No More AM Radio in CArs

The Rocky Mountains do a pretty good job of blocking most clear channels from the East Coast, which has stirred up arguments for and against multiple Class I-A stations on the same frequency across time zones. The other thing that hinders picking up far signals is bleed over from closer, less powerful stations one or two clicks up or down the dial.

I can't hear WJR 760 out of Detroit here in north Georgia because WSB 750's signal overwhelms it. However, I have been in the rental car on my way to the Detroit airport before dawn and heard WSB. So there's something about WJR's night-time pattern that's different.

I only worked at one 50,000 watt blowtorch: KFBK in Sacramento. I was responsible for switching the pattern at dusk to protect several smaller stations on the same frequency. I remember getting my butt chewed by the chief engineer for not remembering to make the switch one night, and he had apparently gotten a call from Colorado Springs where we were bleeding over someone else's 1530.

Daytimers are an even weirder deal. You get more airtime in the summer -- signoff is usually determined by the monthly average sunset -- but there's hell to pay if you decide to play an extra record or two past the scheduled transmitter shutoff time.

 

With nothing much happening after I got home from dinner, I decided to try a sweep of the AM band from my driveway. This must be a good atmospheric night for DX-ing, because not only did I hear several of the clear channel blowtorches I’m used to, but also less powerful signals from places like Knoxville, Jacksonville, Mobile (playing 80s lite rock no less!), Greenville, Miss., and Hickory, N.C. I struck gold in the 1600’s range, pulling in back-to-back 1000-watt stations from Sussex, Wis., and Cedar Falls, Iowa.

 

CHUM 1050 was the AM behemoth of my youth in the 70s in Toronto (my parents were avid listeners of CFRB) but once I got an FM radio I left AM behind unless it was to listen to a Blue Jays game when I wasn't in front of my TV.

My wife and I were on the road the night of Game 3 between the Leafs and Panthers and I couldn't remember which AM station was broadcasting their games, that's how long it had been since I had listened to sports on the radio. We went up and down the dial until we found it.

 

Years ago I used to go to reelradio.com, which has thousands of airchecks dating back decades but (now I see after visiting the site for the first time in years) I noticed that you need to have an account. But tons of voices you guys (and gals) are talking about.

(Side note - back when I used to go often, most of the clips were .ra files - for Real Audio. I imagine that's gone the way of Netscape Navigator and Prodigy.)

Before XM merged with Sirius, the 60s channel used to have a weekly feature called Sonic Sounds Salute with Terry 'Motormouth' Young. It would be a recording from a particular station with the DJ and all the station's jingles, and then just mix in the digital versions of the songs in between. It was great to listen to - one of the many things I miss from XM radio that this merger killed off.

 

I broke many sets of headphones to my walkabout radio -- no expensive Sony Walkman for this girl! -- falling asleep to Mets radio broadcasts. When they were still on WFAN, I could clearly hear night games in both eastern and western Massachusetts. (I used to know how many states the 50,000-watt signal reached.) Now they're on WCBS, a NYC all-news station which I'm not sure has an FM equivalent.

WNYC, the NPR affiliate, has different broadcast schedules for its AM and FM signals, particularly at night and on weekends.

 

When I was a kid I got Reds games from one of the coasts.

 

Ford Motor Co. does an about-face after the feds step in: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/b...l-keep-am-radio-on-future-models/70247642007/

 

Feds
Order
Radio
Devices

 

That's some awesome detail and those calls bring back good memories ... Ernie, of course and Bruce Martyn/Sid Abel/Paul Woods on the Wings, Larry Munson doing the Dogs, Gary Gerould when the Kings moved to Sac-town.

Think I might have mentioned this to you before, but in high school I was the "Sunday Man" at a daytimer. Signed that baby on in the morning and took it to sundown. Long days but learned a lot ... and got paid. Good thing the station powered down via automation because I likely would have forgotten often enough doing it manually to get fired.

 

Not so much the Rockies block East Coast AM signals as the signals are oriented elsewhere. The ionosphere propagates AM signals at night and that is way higher than Mount Elway.

 

Registration is free, according to the website, and in 2020 everything was converted to M4A format.

 

In southwest Missouri in 1991, I was able to pick up the last few innings of Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter on WBAP out of Fort Worth. One of the greatest moments of my sports life.