most stations who opt for a music format will insist on over analyzed, over consulted formats that won't work. We have well over 4,000 songs on the playlist and I play handfuls of my own rare vinyl every stinking day.  Songs and artists no consultant would EVER allow. 

Most of all we make it 100% FUN and LOCAL.

TIB

Tim, I have said it for years, local programming will work on AM or FM if it is done right.  My real radio friends used to tell me it wouldn't as they played the Top 40 Brigade over and over... of course I wasn't in commercial radio, so what would I know.  I was just a listener!

I love hearing about success stories. 

One my good friends is a regional sales manager for one of the large radio conglomerates.  She has confirmed what I thought also.  She sees it everyday, and is very much supportive of my part 15 and future plans for licensed station.

I need more power!!!  Said with my best evil laugh!!

That AM radio is dying, that may be or they (who ever "they" are) only say the medium is dying because they want it to die in favor of more modern medium, mp3 players, spotify, pandora and fm radio.

I was reading some negative comments on Facebook, but then aren't they mostly negative about any subject?

The main complaint was the fidelity, funny thing is i have heard some great stations over the years playing music that ranged from country to pop and rock that sounded great.

WKFI-AM 1090 Wilmington,Ohio
WOWO-AM 1190 Fort Wayne,Indiana

To name a couple I always listened to growing up in Cleveland/Cincy.

Even shortwave radio which is broadcasting in Amplitude Modulation can sound fantastic, only problem is the receivers and the public. The general public don't know what to look for as far as good specs in a radio, they just buy whatever will play those darned mp3 files off of a thumbdrive or plays pandora via a usb port on their radio.

It's still relavent, it is still important and is the first medium to bridge the gap between countries, states and counties bringing news, weather, sports and the latest Top 40 hits to a an audience that only knew movies,newspapers,magazienes and records as a source of entertainment.

AM radio may struggle but i don't see it going completely away and yes, a music format would breathe new life into an otherwise dull format of talk and more talk, day in and day out.. I mean really, how many talk shows do we need when most of the same subjects have been covered in nearly a thousand different ways but really only finding a new way to say the same thing that's already been said.

Management, owners and their staff need to brainstorm, research and take votes from the community and build from there. Don't worry about FM stations and their success, bring something to radio that isn't the "norm" and do it really really well.

I like the authors idea of Heavy Metal, i know of a station in Ky that plays hard rock and metal on the weekends among residents that listen to country and gospel.

BBR 1620 AM - Lock it in and rip the knob off !

Like what you are doing Tim, that's the way it used to be. All the "real" oldies stations such as yourself disappeared in the early 2000s citing we have to be profitable and advertisers don't want an audience of people over 60 and as time went on the oldies stations became "younger" and weren't real oldies anymore. Then they all just went to talk or sports.

You have proven them wrong and I like the 4000 song library! The oldies stations owned by the big corporations had 300 songs tops and that was only top 10 hits. What about all the other stuff you would never hear. Like what you are doing and that you are successful at it. And homegrown to boot! How many commercial stations actually have a record library? Some smaller stations located north of Toronto in Barrie, Orillia, Huntsville, Lindsay, etc. actually get their programming from Texas!!

Mark

 album Rock might sound good on AM radio but you would have to process the hell out of it. This is true for both commercial broadcasting and Hobby  Broadcasting.

As far as Park 15 or hobby am broadcasting Lowe's if we could find a way to make carrier current easier especially for those who have site issues you could broadcast to a small world Town quite easily and gain a good audience even if you're an apartment dweller. That is something that you cannot do at present with an antenna system 9 a.m. because it requires a good size the antenna and lots of ground radials could get some good range. Never-the-less apartment dwellers are not going to be able to do that.

 I am one of the people you think that AM radio has a huge battle to fight mainly because they're so much better technology out there. Most people won't deal with the static and the low-fidelity on AM. but for big band music you could bring the older folks back into it and that is something that really does count. I hear it all the time that there's not enough oldies and big band stations out there for the old folks and those are the people who really are getting skipped out on when it comes to radio. So with that in mind you could make a really nice AM station for them that doesn't really require High Fidelity because the older folks could care less.

The reason there's no radio for "old folks" is because advertisers want a younger audience....the age group that buys all the products. It's people in their 20s and 30s that are the biggest consumers. Love seeing that Tim is successful doing what he is, with a small but commercial station.

Mark

FWIW more processing doesn't make AM sound better and too much can make it sound awful (that goes for AM and FM for that matter). A regular opitmod or omnia would do perfect. (I know first hand the Optimod treats rock & roll very well, shoot even the Ino222 does good on its own.)

Our signals aren't the problem, its the radios. AM actually has some fantastic audio quality that can be heard with wideband radios and mod monitors.

I think music should come back to AM for balance, most of what I hear is satellite talk, with a few partially local news/talk and sports stations in there. There are a few music stations, but they're running FM translators, so it's the same as is on the FM. It's still nice to have them for AM radios, and I play music on my lil' AM.

Heavy metal could work on AM, anyone remember Z-Rock? They were around in 1990 era, the peak of metal's mainstream popularity, and some were on AM band stations, and I knew people who would wait for skip at night to receive them on distant AM frequencies. Fans loved that station, and didn't care that it wasn't in stereo, and it was kind of a cool thing to have it on AM, because it was more underground and a secret that uncool people or metal hating parents didn't know about.

Radio is just like that, they compete within the same format, like talk, not trying to have a different sound than another station. They find that talk is getting a big ratings surge, so they put more talk on.

