Lost Another One..
 

...Radio station, that is. There was a VERY GOOD AM station in Blountville, Tennessee, that played stuff from the late '50s, ALL of the '60s, & early '70s. They got "off the beaten path", too, as they played stuff that wasn't the same tired stuff we've all heard 10K times. Not so heavy on the Motown, as so many of these stations usually are. Hey, all you pointy-headed programmers out there-OTHER people besides The Supremes, The Temptations, & the 4 Tops made music back then, you know...Lauriann commented on how good it was, too-AND they had a decent signal that didn't sound too bad even way down here. I LIKE music on AM-OK, it ain't hi-fi, but a good strong AM station is hard to beat, in my mind. Imagine my dismay the other day when I tried to get them & all I heard was "ZUS!JAYSUS!JAYZUS!JAYZ"...Well, OK, it was early in the morning, lotsa stations have preachers on in the morning. Flipped 'er on that afternoon..."AZUS!JAYZUS!JAYZUS!" Aww, chit...Another one bites the dust...Dammittall !

Hate it when that happens. I'm a big AM fan also, so I feel it too.

Sandy, I'm sorry to hear it. Seems that almost every time y'turn around, another decent station falls to the wayside. What I'd like to know is just precisely who listens to all these new stations and if the audience really is as big as they think.
Tom

Sorry to hear that Sandy.

I get attached to radio stations too, and feel bad when they leave...for years. If it's any consolation, fire up one of those big ass bacon fryers you got stashed around your shed, flip the selector to BC and tune to KEWI-AM 690 (Benton, AR) for Ron Norwood' s Doo Wop Express. Ron's a great guy, and he varies the music every week. It's on the air Monday and Tuesday at 4:00 pm Central.

Of course, there's always the option of internet or dish radio...

...nah, forget I said that.

I hear ya Sandy,,, it has gotten so bad here that I did the bad thing a year ago and got sirius,, but I travel in my car 50K a year for my job. Love listening to Elvis, Outlaw country and Classic vinyl. We still have an AM station out of Keokuk Iowa 13.10 that plays some good oldies, and even has classic radio programs every afternoon.
Dan

I know how you feel. There once were a lot of great AM stations here that I loved to listen to. There was KAFY, which was a pop/rock station until the early '90s, KBID which was a great jazz/big band station, KGEO which was an oldies station, and a top 40 station, KERN. KPMC was a station which had a mixed format. In the past few years ALL these stations have switched over to
either Spanish or talk radio formats.:tears: KUZZ, Which is one of the stations which
belonged to the late Buck Owens, is the ONLY local AM music station, but I'm not much of a country music fan so I don't tune in.:no:


Dumont-First with the finest in television.:yes:

There are still a lot of classic country/country AM stations around here...in Odessa one station even has changed from sports to classic country this year.
Around here there are places where you can only get a few radio stations total so an AM music station can still be viable.
Religious programming is often paid programming so the station makes money whether there are listeners or not.
I think it really is a labor of love to do an AM music station in a metropolitan area as it is tough to compete against other media.

I listin to www.kdav.com out of Lubbock Texas.

Monday - Friday
6 AM - 9 AM Bud Andrews & Bill Clement
Bud & Billy C. - "In the Morning" "West Texas Crude"

9AM - NOON Virgil Johnson
Formerly a member of the recording group, "The Velvets," and an inductee in the West Texas Walk of Fame.
NOON - 4 PM Smokin' Joe
4 PM - 5:30 PM Jerry 'Bo' Coleman
5:30 PM - 8 PM Dave on KDAV
Mon - Tues - Thurs. Bill Lee
Country-fied.
Fridays
8 PM - 6 AM Scott Seeburg
Enjoy Uninterrupted Music
Saturday
6 AM - NOON
1 PM - 4 PM Bill Lee
Country-fied. Playing music with a West Texas flavor.
4 PM - 6 AM Scott Seeburg
Enjoy Uninterrupted Music
Sunday
6 AM - 10 AM Mark Beneze
"Sunday Morning Memories"
NOON - 4 PM Unannounced Sightings of Professor George playing the "World's Rarest Tunes"
4PM - 8 PM
8 PM - MIDNIGHT Steve Hemmeline
The Softer Side of the Fifties and Sixies

