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...