well its official

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by OvenMaster

I've been noticing over the years that Canadian AM is slowly dying.

Years ago I could find some Canadian AM stations rebroadcast in the 49M (6MHz) shortwave broadcast band. Probably for people widely scattered in the tundra areas.

[jayk]

jeeeez, i miss the am stations of the mid '60s.
WABC and cousin brucie,
WKBW in buffalo, joey reynolds (and 'chicken man'!)
WLS, Chicago
WOWO ft wayne in.
WBZ out of beantown

and more i cant remember right now.

great stations, all!

edit-i never realized halifax ns had 350,000 people. WOW!

[Rodzilla]

i never realized halifax ns had 350,000 people. WOW!

well it's properly known as the Halifax Regional Municipality nowadays[AKA- HRM].what was really always one place anyway was until a few years ago made up of two separately incorporated cities just across the harbour from one another,as well as a town and a few other places...it was all amalgamated into one local govt a few years back...and the official population count went up accordingly..tho it pretty much always has been the largest canadian city east of Montreal

[mhardy6647]

WBZ is alive and well... news/talk (mostly news); they do it much better than most AM stations with that format. I listen to 'em on the drive in to work regularly.

[jayk]

Originally Posted by mhardy6647

WBZ is alive and well... news/talk (mostly news); they do it much better than most AM stations with that format. I listen to 'em on the drive in to work regularly.

now that we mention it, i still tune in to 'wbz-radio 103' once in a great while. even tho i'm a hunnert miles away from their tower, i can still pick up their a.m. in the daytime.

dave maynard
don kent
forget the rest...

[newhallone]

I have two local am stations one is talk radio and the other was playing Music of your life. Which wasn't too bad. Sure it repeated a little and a few clunker songs. Sadly they switched to Americas best music and I now get nauseous from all the bad Disney soundcraps. So now I have to wait till dark sets in to listen to am740 Toronto. I guess I will have to get started building a transmitter.

[Dave1384]

Originally Posted by mhardy6647

WBZ is alive and well... news/talk (mostly news); they do it much better than most AM stations with that format. I listen to 'em on the drive in to work regularly.

I get 'em at night. Whatever became of David Brudnoy?

Originally Posted by Rodzilla

the last AM station in my city of approx 350,000 signed off this week..the local AM band is now officially a vacant wasteland.i virtually never listen to AM but it seems strange and worth noting as the end of an era nonetheless

Was that the one around 1070?

[OvenMaster]

Originally Posted by Dave1384

I get 'em at night. Whatever became of David Brudnoy?

Passed away in 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brudnoy

[mhardy6647]

Originally Posted by OvenMaster

Passed away in 2004: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brudnoy

His immediate replacement has also since passed away. Having that slot at WBZ is apparently akin to being keyboardist for the Grateful Dead (or drummer for Spinal Tap).

[Einar72]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Cruise

Never thought I'd miss the sappy sound of 70's E-Z listening, but after listening to current stuff I suppose it wasn't so bad after all. I used to have these guys mixed up with Player (Baby come back).

BTW, the bumper music I'm listening to on a podcast as I type this is Bruce Cockburn's If I had a rocket launcher.

[Arkay]

I can't pull in many AM stations here (except at night, when I get mainland Chinese ones almost like pulling in shortwave!), but I recently learned that the main AM station I like to listen to --probably the best of the few English-language stations here-- is actually broadcasting now in AM STEREO! I have to rig up an AM stereo receiver, to give that a listen!


On the sad side, there are subtle (and not-so-subtle) signs that the government has insidious plans to either shut down or greatly alter the station and its management, probably because it is a free-speaking station that is perhaps more outspoken on certain issues than the Mainland Central Government is comfortable with. Not exactly censorship, but clearly there are some behind-the-scenes struggles and differences of opinion about the station, and I fear for its longevity in any form that I'll want to continue listening to. But so far, they remain a decent station and a visible token reminder that we live in a "one country, TWO systems" environment here. The government cannot and will not be too obviously seen to be doing anything too harmful to the station, as it would hurt their image and the image of Hong Kong, perhaps too much... but they will patiently and persistently try to accomplish their ends in more subtle (if not devious) ways, no doubt.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Arkay

I can't pull in many AM stations here (except at night, when I get mainland Chinese ones almost like pulling in shortwave!), but I recently learned that the main AM station I like to listen to --probably the best of the few English-language stations here-- is actually broadcasting now in AM STEREO! I have to rig up an AM stereo receiver, to give that a listen!

