Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada AM radio silent; are U.S. stations next?
 

I just looked at the Canadian radio listings on RadioStationWorld.com and noticed that every one of the AM stations in Halifax, Nova Scotia have gone silent, transferring their programming to FM. I'm wondering if the same thing might eventually happen in the US. With most AM stations in this country now programming talk, sports or religion (there are, however, a few small, low-power music stations left, but they are few and far between these days), I wouldn't be surprised if AM in the US goes completely silent in a few years, with most existing small AMs silencing their over-the-air operations and going to streaming audio over the Internet, if not to FM.

One station near me, a 1kW daytime-only station in rural Geauga County, Ohio, roughly 40 miles east of Cleveland, that had tried four different formats since its initial sign on in 1969 (each of which obviously failed miserably to bring in the listeners, to say nothing of the advertising revenue, the station desperately needed to stay on the air) went silent on Memorial Day about five years ago, and was never heard from again. I knew the station had left the air for good when I tried to call their studio line a few days later; I got a recording from the telephone company stating that the number had been disconnected. I don't know what has happened to the station's studio, transmitter building, etc. since then.

There's only one major broadcaster left in NS that has AM- AVR/Maritime Broadcasting Systems. (various frequencies in various locations)

I'd wager these towers are simply being run until the hardware fails, since they also have an FM frequency.

Yes, AM is going the way of the dinosaur, except for those small home-brew stations run by local folks with a passion.

i posted a thread about it when it happened here in Halifax...as you say we did pick up a few new fm stations,which for the most part are a bit more relevant,to me at least...and really other than enthusiast types dealing with antiques,pretty much anyone with a radio these days has FM capabilites.

AM going away here has really been a non issue..most people didn't even notice...just a little while ago,a GF of mine was telling me how the radio didnt seem to work in her classic car anymore,she insisted that it used too but that it must have broken somehow...she doesn't drive the car regularly and didn't realize that there was just nothing for it to pick up anymore...!

Post Deleted By Author

Please learn what words mean before you use them.

Quite frankly, I'm glad to see the world you live in go - a world of rampant racism, sexism, discrimination based on all sorts of personal qualities, political fearmongering (ok, that one is still alive and well), assassinations, fear of devastating nuclear war, etc. Good riddance.

Harsh comment the last one, but putting socialism and flat panels in the same
category is not the idea of the century either. If AM were sonically superior
to FM, more people would listen to it, but unfortunately for the dreamers, it
is the other way around.

Rampant sexism...have you looked at your avatar lately??? :)

I think this thread is gonna get closed if the political crap goes any further.

I will do my best to stay on topic concerning AM stations.

Fortunately, in the DFW area and there's other major markets that AM does have a presence in the field. Besides the talk, we also have oldies, sports, country, tejano, soul/gospel/r&b, all on the AM dial.

I know there's been topics discussing the extermination of the AM band as we know it but unless someone can affirm this I kinda find it hard to believe.

I think AM will be around for a while yet--exactly how long is anybody's guess. Here in Seattle, one of our AM news/talkers (KIRO 710) moved to FM about a year ago, which I found somewhat alarming (710 AM went to all-sports). But, we still have about half a dozen AM stations that play music; and no AM stations have gone dark yet.

Aren't there other AM radio stations within 24/7 listening range of Nova Scotia? I somehow cannot believe that the AM radio dial in your area is now 99.999 percent dead air since all but one of their AM stations has gone silent. Is Nova Scotia that far away from any other major city in Canada that stations from other parts of the country are not heard during the day? At night, 50kW stations from the U. S. East Coast should come in to the Halifax area like gangbusters as that city, not to mention the province of Nova Scotia itself, are not that far away from the US border. I would think, for example, that Toronto's CFZM 740 -- which runs 50kW with a signal pattern beamed at the city and also the northeastern US -- could be heard in Halifax as well, not to mention other 50kW stations across the border in New England and the NE United States (Hartford, Connecticut's WTIC, Buffalo, New York's WKBW, et al).