MIDNIGHT- 6 AM Scott Seeburg
Enjoy Uninterrupted Music

polaraman

Sandy, I know how you feel...it was a VERY sad day when the world lost WNEW-AM 1130 (NYC) and "American Standards" with great DJs (including Jonathan Schwartz's Sinatra Saturday). Now 1130 AM is Bloomberg News after WNEW shifted first to 1560 AM and then 1560 became the garbage known as: Radio Disney. :gigglemad

Well, I INTENSLY dislike the "preacher stations"-There's WAY too many of 'em here, invariably they preach "Hellfar 'n' Brimstone" & the engineer must be a backwards child in one of the lower grades, because generally they have the modulation cranked to 11, & consequently sound extremely distorted.

I got a station like that up here: WACE. A daytimer (where the engineer occasionally forgets to shut down at sunset and leaves the transmitter going all night to stomp on Montreal's CKAC) where the programming is a mix of informercials for herbal remedies and religious programs. Some of them just sound like the minister has the mike inside his mouth and he's screaming his lungs out. Can't make out one single word... so how can any listeners?

Ovenmaster is almost at 5K :banana:


Go Go Go Go Go!!

OMIGAWD !! I've inspired a whole generation of budding young Post-Whores...<grin>

Says the man with the super high post-count .....:banana:

Come on, Alaska !! Catch up !! <grin>

AM catchin'-up

(see that, added an on-topic post that says nothing!).

Yeah, well, Walker, in all fairness, I DO have about a 3-years' head start on you...<grin> But you ain't doin' bad at all...

I hate it when a Good AM or FM station goes to talk radio or some other modern format. Have that same problem here in Warner Robins, GA. One FM station used to have a show on saturday nights that played songs from the 70's (not all the popular stuff, but what people would say are the forgotten songs of the 70's) that went talk radio. I normally listen to an oldies station that is good (on Sunday nights they play a lot of stuff from the 50's and early 60's :thmbsp: :music: ). It is not local so I can't pick it up at work (only 2 1\2 miles from home), but I can pick it up at the house and in the car.

I too mourn the loss of musical variety on AM. It used to be all you needed was an AM radio and there was something on for every area of listener interest. Stations did not change formats very often then. Now it is like every year something changes. Once you get attached to a station, it changes format to something unacceptable. There is too much business in the radio business. The love of money has replaced the love of the medium.

I don't like FM very much although the sound quality is good. The music stations have such narrow playlists that it is not long before you've heard them all a hundred times. I can't take the Gen-Ex music, rap or alternative that is on most of the stations. On FM I mostly like NPR when they're not begging for money.

Now I mostly listen to AM talk radio or shortwave. To me a portable radio without shortwave is almost useless.

I did recently discover an AM station that plays great 60s and 70s oldies, WGOP from Maryland. It is at 540 on the dial or simply Fifty-Four as I like to call it. It sounds great coming through my 1937 Philco 37-610 tombstone which also receives excellent shortwave.

For years I've toyed with the idea of adapting satellite to a big, 12-tube Zenith or some other quality vertical console. It's been discussed here, but I haven't acted on it. Imagine being able to enjoy everything from Big Band, classic country, DooWop or sixties rock on your favorite set, whenever you wanted!

To me, that would be the ultimate radio experience.

I like the tone of a quality AM signal, but here in AZ the interference can sometimes get really bad; especially during the monsoon season. I like FM, and we're lucky to have a few really good stations that not only play good music, but seem to be intelligent enough to stay in business. KOOL-FM (94.5) is owned by CBS and has been playing the same 60s/oldies/Motown format Since 1970. They produce a beautiful signal too; really punchy and loud, with lots of bottom end.

