<VV> AM radio

[Tony Underwood]

At 08:12 hours 08/02/2005, Debbie Duval wrote:
>[Ah yes WBZ, 50,000 watts of the best there was, Dick at night 
>and  Cousin [Brucey days . I could even get them when I was in 
>College in Ft. Wayne  IN. most [nights that is. If not it was WLS.
>[rich
>
>Just trying to avoid the local WOWO?  WOWO was another 50KW that we 
>east coasters listened to.


WOWO had *Great* jingles.   Music was pretty much standard top-40 but 
their bumpers and jingles were stylish.   The station call was also 
exploited bigtime via "woah-woah, coming atcha!"


>WGAR also, Imus in the morning was there.
>
>Tony, for listening to ditties, try Dr. Demento's CD's. Volume 1 and 
>volume 2 are out.


Yep, got 'em and also taped the Dr Demento Anniversary special that 
aired on pay cable a few years ago, had all those ditty artists on 
stage doing their thing, GREAT stuff!!


>I'm sorry to hear that "Jack" radio replaced a good station. Usually 
>it replaces corporate play list stations (like Clear Channel's lousy 
>line up) and makes radio worth listening to again. None here in central VA.


I'm OK with AM radio these days... mostly...  there's an 
all-news/Talk station here in town that gets great ratings and I 
listen at work all day, pretty good stuff, combination  of national 
and local news every 15 minutes or so, along with syndicated talk 
show programming, made to order around here for a Corvair with  its 
original AM radio in the dash.    Again, for those who lament the 
demise of Top-40 AM radio, Talk is what saved it from oblivion.   FM 
has gone the route for high fidelity music, something AM was never 
able to match (limited to 10khz channel spacing etc) in audio 
quality.    Since the human voice has a frequency range that seldom 
exceeds 3khz, AM Broadcast band radio is perfect for transmitting the 
human voice, technology-wise...

...ironically, this was the original intent from the beginning, when 
spectrum space was originally allocated for AM broadcasting in the 
first place.   It was intended to carry the human voice and not a lot more.

AM Radio has simply returned to its roots.

Another thing:

AM Broadcast Band radio is thrifty.    It's "space efficient".   A 
single AM radio channel is only 10 khz wide... that's all.    It 
takes only 5  FM Broadcast radio stations to use as much spectrum 
space as the entire AM broadcast BAND combined.    And it takes only 
three TV broadcast stations to use as much spectrum space as the 
entire FM broadcast band.    TV broadcasts are enormously greedy 
space hogs, which is why the FCC really wants to reclaim the VHF TV 
bands back... and will, when HDTV broadcasting finally gains a 
serious foothold over the next few years (on UHF) allow the FCC to 
stop renewing TV licenses to broadcast on the VHF bands.

AM broadcasting is not only efficient in its use of space, the 
technical requirements to transmit an  AM broadcast are quite 
simple... almost anybody with the knowledge to pass an FCC  General 
Operators license can build in their basement what it takes to 
transmit music on the AM broadcast band across the city...  been 
there done that ;) and it was all done with old tube type hardware 
built from junkbox parts available cheap surplus, and it worked out 
quite well (and is likely to land you in court if you aren't very 
careful).    You can't easily do that with FM unless you have an 
engineering degree or are very smart.    This is why AM keeps on 
hanging on, simply because it's simple and relatively cheap to 
operate compared to FM, watt for watt.

AM gets no respect...    and that includes the radios in 
Corvairs.   My '60 4-door still has its original tube type radio 
which still works fine, as does the '62 ragtop (last year for a tube 
type radio in Vairs) and they both pretty much stay tuned to the same 
local station (Talk) except when on the road at night and the knob 
gets twisted to chase night skip, to see what can be found 
elsewhere...  wishing the Nightlight Show was still airing on WBZ at 
midnight...


tony..