Your girlfriend's car radio must have antenna problems, as she should be hearing some nearby stations, as I mentioned. Perhaps the antenna leadin broke off at the base; this often happens in winter during a hard freeze, when water gets into the antenna base, freezes, and breaks an insulator, resulting in the antenna leadin either shorting to the base or the center conductor breaking off at the point where it connects to the antenna, not to mention poor or no connections at the other end of the cable that plugs into the radio's antenna socket; any one of these conditions will kill all reception. Remember, with car radios, the antenna is extremely important; without it, the radio simply will not work at all, unless you are within shouting distance -- literally -- of a local station, and even then there is no guarantee you will hear anything because the interior of any vehicle is just about the poorest place there is for any kind of radio reception.

Please note that the foregoing applies to today's embedded windshield auto radio antennas as well as the older fender-mounted ones. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that a car radio will not operate at all without an antenna connected to it. The leadin cable alone won't work as an antenna because it is shielded; again, unless you are in an incredibly strong signal area, trying to use only the leadin cable without the actual antenna won't work worth a plugged nickel.

She's covered...more completely than quite a few outfits of the past 50 years. ;)

I would think that there would be signals coming in from elsewhere, too. The AM dial around here is rather crowded.

I agree 100 percent. I started this thread, and do not appreciate such comments either. VK has very specific rules about political content in postings; anyone who goes counter to those rules will be warned that he is skating on thin ice, and if this doesn't stop the political grandstanding in its tracks immediately, the errant poster will be suspended and/or banned from ever posting to these forums again.

To compucat, I can say only the following (the rest will be up to the moderators): The subject of this thread is the question of whether US AM radio stations will eventually go silent as many of Canada's (and all of Halifax, Nova Scotia's) stations have; your rants have no place here. Please, keep your political views to yourself and your remarks on topic. I'm sure VK's moderators will tell you the same thing. I would also suggest that you carefully read VK's forum rules, if you haven't already. They will go into detail as to what is and is not allowed in these forums; indeed, they need to be read and clearly understood beyond the shadow of even the most unreasonable doubt by every VK member before he or she makes his or her first post.

Yeah, guys, you wanna argue politics, go over to Political Chat...There's no room for this kind of nonsense here.

Does this mean the entire AM band in NS is fair game now? Not much that I can get here where I am, but at night it's real good.

Quite possible; I was referring more to local stations. I just had a quick listen and I hear a lot of tea kettles and something that sounds like SSTV... but little else. (could also be that my antenna is crap- I'll try another set later.)

Edit: Confirmed- there's nothing remotely tunable except for the one AM station I mentioned.

Ooohhh... a fellow Haligonian :D
The only reason I know and posted here is because I was looking to see what I could listen to on the AM-only tube set I'm restoring (Fleetwood 4068 thread here)

Hi could it be propogation affecting what you are hearing..Here AM is loaded up day and night..I hear stuff from Canada too here at night. How many stations are we talking about..Could be they all belong to the same network or owner?Just a guess on my part. Sprman55 : )

What do you hear on AM radio, as a rule, in your town? Just curious.

I thought your area gets most Jonesboro, Arkansas AM stations full time. I just looked at the profile for your town on CityData.com, and found that you are but a short distance from Jonesboro. Evening Shade is not that far from Memphis either (if you consider 100+ miles "not far"). I'd think you could hear both cities' major 50kW AM stations in daytime and until/unless they change their signal patterns after sundown. Fifty-kW full-time stations had literally coast-to-coast range at night (when daytimers on the former clear channels had to sign off at local sunset, leaving the clears quiet at night, and all night except for, at most, two 50kW stations, one on either coast) before the FCC did away with the clear channels and granted daytimers the option of running at limited nighttime power (from five to a maximum of 500 watts), often with directional antennas, about 25 years ago; however, since you are just over 100 miles from Memphis, I'd think you would hear their 50kW stations in spite of the FCC ruling that now limits former clear-channel stations' coverage to 750 miles in all directions.