Sounds great on the MJ 1035!

I've given up on local AM and FM radio, and listen to shortwave most of the time now. Nowadays when I hunt for radios, I look first to ones with SW. My
current daily listener is a Stromberg-Carlson Model 1235 console which I got for the sole purpose of SW listening.


Dumont-First with the finest in television.:yes:

A good vintage radio is great for shortwave listening and I don't just mean the boatanchor type. My Philco 37-610 tombstone gets great shortwave reception, has an accurate dial with fine tuning control, pleasant sound quality and looks good enough for my wife to let me keep it in the living room.

For portable use, I have three favorites: Kaito 1102, Sony 7600GR and Eton E10.

For shortwave use I like to use my Hammarlund SP-600 JX-17. Excellent radio with good quality audio.

Yeah, but the damn preachers, left-and-right wingnuts, UFOs-shot-JFK-&-JR crowd have about taken over shortwave as well...

We lost one in Cleveland, too
 

I know the feeling. I like oldies, and was very disappointed when, about four years ago, a little 500-watt oldies station about 20 miles west of here (WELW, 1330 kHz, Willoughby, Ohio, east suburban Cleveland) dropped the format and went to syndicated talk. Haven't listened to the station since. It's probably just as well, as their nighttime signal (42 watts, directional) doesn't reach here anyway, although the daytime signal is fairly good here in east-central Lake County (one of the station's engineers told me in an email, in response to a question I had asked about the coverage area since they began low-power nighttime operation, that their signal is not supposed to reach this far east of Cleveland--I'm some 35 miles east of downtown). When it was playing oldies, the station had two very good DJs who formerly worked at the oldies FM station in Cleveland. I'll bet there were a lot of very disappointed and saddened listeners the last day of WELW's oldies format (a Friday), and I'm sure a lot of very rudely surprised oldies fans when they turned on their radios to 1330 the following Monday and heard, instead of oldies, high-powered syndicated talk programming. If I were a betting man (which I'm not), I'd be willing to bet the station has lost most of its listener base since the format switch, but I guess that's happened to almost all the other AM stations in the greater Cleveland area, and cities across the country as well.

Those of you who still have music stations within listening range are lucky, as most AMs these days are talk, sports, or preaching. I know there is only one music station left in Cleveland (WWMK, 1260 kHz) which is owned by ABC and is an affiliate of the Radio Disney pre-teen radio network. I'm 51 years old (just turned 51 today, July 9) and don't care for that kind of music. I liked 1260 a lot better when it was top-40 in the '60s/'70s, and when it was a big-band station (WBBG, a call sign now held by an FM oldies station in Youngstown, near Pittsburgh).

I'm not upset over any of the foregoing, however, as there are plenty of AM music stations within range of my town; my Zenith C845 gets them all quite well, as does my K-731. Here's a short list:

CHWO AM 740, Toronto (standards, streaming at http://www.am740.ca)
WKTX, 830, Cortland, Ohio (standards, daytime only, 80 miles from Cleveland)
WAKR, 1590, Akron, Ohio (standards, 30 miles south of Cleveland)

FM:

WKHR, 91.5, Bainbridge township, Ohio (standards/big band, 30+ miles from Cleveland) ; streaming on the Web at http://www.wkhr.org; Kenston High School students play the music during the school day and until 9 p.m. EST, then the station is automated all night long until eight a.m. the following morning.

All the hit music stations are on FM, including the oldies station, WMJI, "Majic 105.7"; on the Web at http://www.wmji.com. (WMJI has an HD subchannel as well [WMJI-HD2] which streams over the Web, but the music player needed to listen to that stream only works with Windows XP and Vista--darn it! I'm still running Windows 98SE.)

As for AM, however, every Cleveland station (except 1260) has dropped music and is now programmed with talk, sports or religious content. But this is hardly an isolated case; as I said, the same thing has happened in just about every city in the United States. Much of the time one has to do some looking to find music stations on AM these days; some cities do have AM music stations, but many times their signals are too weak to listen to (outside their normal listening area) or are daytime only (as was the suburban Cleveland oldies station I mentioned above, until it received authorization to operate with sharply reduced power and directional signal pattern after sundown).