I listen to talk radio, and we do have some solid talkers out there that are very good, live and direct, so it's constantly original and new programming that way, and that should be lauded in a sea of canned programming possibilities. We could be hearing American Top-40 from 1971 with Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

Some of us like music though, I'm a big fan of it on the radio, with a live DJ I could call or text and learn about new music from. People supposedly don't want that these days, since it's like the DJ dictates your music, but I don't see it that way, if I like what a DJ's doing, I'm right there with them and it's like the DJ is a friend who is personally introducing me to new music.

Another thing about music is you can have it on as background to other tasks, so you can tidy up your room or make calls while the radio is on in the background, and music can set a mood, where talk is in your face, demanding closer listening.

I think that's one reason advertisers would like a talk show, listeners' attention is rapt, especially if the host also reads the announcement, that's a solid flow, no music stopping and going into an ad. It's probably the same with sports news radio.

Z-Rock! I wanna say the vast majority of their affiliates were AM. Dallas was lucky enough, probably because they were based here, to have an FM affiliate. Z-Rock actually started in the mid 80s where it enjoyed the peak of its popularity before fading into the sunset in the early 90s. (Mostly due to metal's fall from popularity as Grunge raced to the top).

Z-Rock was the originator of Mandatory Metallica and other features that are staples in the rock radio format now.

I've got a few goodies from the Flagship Z-Rock studios in Dallas.

For my station I went all talk programming to simply have something new and different on the air everyday since the shows are all live and topical.

I don't think there has to be much of a difference in processing between AM and FM, except for the 10 khz NRSC rolloff that AM uses. It stings that they approved that, I shake my head every time. Ahh, I just have to let it out. Of course Park 15 doesn't have a bandwidth restriction like that, which is the best!

With transmitters today, you might as well just run a standard flat sound without anything weird. I used to hear AM stations that were running a midrange sound, with the bass cut off and the treble cut off, and you could hear the difference between that and what other stations were doing. Some stations were muddy and bassy, with cheap limiting. Now what I hear are stations that just sound like they're pulling in the web stream from their network, at talk quality and all highs are gone, and it makes them sound weak and thin.

Yeah Legacy, just try it with your Innovonics on it first and then see what you need to process.

I've been trying something new on my AM lately, just ALC and limiting, with compression off. It seemed that it was the compression that was giving the less defined sound on narrow bang radios, causing aural mud.

Now the ALC functions to even up the level on the quiet sections of songs or being too far from the mic, so the level is up above AM band noise most of the time, and the limiter is working on the fast peaks.

There's none of the constant compressing in between, that "busy" sound that was bothering me after extended listening at louder vols. The middle ground between low levels and high has cleared up for smoother listening, but yet the audio is still nice and loud, it just doesn't sound so compressed.

Yeah, dang that Grunge, I know exactly what you mean, Nirvana and all. Z-Rock was like nothing else, and friends said dude, you gotta hear Z-Rock! Their production was different than I'd heard, a highly compressed mic under the music, really different than other rock stations, extreme.

I didn't know they had mostly AMs, but that's cool, and it was the only place I heard them. One was on 1490 as I remember it, and I thought the dudes I knew used to listen to the one in Houston, but I'm not sure, because I enjoyed it with them, but wasn't metal enough to keep on listening when they weren't there.

After all this time Z-Rock should come back on AM! Look at what MeTV is doing with their TV programming, they don't just run it, they take special care to play it like it was aired originally, in the same time slots and two episodes of MASH back to back.

Ahh yeah! Z-Rock was petitioned off the air in so many cities by angry parents.

One station i recall that was just outside of Milford,Ohio was struggling with formats and trying hard to keep the lights on switched to the Z-Rock format only to be squashed by angry parents.
I wanted to choke those people for ruining that for me and many of my friends who are metal heads like me. Now all that is left of that format are air checks posted online if you dig deep enough in Google Search.

Oh well, there's my private station now to fill that void. It only covers the house on 107.9 with back to back metal using cables i discovered under the house left over from the last family that rent this house.

Rock on!
Barry of BBR Yardwide

LOL Z-Rock!

Knock, knock man!

I heard groups like the Smashing Pumpkins and Presidents of the USA, I remember hearing their song "Peaches" for the first time on our local Connecticut Z-Rock station on 98.7 FM. Hall Communications bought their transmitter and bought AM radio station WNLC 1510AM New London CT. (to which it took WNLC's call sign, signed the AM station off permanently, dismanteled the 8 tower array, knocked the studio down, then took Z-rocks tower and transmitter and created WNLC FM 98.7 Album Rock station.) The 98.7 FM feed now comes from a local studio in Norwich CT. No affiliation with Z-Rock now though.

It is a sad story as to what happened to WNLC 1510 AM, nothing there but a cement slab where the studio was and cement blocks that once held 8 towers in the air.

More can be read about it here:

http://www.hartfordradiohistory.com/WNLC__AM_.html

Make sure you scroll down to see the site as it looks today because that is a long history lesson on the former WNLC 1510 AM New London Connecticut.

Bruce.

I'll take some exception to the idea that AM can be hi fidelity even if you have good equipment. And I only say that as a hi-fi guy. Then again over the years I've come to appreciate the AM esthetic. At 50 I'm also patient.

Agree totally on a good format. We have a few AM stations near STL I think are interesting. I don't doubt the broad audience. I get a kick out of the format on Dewberry's Jam, which is Part 15, but I have to hear it stream because I'm not in TX!