F.C.C. Plans Sweeping Changes to Bolster AM Radio

[cpzilliacus]

N.Y. Times: F.C.C. Plans Sweeping Changes to Bolster AM Radio

The Federal Communications Commission, seeking to revive the sagging fortunes of AM radio, has proposed removing or updating regulations that station owners believe have left many AM channels on the precipice of death.

The commission is seeking public comment on numerous changes, required before it adopts its final rules. The proposed changes, supporters say, could salvage a technology that once led Americans to huddle around their radios for fireside chats and World Series broadcasts but that has now been abandoned for the superior sound of digital and online music and news outlets.

Because of interference caused by consumer electronics, smartphones and the like, AM radio often seems to deliver mostly static. The AM audience has fallen to 15 percent of all radio listeners, down from 50 percent as recently as 1978. While the FM audience has fallen as well, it draws more than five times the audience of AM.

[roadman]

I don't think the problem with AM is so much the static as the increasingly poor quality of the programming.  Talk radio and news programming that is 75 to 80 percent advertising is hardly a substitute for the pop music and "solid" news stations of yore.

I am aware that the problem of advertising has invaded FM as well.  But it's still far less of a problem than with most AM stations these days.

[Jardine]

For me, it is the extremely limited range of the 'non-clear channel' stations.

Locally, there is one station I can listen to in town, and all the way home (50 miles or so) and the other stations, while having programming I like, don't have much signal beyond 10 miles from town.

I realize the standard radios in most vehicles suck, but in a $30,000 pickup, couldn't there be 75 cents available for a better AM front end ?

[mass_citizen]

I agree with removing the nighttime power restrictions. Also FM is just way too crowded now and in my opinion most of the news, talk and sports programming that have recently switched to FM should have stuck with AM. The digital/stereo quality is really only needed for music broadcasts. I can hear someone talk just fine on AM and I can get reception for longer distances on roadtrips. My biggest peeve is having to find the local station that broadcasts the Sox game when travelling to Cape Cod, Maine, NH. When the games were on AM I would never have to change the dial.

[Duke87]

The changes to nighttime restrictions sound like they might make it more difficult to DX.

As for "saving AM", I dunno. It seems to me that the writing's already on the wall for AM/FM radio and it's only a matter of time before it goes the way of the dodo entirely. I know I almost never use my radio in my car and I really wouldn't miss it if my next car didn't have one.

On the other hand, the fact that cars are no longer being built with CD players will force a lifestyle adjustment when I get a new one.

[vdeane]

Agreed that FM is too crowded.  It's challenging to find a station to put my iTrip on in some areas, like NYC (even Albany gives me trouble sometimes).

[DeaconG]

Anyone remember when AM Stereo was going to save the medium? Hell, even when they proposed it I thought it was a decade late and several thousand dollars short.

[ARMOURERERIC]

My peeve is all the Northwestern Mexican station that come on line at 7PM using the same frequencies as existing San Diego stations, I finally found an AM station that broadcasts Padres games out of El Centro only to get a massive static burst at 7PM just before game time and now I am listening to a Mex station with the same frequency but different call letters.

As you know there are now many weird game sponsorships, and I am still amused at:  The Chevron Agricultural Lubricants of Imperial slide into the plate for a Padres game.

[mgk920]

The problem that I'm having with AM (besides the usual interference from very localized things such as florescent lamps with bad ballasts) is from the 'IBOC' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-band_on-channel digital hash from other radio stations.  The best way that I can describe it is being much like a very close-by thunderstorm that is trying to sound out words.  Just this past Monday, a station out of Milwaukee (WISN 1130 AM) that I like listening to (yes, I do like keeping up with discussions on the latest news and political happenings) while driving around here in Appleton started being blasted by IBOC hash from a local station here in the Appleton area (WHBY 1150 AM), rendering it unlistenable in my car and a very difficult listen on my usual 'daily driver' set at home.



That is something that I do want the FCC to address.



And yes, I fully agree with the overcrowded nature of today's FM broadcast band and stations that should never have gone to it.