i haven't tried extensively to see what i could get...i did get something faint out of new england tuning manually around one night in the car,[auto search just goes round and round the dial endlessly]that was right around the time they announced the last local station was signing off so i was checking...whatever i got was religious programming,so i didn't listen long enough to see where it was originating from,Maine tho i think...

my restored Nordmende carmen gets nothing on AM[shortwave gets a few things],but it lacks an external antenna,and the internal one is probably shielded by the large internal foil FM antenna! when i briefly powered on my new Bendix project,it was on AM and it was getting "something" here and there..not anything really listenable but i was surprised that it was at least"seeing" faint signals...from "somewhere" during the late afternoon...

as for the girlfriends car...pushbutton presets...the stations around here were likely set ages ago and haven't moved,i doubt she tried to spin the dial manually when all the locals were absent...car is a 67 Pontiac Beaumont BTW...stored all winter and never frozen..i think there's only about 40k on it??!!

Rules?
 

I must be missing something... A while back, I noticed that many posters on this forum will not use the term "eBay" or will use a disclaimer such as "I am not associated with this auction" when posting a link to an eBay auction... I went looking for a videokarma rule section, to find out what is permitted with respect to eBay links. I could not find any rules. I have always tried to use common sense in posting, and hope that I have not offended anyone, but if there are specific rules, please direct me to their location.
Thanks!
jr

As for a 1KW daytimer station going dark, I wondered how such stations could have ever survived even 40 years ago. As it is, the AM band is a little overcrowded and if a daytimer goes dark, it's less interference to stations in nearby markets in the same channel. AM tends to be large regions of interference with small islands of service.

You didn't do or say anything wrong. My remarks were directed to VK member compucat, who had made several politically-charged remarks in his reply to this thread; in fact, VK member AUdubon5425 saw that reply and even made a statement that this thread could be closed if the political "crap" (his word) doesn't stop. I just looked at the thread a few minutes ago, however, and found that compucat has since deleted his post, so I think that's the end of the problem.

One of the problems with the 1kW daytime station I mentioned was that, in the last year or so before it signed off permanently, it was a sports station being programmed from a satellite feed--with little or no local programming. The other problem was that this station was trying (unsuccessfully) to compete against a 50kW sports station in Cleveland; the daytimer was in a very small town that received the 50kW station (and most other radio stations in the Cleveland radio market) very well, so it is likely that listeners in the small town were tuning in to the 50kW sports station a lot more than they were listening to the smaller local one. This always means trouble for radio stations because they depend on advertising revenue to stay on the air; this is especially true for small stations in one-horse towns. The small station in the Geauga County, Ohio town I mentioned in my post is no exception. They tried everything in their power to keep from going under--among the things they tried was an attempt to get FCC approval to move to 870 kHz, so they could install a more powerful transmitter. That failed miserably; I don't know for certain why, but I have a suspicion that, since 870 kHz is only 20 kHz (0.2 MHz) up the dial from a 50kW Cleveland station at 850 (the station the 1kW daytime Geauga County station was trying to compete against), there were concerns that the two stations could interfere with each other, or worse, the Cleveland station could obliterate the smaller one. Another problem, had the Cleveland sports station moved to 870 kHz, would have been nighttime interference to 50kW WWL-AM radio in New Orleans, also on 870, unless the Cleveland station employed a very sharply directional nighttime signal pattern and reduced its nighttime power to well below 5kW (the station runs, and has run since it increased power to 50kW a few years ago, 4700 watts nighttime on 850 kHz). Yet another problem, and why the 1kW daytime Ohio station finally threw in the towel when it signed off for the last time on Memorial Day about five years ago, was that by now the station was literally falling apart--antenna towers had been improperly anchored to the ground and could have toppled in the first good windstorm, an antiquated transmitter and studio equipment, and other problems the owner just couldn't deal with any longer. The AM station went silent shortly thereafter and the owner/licensee, Music Express Broadcasting, then decided to concentrate its efforts on maintaining and operating the other station it owns, WKKY-FM 104.7 in a small town on the shores of Lake Erie.

