AM Radio

[KillerTux]

I was driving last night, really bored around two in the morning. Finally turned on my radio (AM only  ) and there was a 24-Hour news and traffic station talking about Interstate 93  I was trying to guess where it was from and settled on Boston, Massachusetts and then I went through the dial and got a LI NY station and some NJ station. Pretty cool hearing about conditions a few hundred miles away.

[mightyace]

When I still lived in Ohio, I traveled I-80 across PA several times per year.

There are not a lot of stations along that route and topography makes things harder.

But, I was able to get a number of "clear channel superstations"

660    WFAN    New York, New York* (formerly WNBC)
670    WSCR    Chicago, Illinois*
710    WOR      New York, New York
760    WJR       Detroit, Michigan
770    WABC    New York, New York
860    CJBC      Toronto, Ontario
880    WCBS    New York, New York
1010    CFRB     Toronto, Ontario
1020    KDKA     Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1030    WBZ      Boston, Massachusetts
1060    KYW      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1090    WBAL    Baltimore, Maryland
1100    WTAM    Cleveland, Ohio (formerly WWWE)
1210    WPHT    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (formerly WCAU)
1530    WCKY    Cincinnati, Ohio

Used to be clear channel until 1998 - or was when I was doing this:
1190    WOWO    Fort Wayne, Indiana

* One year I was heading home for Christmas on a Monday night and was listening to Monday Night Football.  I had to keep adjusting my analog dial to keep a signal.  It look me awhile for me to realize that I was switching between these two stations.  (Of course, with modern digital tuners, it would be much easier to figure this out.)

[InterstateNG]

From SE Michigan, a 700-mile radius seems to be the limit under ideal conditions.  I know I've gotten WCCO-AM and WSB-AM before.

A lot of the stations in Detroit, both FM and AM, have pretty good reception in Cleveland, surprisingly.

[corco]

When we first moved to McCall, Idaho, we weren't able to get the television station that had Seattle Mariners games. This was also before the days of MLB.tv/Gameday audio, so we had no easy way to watch or listen to the games. We were up in the mountains so were unable to get much radio reception of anything

My Dad bought 100 feet of wire and essentially turned a tree in the front yard into a giant antenna and we were then able to pick up KOMO 1000 from Seattle at night. Amusingly, we were still unable to pick up what we were shooting for, which was the nearest affiliate in Orofino, Idaho.

[Alex]

I used to enjoy trying to pick up clear channels on AM when driving around late at night. I remember during a snow event in Greenville, SC where I was literally not moving on Interstate 85 listening to KYW out of Philadelphia. Other times I remember listening to radio from Chicago when on Interstate 10 in Northwest Florida.

[hbelkins]

WLW, 700 AM in Cincinnati. Listened to many a late-night Reds game on the west coast in my youth and have fond memories of my dad falling asleep listening to the Reds.

WHAS, 840 AM in Louisville. The stories of thousands of UK fans who would get in their car and drive to a spot where they could pick up the basketball games being called by legendary announcer Cawood Ledford are very common in these parts.

[allniter89]

WKBW--Buffalo, NY--I used to listen overnite from Dover, DE mainly for the lake effect snow forcasts! I couldnt imagine getting 2-4' or more of snow overnite!

[huskeroadgeek]

When I was growing up, I used to like to stay up all night(at least on non-school nights) and go across the AM dial and see how many distant stations I could pick up. Being in the center of the country, I could get quite a large range of stations from coast-to-coast. The most distant station I could pick up on a regular basis was WSB 750 AM from Atlanta. I could pick up KFI 640 AM from Los Angeles sometimes. WHAM 1180 AM from Rochester, NY was the furthest east I could usually pick up stations, although several times I was able to get WCBS 880 AM from New York City. I especially used to like to listen to the Chicago stations-WBBM 780 AM was one of my favotites because I always found it interesting that they gave traffic updates even in the early-morning hours.

[allniter89]

@killerttux---you only have AM radio in your car  wth!! cmon man its 2010!! 
I'd scan the am dial also late at night just to see what I could pickup. I was from Dover, DE and I believe the furtherest  signal I got was from DFW.
In the 70's we lived in the sticks with cable tv not available so we had a 50' or so outside antennae with a motor so you could turn the antennae to pickup a signal, at night during good weather conditions I'd pickup Norfolk, VA tv stations, as well as NYC and sometimes Boston. We received Philly and Balto, DC stations regularly even tho we were 75-125 miles away.

[cu2010]

While growing up in the North Country, I often listened to WCBS 880's coverage of Yankee games (since no station in the area carried them).

I remember the many times we'd take family trips to Michigan and drove well into the night...my dad would be switching between various AM radio stations from Chicago all the way to Boston...it was interesting to hear traffic reports, weather forecasts, and news from all over the country.

[KEK Inc.]

The only AM stations I'm aware of are Spanish Mariachi stations and political talk shows.  There's some traffic condition channels, as noted by blue signs.

That said, I usually listen to classic/alternative rock, rock, hip hop or my CDs.

[rickmastfan67]

I once picked up KDKA 1020 all the way South in Columbia, SC.

And sometimes I could pull in the CBC Radio-1 740 out of Toronto (CBC is now on FM there) as far South as the North Hills of Pittsburgh when they were still on AM.

[mightyace]

I think the farthest afield that I picked up was Nashville's own WSM 650 when I was in Fremont, OH.