Mike

[SP Cook]

AM 's problem is simply too many stations.  In smaller markets the music has moved to FM and the old AM stations are left, after one or two with talk and sports with placeholders like ESPN and  canned off the Sat programming.  Often with no commercials, just SPA s.

IMHO some economic system to get these stations off and thus leave viable stations with a better AD market is the thing to do.

[6a]

I agree with removing the nighttime power restrictions. Also FM is just way too crowded now and in my opinion most of the news, talk and sports programming that have recently switched to FM should have stuck with AM. The digital/stereo quality is really only needed for music broadcasts. I can hear someone talk just fine on AM and I can get reception for longer distances on roadtrips. My biggest peeve is having to find the local station that broadcasts the Sox game when travelling to Cape Cod, Maine, NH. When the games were on AM I would never have to change the dial.

I just don't see where removing nighttime restrictions would help. You would have stations talking over each other. Maybe look at the directional signal rules? We have a local station, WTVN, that doesn't have to power down.  Rather, it has to use a directional signal that makes it heard on the Lake Erie islands but not 5 miles southeast of the towers. Same thing with WBT in Charlotte. Their signal can be heard in Canada at night but go a couple miles west of the towers and the signal just disappears...so bad they got an FM repeater. That's done to protect a signal in North Dakota . Those stations could maybe reduce power but stay non directional to actually serve the whole market. AM is truly a funky beast.

[jp the roadgeek]

I agree with removing the nighttime power restrictions. Also FM is just way too crowded now and in my opinion most of the news, talk and sports programming that have recently switched to FM should have stuck with AM. The digital/stereo quality is really only needed for music broadcasts. I can hear someone talk just fine on AM and I can get reception for longer distances on roadtrips. My biggest peeve is having to find the local station that broadcasts the Sox game when travelling to Cape Cod, Maine, NH. When the games were on AM I would never have to change the dial.

Sox are still on the 50K watt flamethrower WTIC in Hartford.  Great reception within 30 miles all the time, and I've picked it up as far away as DC and near Quebec City at night.

[mass_citizen]

Sox are still on the 50K watt flamethrower WTIC in Hartford.  Great reception within 30 miles all the time, and I've picked it up as far away as DC and near Quebec City at night.

I miss the 50k days of weei when they were on 850

[bugo]

The problem with AM radio is that it's mostly right wing garbage.

[jp the roadgeek]

The problem with AM radio is that it's mostly right wing garbage.

And most of what the mainstream media puts out there is left wing garbage   But I digress.

[NE2]

holy crap liberal media

[SidS1045]

Speaking as a broadcast engineer with 40+ years experience:  These proposals are utterly divorced from reality and stem in large part from the FCC doing their level best over many decades to f*** up AM.  Congress had a hand in it too, since the FCC is a creature of Congress.

The list is long, but these are the most important bullet points:
--WAYYYYYY too many stations.  The FCC doesn't do social engineering very well, especially when it butts up against the laws of physics.  Directional antennas or not, you simply cannot shoehorn so many stations into a finite amount of bandwidth without something crying "uncle."  The FCC decided long ago that every hick town having its own station was a desirable goal.  Wasn't gonna work then and certainly won't work now, for economic as well as engineering reasons.
--Removing restrictions on nighttime power will only make the problem worse.  Nighttime conditions, under which signals bounce off the ionosphere's F layer and travel hundreds or thousands of miles, call for *reduced* power.  Just "turning up the volume" is like a room full of people, all shouting...you can't hear anyone.
--HD Radio on AM was a fool's mission from the start.  The HD signal rides "piggyback" on the analog AM signal in what used to be called the "guard band"...the area between AM channels that was supposed to guard those channels from interference.  HD, sometimes referred to as IBOC (in-band, on-channel), really ought to be called IBAC (in-band, adjacent-channel), because it spits carriers onto adjacent stations, thus increasing interference.  Further, for anyone with working ears, HD on AM sounds terrible because the digital encoding is low-bit-rate and highly compressed.  It is full of artifacts which even my 62-year-old ears find grating and fatiguing.  If the FCC had decided to move AM to all-digital in a new band (TV channels 5 and 6 are often mentioned, but are unavailable), this might have worked, but they insist on keeping AM in its present band.  The HD nonsense needs to stop - now.
--The FCC has almost completely abdicated their enforcement of Part 15 of their regulations, which deals with electronic devices which emit incidental RF signals, such as radio receivers, wireless microphones, switching power supplies, etc.  The amount of noise on the AM band due to non-Part-15-compliant devices, in some places, renders the AM band completely useless.