WSM in Nashville still plays country after 70+ years and still, to the best of my knowledge, carries broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry, so there is at least one station that refuses to give in to the current trend, i.e. stations dropping music and going to talk or other non-music formats. CHOK-1070 in Ontario, Canada (I forget the city) was doing oldies until recently, when its owners decided to flip it to country a while back. CFCO-630 in Chatham, Ontario, was also spinning oldies until a couple of years ago; now it calls itself "Classic Hits CFCO" and simulcasts on FM at 92.9 (I think).

Oh well. Thank goodness for the Internet and services such as AOL Radio with XM (Nullsoft's Winamp media player comes equipped to receive all AOL with XM streams except the talk channels). Liking oldies as I do, I have my Winamp player set on AOL with XM Sixties on Six and Seventies on Seven, when I listen to music; otherwise, I will listen to my own collection of oldies CDs and cassettes, which I have ripped into my computer. The nice thing about that setup is that the music is uninterrupted and, when the player is set on shuffle (as mine is), the songs play at random, so one may never hear the same song twice if the playlist is several hundred songs long, again as mine is (I have some 500 songs in my Winamp player, which I've sorted into playlists--oldies, soft rock and so on).

My favorite FM stations are bookmarked in Winamp as well, so I almost never listen to terrestrial radio anymore. I all but gave up on local AM when the stations dropped music for talk; the Cleveland oldies station is good, but there's too much DJ chatter and commercials for my taste (except after midnight, when the station is automated). Now, if only WMJI-HD2 would stream in a format that Windows 98-compatible media players such as Winamp, et al. can use...

I can vouch for the great sound of KOOL-FM 94.5. I've heard it on the Web here near Cleveland (I have its stream bookmarked in my browser and listen to it now and then), and, as you say, it sounds fantastic. My only regret is that I cannot listen to it using my Winamp player; one must use the special CBS Radio music player to hear the stream. No matter. I like the station so well I'm willing to use an external player to hear it. That station (and KCDX 103.1) are my favorite Phoenix stations now. That's the beauty of Internet radio streaming--one need never be out of range of a favorite station, even if that station is hundreds or thousands of miles away; as well, stations that stream over the Web can and do increase their listener bases far beyond their over-the-air coverage areas. The oldies station in Cleveland, WMJI "Majic 105.7", is operated by Clear Channel Communications of San Antonio, Texas; it's been doing oldies since 1981 and streams on the Web at http://www.wmji.com. The station sounds great, both OTA and online, but it has too many commercials and too much DJ chatter for my taste, except when it runs 100-percent automated after midnight Eastern time. Even then, I like KOOL-FM 94.5 and another oldies station located in Chicago, WZZN 94.7 (http://www.wzzn.com online). The Chicago station is programmed entirely from the True Oldies Channel satellite oldies network and sounds great as well. There was a station about 35 miles east of me that was carrying the True Oldies Channel for about two years, more or less, then it switched to a talk format. :no:

Easy listening, aka elevator music, didn't die; it went from FM to the Internet. My favorite easy-listening Internet station is "The Breeze" from Crown Point, Indiana (northwest Indiana, near Chicago) ; its URL is bookmarked in my Winamp player. Their website is http://www.thebreez.com (that's without the 'e' at the end, as an announcer intones about once an hour when he gives the station's web URL). On their home page is a picture of an old-time radio, but don't let it fool you; it's not just for looks. That picture will, when clicked on, take you straight to the audio stream, as it is a link to the website I mentioned.

If you like what you hear on The Breeze, drop them a line and tell them so. There is a link on the home page just for that purpose. They read all email that comes in to their inbox, and they appreciate the feedback.