I think the US would be better off without AM radio, as most of the stations are talk, sports or religion--formats that could easily be moved either to the Internet (streaming audio) or to FM. The problem, however, with moving underperforming AM stations to FM, especially in smaller markets, is the sheer cost of operating another station (which many cities cannot afford, especially in today's economy, to say nothing of the fact that most major cities' FM stations are running, and have been running for years or in some cases decades, established formats already and would be unwilling to switch), unless the AM station moved its programming to an existing FM station that itself was underperforming so badly it was on the verge of collapse.

Streaming audio over the Internet looks, on paper anyway, like a viable alternative to over-the-air broadcasting, but it too is very expensive to maintain once the stream is established. Unless the station's owner is sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that enough people will listen to his/her station to keep the stream online for more than just a few weeks or months, exclusively streaming a radio station over the Internet at the expense of the station's over-the-air signal is a risk few if any stations can afford to take. A small local station near the Cleveland suburb in which I grew up does stream over the Internet, but it is a talk station whose owners probably are convinced will survive since people such as myself who cannot, by virtue of the station's 42-watt directional nighttime signal, hear the over the air broadcast can log on to the station's Internet site and listen to the station's programming there.

Within my home, even with an outdoor antenna, I can only seem to pull in KRMG 740 from Tulsa, OK at night. I suspect it's one of the three running computers in this room, probably this one. I can take my little wooden Transitone outside and get a dial full

Jeffhs, I'd hate to see AM go away!

When I travel, I prefer listening to AM and if it's nightime I'll dx depending on where I am, and I like to hear the weather and road conditions also.

There's also Trucker related shows on at night too..more people may listen to AM then you realize, and like I mentioned I live in a major market area.

It's bad enough that we have to feed our vintage TV's artificial signals but with the mobility of AM (and our vintage radios) we can still have AM!

No problems with AM in south central PA: lots of stations daytime and lots more at night, quite listenable. Daytime I hear locals and Harrisburg, Philly, Reading, Lancaster, York. Nightime all of these plus New York, Boston (WBZ is a blowtorch), etc. etc., all possible on an AA5 with its own loop. Gotta turn off the computer and be sure no light dimmer is on, though.

There are many AM stations here, too many to move them all to FM. Although formats have changed, every occupied dial position has remained occupied as long as I can remember although a few stations have traded dial positions with others. AM reception here is usually good. DXing is great here too. I get a station from Canada, AM 740, called Zoomer Radio. They play oldies and vintage radio shows. I hope AM never goes away because many of my vintage radios would become obsolete.

Wow! What a great location for Dxing! :yes:
I just looked up the location on "Radio Locator" and found that you should be in range of something like 37 stations... but with mostly weak reception. More FMs than AMs within range. Great place for a R-390!:music:
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin...&x=20&y=4&sid=
jr

I have a lot of comments related to the current state of commercial broadcasting that I'll save for a different thread, different time. However, I used to be an avid listener to AM. No matter where I was located, I'd find a radio and tune around until I found Art Bell. Then - I was a happy camper. He's been gone for a while now, replaced by George Noory, so I don't really listen to that show as often anymore. I don't really care for most of the syndicated talk shows, trucker shows, all-sports stations, religious broadcasters, etc. Really the only AM station I ever listen to anymore is WGN 720 from Chicago. They've got LIVE, LOCAL talk, great hosts, interesting topics (gotta love website wednesday night, lol) Generally if I want to listen to music on the radio, I don't even bother with AM. Its too noisy and low bandwidth so it generally sounds like crap, for me FM and HDradio are the way to go.