Interesting. AM stations here in the US were experimenting with stereo transmission about twenty years ago (there was at least one AM stereo station in the Cleveland, Ohio area at the time), but the idea never caught on. I remember one all-news station in Chicago in the late '80s (WMAQ-AM 670, now WSCR ESPN sports) that was also transmitting in AM stereo, but they gave up on that experiment as well when they were sold and changed their format several years later.

I don't know if AM stereo receivers are even available new-in-box anymore; if they are, you may be looking quite a while before you find one, except perhaps on the used market (i.e. eBay or Craigslist). At least that's how it stands here in the US. I have yet to actually see an AM stereo receiver up close, although I saw ads for them here and there in ad flyers in my Sunday newspaper, etc. when the system was finally approved for use by US radio stations.

BTW, I'm amazed that Hong Kong has few if any AM radio stations. It may be, as it is here in the US, that FM radio in Hong Kong is more popular by far than AM these days--forcing many AM stations off the air or to run automated formats, as several AM stations in my area near Cleveland, Ohio have done over the last few years. Two examples: The local AM station here (actually about five miles from my apartment) was a fairly good local news and music station until a year or so ago, when it was sold and the new owner switched it to nearly 100-percent syndicated satellite programming; the same happened to a station near where I grew up. The latter was also a music station for 40-odd years, but its owner recently decided there was more money in talk radio, so five years ago or so that station was flipped from oldies to 100-percent satellite talk.

The foregoing is a very sad commentary on the state of United States AM radio in the 21st century, but unfortunately the owners of those stations care only about their bottom line (read money), so they have decided in most cases, of necessity, to flip their stations from music to talk. (Most stations, in fact almost all 50kW stations, in U.S. major cities are now talk, news, sports or religion.) Even that isn't enough to save some very small local stations from floundering; many such stations have been forced off the air due to financial difficulties, problems maintaining aging equipment and towers they cannot afford to replace (this actually happened to a station some 20 miles south of here about five years ago), and so on.

U.S. AM radio is not the powerhouse it once was; in fact, it is but a shadow of its former self these days. It wouldn't surprise me if some day all AM stations here either left the air entirely or moved to FM, leaving the AM broadcast band all but quiet as a mouse--except at night, when one might hear a few stations from other countries. The big money these days is in FM and Internet radio, so I think AM's demise may be a lot closer than we may think.

[LCC0256]

Just checked on my C Crane Radio to find out EXACTLY how many local AM stations we have left in the Augusta GA area there are 7.. i feel fortunate. They are all either sports, talk or Christian music. I just hope my old radio collection will not be useful for only window dressing for my children and grand children due to the fact that AM goes completely extinct...I want to know if all broadcasts eventually are transmitted digitally will it be impossible to receive those stations on old radios? I guess someone will invent a converter that could be routed wirelessly to all radios in a home so that everyones collection can still receive broadcasts ? (if in fact the AM is still in use 40 years from now...)

[Einar72]

Originally Posted by LCC0256

Just checked on my C Crane Radio

It will be interesting to see if the Chinese government or the American consumer would be more upset if digital AM broadcasting was made the standard by CONgress (like in '96 establishing HDTV). We can always use our old radios for doorstops, while we cough up money we don't really want to spend for some new, obsolete-proof rigs. With a nod from the boardrooms (or pool-sides) here, the factories over there could start producing new equipment and be selling them to us before we even could complain.

[Sandy G]

That's it. I kwit. Gonna start haulin' my Boatanchor collection down to th' street, to let the Garbage guys haul away....






BTW, I have a large bridge in a major northeast population center that I would like to sell, as well...