AM is dying..time to move on to a new medium and let the frequencies be used for something else
Please, before blatantly looking uneducated to a topic, do your homework.
Okay, readers...make some coffee, grab a pizza.....whatever...
AM is at it's
highest and best use. There is no better use other than very efficient mass communications The "Standard Broadcast" (AM) band would be used-for. By it's nature it's long-reaching, and has unique nighttime properties not suitable for anything except what it is today. "Standard Broadcast." It CAN, however sound almost as good as FM when properly delivered by broadcasters, and properly received by a an audience that buys and supports QUALITY receiving devices (which leaves out most Americans and every one of the radios at WalMart, other box stores, and most "modern" devices made in China.)
Now, for those of you who keep pushing AM to "go digital"...please explain why do you want to mess with the only remaining (AM and FM) broadcast medias that don't have "digital breakup" if, say, you look wrongly at your receiver, or, if the air is heavy with humidity, or if a storm is between you and your local station! Even during thunderstorms, LOCAL listeners don't hear much interruption, and for distant ones, the message still gets through. The buzzword, "digital" is NOT the answer to everything, but the modern public certainly has been brainwashed into believing this! Almost everyone has now had either their digital cable, digital satellite TV or digital cellphone "break up" it's signal due to interruptions. (A problem we didn't have before "digital" was accepted as normal.)
Remember the days when you could actually see and HEAR the intended message even if the signal was weak? ANALOG radio still gets you that message!
No, I'm not saying we should go back to heavy bag phones, electron tubes, and black & white TV. I collect antique electronics, I like to restore and display them, but I don't want to return-to most of them for daily use. I love Netflix, I own a few Rokus, and I time-shift TV via FTA and a TabloTV box. I live in the modern world, but I also broadcast on AM as my main signal, on FM locally, and provide a digital live stream from an analog tuner for people who think "radio" is old fashioned.
All that being said, I would like it if people posting on popular sites archived across our web would get facts straight with regard to our AM band. It's uneducated posts that can be misconstrued as "popular American Opinion" by our sometimes equally uneducated legislators. The FCC is well aware of AM's limitations, but also they're aware of AM's continued contributions to local economies, charities, payrolls, and their own pockets through our yearly "Regulatory Fees" (what we pay to KEEP our licenses each year, even though the length of the issue is many years at a time.) Commissioner Pai is in-touch with stations both small and large, and has heard many a success story of AM's still serving their communities, and guess what...if stations are SERVING, they're GROWING and contributing to society and economy. The BEST thing the FCC could do for broadcasters would be to back a public education campaign about local analog radio and it's role in community. If radio broadcasters had the same kind of support they gave the digital TV translation, the PERCEPTION of (Particularly AM) broadcasting could change radically, and this would go farther in helping our industry than the detrimental suggestion of changing to a method of digital transmission..
At eleven years as owner of an AM station, Six of a combo AM/FM, and nearly 30 years behind the mic having worked my way up from Sunday morning God Squad to station Owner and Morning Host, I'm uniquely qualified to ask people posting on the 'net to please, research before posting! You dirty the name of a very viable product, (AM) whose biggest problem is owners who don't treat their AM's as if they are important. They ARE. They CAN-BE. I never had a happier day than the one that my credit and my radio references allowed me to locally finance my first station, and while it's been a battle at times, we are PROOF that AM can work. We contribute in taxes, employment, we raise money for charities, we're active in making local events bigger through endorsements, and this is something EVERY broadcaster can do, not just in small towns. We even provide...drum roll please...MUSIC in our format! Holy Cow! Music on AM? Try it! It'll sound better than most of the mp3's you shove in your phone! Broadcasting needs good owners who take pride in their work.
Respectfully, to those who suggest abandonment and digital changes to AM, If you're not listening to (AM/Broadcast bands) us now, you won't
even if we convert to digital. You, yourself have decided not to be our audience, though we are bound, as good broadcasters to
try to serve YOU. God forbid it happens, but you're like many others who will eventually turn to local broadcasters when and if our nation's "digital infrastructure" has failed for one reason or another. I hope we're still here to help. I'll fight to keep AM broadcasting alive and viable as long as radio exists.
Good stations still "serve the public interest as a public trustee"....even though that requirement has certainly been muddied by mergers and mega-corporations thinking they know "radio."
And finally,
respectfully, and with no malice, I make a request, please to those same individuals:
(directed at those who post without knowledge, and who just like to throw buzzwords around..not to those whose respect I've earned in radio and here on this site)
...If your attitude is bad toward our current analog broadcasting, especially AM, please close your mouths
(That's a "zero," not a "one" in your digital world.) about abandoning AM and about "digital" coming to our broadcast bands. We don't need it.