Well, haul 'er on over one night! :thmbsp:

I know here in Chicago, AM is going nowhere in the forseeable future (next couple of years anyways). AM stations account for a large portion of the top 10. I also heard somewhere (rumor only) that with the demise of the smaller stations, large stations like WGN and WBBM would be allowed to increase their power even more making them almost nationwide. This is the first I've heard of the demise of the whole band. Although programming won't be local for a lot of you, at least it won't be these computer operated stations where there is not even a human in the studio.

I'm not far from Evening Shade, and Dxing conditions are great. I pick up all kinds of stuff out of several states on my radios, I've even picked up a station out of Window Rock, AZ a few times on my DX-160.

Local?..I love hearing about the blizzards and the road conditions as I sit in comfort down here!

You mean that I'll get these even better than I do now?:D

Don't forget about WLS either!

Is there anyplace that can't get Chicago stations??

I can get Chicago fine here in south central PA. Don and Roma in the morning, etc. etc. I can almost always get WBBM and WLS. Early winter mornings in the car I would switch from them to WWL New Orleans, and even WHO, Des Moines sometimes. But could not always get KDKA Pittsburgh. Back in the day when WLS played music, remember "Double-you, ELL, ess: Larry LUjack!"

WLS-FM still plays music (oldies) on the Internet at 947trueoldies.com. WLS-AM 890 flipped to talk several years ago; the oldies (which were top-40 in the '50s-'60s) went to WLS-FM 94.7 shortly before or shortly after that.

I like oldies, as I grew up in the late '60s-'70s, so I bookmarked WLS-FM's website immediately after hearing of it some time ago. I couldn't listen to the stream until now, however, due to the station using a streaming provider and music player at the time (last year or the year prior) that simply would not work with Firefox 2. WLS-FM's new player, however, works fine with FF2; I just heard Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock around the Clock" on 94.7 a few minutes ago.

Cleveland had two excellent top-40 AM stations in the '60s and '70s: 50kW WKYC-AM 1100 and 5kW WIXY 1260. The former was operated by NBC at the time and had some of the wildest DJs I've ever heard (I particularly remember "Big Jack" Jackson Armstrong, who had a program on 1100 and later on 1260; unfortunately, he passed away recently in North Carolina).

WIXY 1260 had some wild characters spinning wax at the time as well, but that station's downfall was that its 5kW signal could not be heard well east of Cleveland; the further east of Cleveland you went, the weaker the signal became, until by the time you were well outside the Cleveland area (eastern Lake County and beyond) you couldn't hear the signal at all. I was living in a Cleveland suburb at the west end of Lake County at the time and was able to hear the station 24/7; however, where I live now, at the eastern end of the county, I can barely hear the signal in the daytime. Since 1260 is now Radio Disney, however, I have no use for the station (or any Cleveland AM station, for that matter); 1260's format these days is geared towards young teenagers, and I am almost 54 years old.

WKYC 1100 and its FM arm, WKYC-FM, were sold from NBC in 1970; both stations have had several ownership changes since then. The AM station went through several callsign and format changes, eventually becoming talk radio WTAM 1100 some years ago; the FM station also had several changes in calls and formats, winding up in 1982 as WMJI "Majic 105.7" oldies -- the call sign and format it has had since 1981. I remember WKYC-AM's wild DJs, as I mentioned, and also, since the station was an affiliate of the (now defunct) NBC radio network at the time, it picked up a weekend variety program known as "Monitor Beacon" that was simulcast over that station and WKYC-FM.

Monitor went off the air in 1975, by which time WKYC-AM had changed calls to WWWE (3WE) 1100 and was playing a middle-of-the-road music format. WKYC-FM played automated beautiful music (formerly known as "elevator music" because it was also played in elevators at the time) from the time it was sold until about the mid-'70s. WKYC-FM then became an adult rock station and remained with that format until 1981, when it was flipped to oldies (now known as "classic hits") and the callsign changed to WMJI. The station (and presumably WTAM1100, formerly WWWE, as well) is presently owned by Clear Channel Communications of San Antonio, Texas.