You are lucky to have so many different radio stations in the Phoenix area. Here in the Cleveland area, most stations from 92.3 MHz on up play rock, rap and other stuff, but no easy listening. Below 92 MHz, however, things are different. There is a very good big band/standards station on 91.5 MHz, WKHR-FM, operated by a local school district. It has students from a local high school as disk jockeys during school hours and until 9 p.m.; after nine p.m. the station is automated until about eight o'clock the following morning. Their website is http://www.wkhr.org if you want to listen online. Their OTA signal is very good everywhere in greater Cleveland, owing to the fact that the station is located in Geauga County, Ohio. This county's elevation above sea level is very high, which means the station's antenna tower is higher than those of most Cleveland stations; the latter have their transmitters and antenna towers in a southwestern suburb of Cleveland called Parma (a few stations have their towers/transmitters in another southwestern suburb known as North Royalton, and still others have their transmitters in yet another SW suburb called Seven Hills). Cleveland station WENZ (Z107.9, urban) also has its transmitter and towers in Geauga County. This station runs only 16kW effective radiated power (ERP) vertical and horizontal these days, but in the 1960s and '70s, and possibly into the early eighties, it was a monster running 70kW ERP in both directions, for a whopping 140kW ERP signal. The FCC ordered WENZ to reduce its output to 16kW about 20 years ago, IIRC, when new FMs went on the air in Pittsburgh and Toronto, Canada, on 107.9 MHz. I would be willing to bet, if I were a betting man (I'm not), that, when WENZ began operating with only 16kW ERP vertical and horizontal, the station's older engineers probably sighed, "Oh well, it was fun while it lasted." They would be referring, of course, to the station's days as a 70-kW ERP powerhouse. I don't think anyone around here will ever forget those days. Kinda' like when WLW in Cincinnati first went on the air in the '30s with a 500-kW transmitter. The signal was so powerful that it caused light bulbs to glow, even out of their sockets, and in lamps that were not even plugged into an AC outlet. The problem was lessened, if not completely solved, when the FCC limited the maximum power any U.S. AM radio station could run to 50kW.

BTW: Nolan, I have a picture of Phoenix, Arizona during monsoon season as my computer desktop wallpaper. Nice to look at, but I bet monsoon season is no picnic in that area.

I can think of at least one way you can hear satellite radio through your treasured Zenith antique radios; just connect the audio output of your satellite receiver or computer across the volume control (using a series blocking capacitor, of course). The sound will be reproduced through your radio's own audio system and speaker, and it will be great if your set's audio system is good, as all Zeniths are. I once had a 23" Zenith b&w TV with a hi-fi sound system; I hooked up the audio output of an old FM tuner across the volume control, and it worked/sounded fantastic. :yes: Unfortunately, I had to give it up when I moved about three years later. :no: And after all the work I had put into it (new tubes, etc.)! Oh well, it was plenty of fun while it lasted. :yes:

Well, ONE is bucking the trend-WQBB 1040 AM in Knoxville-"The Music of Your Life"- but they're too weak to be heard up here, 60 miles up the road..

I'd think it would be coming in at your place like gangbusters.
 

Sandy, I'm surprised you don't hear WQBB from just 60 miles away. I just looked up the station on Radio-Locator.com and found that it runs 10kW (daytime only) and 3kW during critical hours (two hours before sunrise and two hours after sundown).You should be able to hear it just fine with that 10kW signal, but then again the signal may be so sharply directional (favoring greater Knoxville) that it won't reach your area. As I mentioned in a post to this forum last night, there is a very small station some 20 miles west of me that is absolutely inaudible in my area at night, probably for the same reasons. That station runs only 42 watts at night, probably with a sharply directional signal pattern during dusk to dawn hours as well that concentrates the station's signal on the west Lake County/eastern Cuyahoga County area (suburban Cleveland). The daytime signal (500 watts) is directional as well, with the pattern covering pretty much the same area, though I can hear it fairly well here until it goes to the night pattern; then it drops into the noise.

No one writes more thoughtful, informed and downright eloquent posts than Jeff. Happy birthday bud!