[golden eagle]

Picking up AM signals is somewhat of a hobby of mine. Usually, the stations I can pick up on a regular basis:

WWL New Orleans
WSB Atlanta
WSM & WLAC Nashville
KMOX St. Louis
WBBM & WGN Chicago
WBAP Dallas
WOAI San Antonio
KOA Denver
WLW and WCKY Cincinnati
KOOJ Iowa (an AM hot AC)

At times, I can also get WJR Detroit and WTAM Cleveland.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Growing up in Ohio I had a similar set up to Corco. Maybe 50 ft. of insulated copper wire that stretched over the roof of my parents house.
I kept a list of the station I picked up. My furthest away station was 1220 WOAI in San Antonio and 850 KOA Denver.
I got lucky a couple of times and picked up low power (1,000 Watts or lower) stations from Orange Tx and Fargo, ND as well.

[Alps]

I enjoy listening to the CFL out of Hamilton on a clear, crisp signal here in NJ.

[mgk920]

Night AM listening is especially SWEET when you have a fully-restored pre-WWII radio to listen to it on!



And don't forget live sports - Major League Baseball and AM radio are still the match made in Heaven and NFL and other games sound pretty good on it, too.  For example, with the NFL's Green Bay Packers, I'll turn the TV sound down and get the audio from Wayne Laravee and Larry McCarren, their radio guys.  I can also receive Bears games by day (WBBM, 780 AM out of Chicago) and several more teams at night (I listened to last Thursday night's Vikings @ Saints game on WWL, 870 AM out of New Orleans - loud and clear!).  For baseball, by day I can hear games of the Brewers (many stations in Wisconsin), Cubs (WGN, 720 AM) and White Sox (WSCR, 670 AM, both out of Chicago).



One pre-War radio that I am working on now, a 12-tube Zenith 1204-chassis set (made in 1938), has the VERY BEST AM tuner that I have ever seen - with an RF amplifier stage it is able to fully separate adjacent stations all up and down the band and pull in ones that I never thought that I could get here in NE Wisconsin - and with GREAT sound quality!  I can see why the set that I have (a Zenith 12-S-245 'chairside' set) retailed for about $170 in 1938 money (about $3500-4000 in today's money) and people back then willingly paid it.  It's that day's equivalent of the modern-day room-sized 'theater' big-screen home entertainment center.



BTW, 740AM out of Toronto plays stuff such as music and 'OTR' ('Old Time Radio') shows overnight that is very fitting for these antique sets, too, and is very strong here.

One more, during the times of the year when it is dark by about 7pm central time here, the Grand Old Opry (the longest-running show in all of broadcasting worldwide, they haven't missed a show since the mid-1920s) is loud and clear on WSM, 650 AM out of Nashville, TN, every Saturday night.

Mike

[mobilene]

I used to "DX" (scan for distant AM stations) twenty years ago. I had a GE SuperRadio III that was extra sensitive and enjoyed finding not just the clear channels, but also the regionals.  But this was before 95% of the AM band had switched over to syndicated, satellite-fed programming.  Now it's so rare to find a station out there putting out something original that it's just no fun to DX anymore.

Another thing is that most factory car radios today have lousy AM receivers, at least compared to 30-40 years ago.  My late-teenagerhood '75 Ford Pinto with its AM-only radio could pick up distant stations really well.  My recent cars, not so much.

jim

[hm insulators]

I lived on the Hawaiian island of Kauai in the early 1980s and I learned that at night, you could pick up AM radio stations on the mainland. I was probably the only person on Kauai that had KFI in Los Angeles pre-set on his car radio! (This was long before KFI and other AM stations that played music switched to right-wing talk radio.) I think the farthest I ever picked up on Kauai was WOAI in San Antonio.

[mightyace]

(This was long before KFI and other AM stations that played music switched to right-wing talk radio.)

I stopped listening to that a long time ago even though I agree with most of what they have to say.  The shows just got me all upset about things I couldn't do anything about plus the hyperbole of what might happen.

And, in general, I've stopped listening to all talk radio (Sports, Lifestyle, etc.) once I realized that 99% of the callers to these shows are idiots.

[agentsteel53]

I cannot listen to talk on the radio.  Even station identification is enough to get me to change the channel.  that's what I like about late-night satellite radio - no DJs, no station identification, just back to back songs.

[cu2010]

I don't mind sports radio...sometimes it's the only thing that'll keep me awake and focused late into the night. There's also some NPR programs I enjoy as well (particularly on the weekend...I'm impartial to Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!. I don't care for most political talk shows...the hosts are all the same- either too liberal or too conservative, and unable to see anyone else's point of view.

During the day, though, I much prefer to drive to music, particularly of the rock variety, and played really loud. During the night, I need to be able to pay more attention to my surroundings, and loud rock music often keeps me from doing that (not to mention loud rock usually just makes me want to drive faster )

[agentsteel53]

listening to rock and metal definitely keeps me awake at night!

[mobilene]

I may run against the grain here, but I like having a live DJ playing songs on the radio when I drive at night. It makes my trip feel less isolated and alone.  Problem is that so many stations "voicetrack" their evening and night DJs now -- basically, they prerecord the talking bits and let the computer play them back at the right time.

I worked in radio as a disk jockey for 9 years, so I may have a biased opinion about live, local radio.

jim

[cu2010]

Problem is that so many stations "voicetrack" their evening and night DJs now -- basically, they prerecord the talking bits and let the computer play them back at the right time.

It's even worse when the voice tracks and the songs get out of sync (the prerecorded DJs are introducing songs that were played ten minutes ago!) 

I like having a live, local DJ when I listen to the radio as well- I enjoy listening to their commentary on all sorts of things. However, it is critical to maintain the right balance- if a DJ talks too much and there is too little music, that's a turnoff...however, if I want 100% music, I'll plug in an MP3 device (or, if I'm at home, open iTunes) and listen to that.

I was a college radio DJ, and have worked in both local radio and television, so maybe I'm also partially biased as well.