Quote:
Originally Posted by Arkay
I can't pull in many AM stations here (except at night, when I get mainland Chinese ones almost like pulling in shortwave!), but I recently learned that the main AM station I like to listen to --probably the best of the few English-language stations here-- is actually broadcasting now in AM STEREO! I have to rig up an AM stereo receiver, to give that a listen!
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Interesting. AM stations here in the US were experimenting with stereo transmission about twenty years ago (there was at least one AM stereo station in the Cleveland, Ohio area at the time), but the idea never caught on.
I remember one all-news station in Chicago in the late '80s (WMAQ-AM 670, now WSCR ESPN sports) that was also transmitting in AM stereo, but they gave up on that experiment as well when they were sold and changed their format several years later.
I don't know if AM stereo receivers are even available new-in-box anymore; if they are, you may be looking quite a while before you find one, except perhaps on the used market (i.e. eBay or Craigslist). At least that's how it stands here in the US. I have yet to actually see an AM stereo receiver up close, although I saw ads for them here and there in ad flyers in my Sunday newspaper, etc. when the system was finally approved for use by US radio stations.
BTW, I'm amazed that Hong Kong has few if any AM radio stations. It may be, as it is here in the US, that FM radio in Hong Kong is more popular by far than AM these days--forcing many AM stations off the air or to run automated formats, as several AM stations in my area near Cleveland, Ohio have done over the last few years. Two examples: The local AM station here (actually about five miles from my apartment) was a fairly good local news and music station until a year or so ago, when it was sold and the new owner switched it to nearly 100-percent syndicated satellite programming; the same happened to a station near where I grew up. The latter was also a music station for 40-odd years, but its owner recently decided there was more money in talk radio, so five years ago or so that station was flipped from oldies to 100-percent satellite talk.
The foregoing is a very sad commentary on the state of United States AM radio in the 21st century, but unfortunately the owners of those stations care only about their bottom line (read money), so they have decided in most cases, of necessity, to flip their stations from music to talk. (Most stations, in fact almost all 50kW stations, in U.S. major cities are now talk, news, sports or religion.) Even that isn't enough to save some very small local stations from floundering; many such stations have been forced off the air due to financial difficulties, problems maintaining aging equipment and towers they cannot afford to replace (this actually happened to a station some 20 miles south of here about five years ago), and so on.
U.S. AM radio is not the powerhouse it once was; in fact, it is but a shadow of its former self these days. It wouldn't surprise me if some day all AM stations here either left the air entirely or moved to FM, leaving the AM broadcast band all but quiet as a mouse--except at night, when one might hear a few stations from other countries. The big money these days is in FM and Internet radio, so I think AM's demise may be a lot closer than we may think.