Thanks for the boatload of links. I've got Chicago's 94.7 'True Oldies' streaming right now. Great station! That's a new bookmark-

Like everywhere I imagine, Arizona has its highs and lows. It is brutal right now, but us desert rats are old hands at dealing with it. Monsoon storms wreck AM signals, but it won't get really bad until next month when the rains and storms really hit. Sometimes it's all day, but especially after 6:00pm. We shut all the lights off and watch the lightning show through the house windows.

Yeah, we have a few AM music stations here in Pittsburgh, one is on 620 and the other is 770, both owned by the same people. There is an alternative/heavy metal station in the 1500's somewhere too. BTW, a lot of the older music was mixed especially for AM radio. I also like to listen to WABC out of NYC every Saturday night from 6 to 10 PM when they have their oldies show.

My best Radio memory was when i got a moped at 15 y/o. i went exploring everywhere on that scooter. I grew up about 1 mile from the WLAC am transmitter in Nashville. One day i stopped in and knocked on the door, "these were the days when transmitters had to be manned 24-7" and asked if i could see the transmitter. I think this surprised the engineer on Duty "Chester S." but he was tickled to death to show off the whole site. I got to see the "not too old" Continental tube transmitter, the huge back-up generators, parts of the old back up studio, and the amazing glowing fluorescent light bulbs that lit up in you hand, out at the antenna. and he showed me another cool trick. he gave me a door key and told me to touch it to the ground plane of the main antenna "Its a wide copper strap that wraps around the concrete block at the base of a antenna" When i did that it threw big sparks. He said at the ground point there is 0 volts but alot of amps.
I would drop in from time to time just to talk about radio and stuff, and listen to the big fans cool the transmitter and i would listen to various things echo the audio inside of the transmitter. In the summer time it was really nice to visit him, because that building had wonderful air conditioning! those days ended when they installed a remote control system, laid off the full time engineers, and then switched the music format to talk radio. It made Chet laugh when i said they went from music to 50,000 watts of hot air. I miss those days and i miss the old Western Electric broadcast components they had stored in a back room. If i only thought to ask for that old "junk"
Logan

We lost one here a couple of years ago that really caused an uproar. That station was 670-WYLS. As long as I can remember, that station has played easy listening type music. It finally got to the point where the station was only on the air from 7-10 AM for I'm sure financial reasons. The owner of this station had an R&B / rap FM station that was the "bread and butter." I talked to the owner once and he was a really nice older guy that just wanted to keep the music going, even if for only a few hours a day. Then, some of our old DJ's in this town got together with the owner of this station and got it back up to full speed playing old country, big band, pop, older rock, and some old gospel. There was a Saturday morning DJ that played nothing but R&R from the '50's, '60's, and '70's. The music on this station was not always the tired old top 10 songs played over and over on the FM stations. Finally, decent music on AM again. That really got me motivated to fix more tube radios! Sometime during all this, the original owner passed away and the station went to his son (figured out where I'm going yet). It was the day after New Years a couple of years ago when I sat in my easy chair, flipped on the old Philco, and heard nothing but "hollering and noise." Without warning, this station converted to an African-American gospel format! Now, that move caused a load of phone calls to the station from angry listeners as well as some letters written to the editor of our local newspaper. Do you think the head knockers at that station listened? NO, OF COURSE NOT! Now, all we've got on AM is three African-American / Urban Gospel stations, one Southern Gospel station, and two "news/talk" stations. The talk stations and the African-American gospel stations do nothing for me. I can listen to the Southern gospel station in moderation. I'm a Christian myself; but, I really don't want to hear all the "hollering" on most of the AM gospel stations and I sure don't want to hear the "I know it all and you're an idiot" talk radio shows. When I turn on a radio, I want to hear good MUSIC! The Southern gospel station tends to play more music than the other gospel stations; but, I'd like to hear other types of (older) music on AM as well. My favorite music is R&R from the '50's, '60's, and '70's. If I ever win $10 million; maybe, I can do something.