Finally, the biggest problem AM faces.  You can improve the engineering all you want to, but almost no one under the age of 50 listens to AM because they don't know it exists.  It's not on their radar.  Whether it's angry-old-man political talk, endless sports talk (lots of which is moving to FM), conspiracy theorists or hucksters plugging the latest miracle cures, that stuff simply doesn't resonate with young people.  Without programming that will attract the under-50 crowd, the best engineered AM radio system in the world will still have no one listening.

[thenetwork]

What I would like to see AM Radio do is if you are a 50,000 watt channel that can be heard across a sizable region by day and an even bigger continental region at night, then those flame-throwers should be required to air at least 75% of their programming as live and local content (giving stations the option of going satellite during the graveyard shift of Midnight to 6 PM).  Airing your local major/minor/college league sports team would count as live and local as well.

And even FM radio is getting too crowded.  our area added three more FM stations to the glut of available crappy stations where I live over the past year. Out of the three, two are strictly off satellite and one is locally automated. 

Considering that most stations don't have the manpower to break-in with local, important bulletins anymore when weather or safety conditions warrant, I can see people not preparing for a potential area disaster because the satellite guy thousands of miles away is talking as if everything is sunshine & puppy dogs.

[SidS1045]

What I would like to see AM Radio do is if you are a 50,000 watt channel that can be heard across a sizable region by day and an even bigger continental region at night, then those flame-throwers should be required to air at least 75% of their programming as live and local content (giving stations the option of going satellite during the graveyard shift of Midnight to 6 PM).  Airing your local major/minor/college league sports team would count as live and local as well.

The FCC, as a governmental entity, steadfastly refuses to get involved in dictating programming, thanks to something you may have heard of: the First Amendment.

[NE2]

The FCC, as a governmental entity, steadfastly refuses to get involved in dictating programming, thanks to something you may have heard of: the First Amendment.

Um.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine#Decisions_of_the_United_States_Supreme_Court

[6a]

What I would like to see AM Radio do is if you are a 50,000 watt channel that can be heard across a sizable region by day and an even bigger continental region at night, then those flame-throwers should be required to air at least 75% of their programming as live and local content (giving stations the option of going satellite during the graveyard shift of Midnight to 6 PM).  Airing your local major/minor/college league sports team would count as live and local as well.

The FCC, as a governmental entity, steadfastly refuses to get involved in dictating programming, thanks to something you may have heard of: the First Amendment.

That wasn't always the case, though. Quite a large portion of the commercial radio era was governed by the fairness doctrine, which most certainly dictated programming.

It is annoying as hell, however to tune in a far away station and hear Hannity or coast to coast or some other syndicated show. Part of the fun in dx-ing is hearing that local flavor.

E: damnit, NE2

[bugo]

The problem with AM radio is that it's mostly right wing garbage.

And most of what the mainstream media puts out there is left wing garbage   But I digress.

LOL

[SP Cook]

The so-called "fairness doctrine" (which is better translated as "the media disguises commentary as news, in order to avoid the so-called fairness doctrine) is thankfully a thing of the past.

In any event the original proposition that "its all right wing garbage" (read: people saying truthful things I wish really were not and cannot refute) is wrong.  In fact, less than 18% of all AM stations have a news talk format of any stipe at all.  Try again.

[NE2]

More than 81% of SP Cook is right wing garbage.

[SidS1045]

Um.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine#Decisions_of_the_United_States_Supreme_Court

"Refuses" (present tense), not "refused" (past tense).

Grammar > you.