WKYC-AM 1100 was a true clear-channel station, running 50kW day and night. The only other station on 1100 all night long was then-KFAX in San Francisco, California, also a 50kW clear-channel operation. The other small stations on 1100, and there were a few in smaller towns and suburbs of major cities, were required to sign off at sundown to protect the 50kW operations from what is known as "skywave" interference. Station CKLW, 800 kHz (The Big Eight) in Windsor, Ontario, Canada was also a clear-channel flamethrower, being the only station on 800 kHz from sundown to sunrise. As with WKYC, et al., CKLW's 800-kHz frequency was occupied during the day by smaller stations which were required to sign off at sundown local time.

The FCC abolished clear channels about 25 years ago. The new rules now state that former clear channel stations must limit their coverage to, at most, 750 miles (directional at night if necessary), day and night. The reason for this was so that low-power local-service stations, presently daytime-only, operating on the former clear channels could serve their areas full-time if they desired (and had the money to) do so. Today, the new regulations state that former daytime-only stations operating on the former clear channels may operate full time, but they must decrease their power output by a certain level after local sundown time; as well, many stations must now use sharply directional signal patterns, attained by transmitting from one or more directional towers, separate from the station's daytime arrays. This is especially true of stations that operate 50kW during the day and were formerly licensed for dawn-to-dusk operation. If these stations go to full-time operation on a former clear channel (or any other frequency in the AM broadcast band), however, they must either reduce power to 5kW or less with a directional signal pattern after sundown or else sign off after local sundown time. A sports-talk station in Cleveland on 850 kHz recently increased its daytime power to 50kW, but must go to 4.7 kW and directional antenna after sundown Eastern time; a Detroit ESPN sports station on 1270 kHz did the same thing and operates under the same rules since it increased its power to 50kW daytime. Given the close proximity of Detroit to Cleveland, however, I cannot for the life of me see how the former's WXYT-1270 can operate 50kW during the day without interfering with Cleveland's WWMK-1260 (10kW day/5kW night); after all, the two stations are adjacent to each other on the dial. Unless there is a 5-kHz (+/-) guard band between adjacent AM frequencies, I cannot imagine these stations operating this way without one causing serious interference problems for the other in daytime, as the Cleveland station runs 10kW days/5kW nights; the Detroit station could drown it out without half trying since it runs 50kW 24-7. :scratch2:

KMOX 1120 in St. Louis is still listed as a 50kW, non-directional station. http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=9638

As is WTAM on 1100. http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=59595

KFAX is still 50kW day and night, but is licensed for a directional antenna array. http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=59595

Additionally, according to the Wikipedia article on clear-channel stations, they're not prohibited from broadcasting past 750 miles, they just don't have signal protection outside that radius. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station

WXYT transmits using 9 tower directional array focusing most of its power to the north.

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=28627

Day plot:
http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Da...7235-78705.pdf

Night plot:
http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Bureaus/MB/Da...7235-78706.pdf

Also, there is no 750 mile limit set by the FCC for former clear channel stations. This radius is the "protected" zone, meaning that other stations may transmit on that frequency as long as their signal strength is within certain limits at the edge of the 750 mile protected zone. Many former 50KW Clear channel enjoy a considerable "bonus coverage" today, well above the 750 mile protected zone.
jr

I can recieve KMOX here also but what really suprised me one night was when I was able to get WWJ/720/Detroit! That area of the band is crammed at night.

Maybe my G500 Trans-oceanic helped a little though...!!

The FCC may write the regulations it wishes, signals that bounce on the ionosphere
will sometimes go very far, sometimes not that far. AM DXing is probably more
interesting than listening to actual program content. I can't wait until the sunset!
By the way, there's a thread on the vanishing AM stations, I will look it up and
post the link.

Here it is:

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=242866

Nah, you need an R-392, the "portable" version of the R-390...Makes a dandy heated campstool, & you can stick one under a corner of yr Jeep to hold it up, if you've lost a jack...Supposedly, they'll work underwater, but even I'M not stupid enuff to test that myth...(grin)