[Jeffhs]

The local AM station in my area (actually, it's about five miles from me) runs automated black gospel and has the worst sounding announcers I have ever heard on commercial radio. For example, the station has an hourly announcement that identifies the station as "fourteen sixty, doubleya-ABQ"; sounds like the "announcer" is a young girl with no broadcasting experience whatsoever and a terrible voice. It's a darn shame, since this station used to be a full-service local station with live DJs, playing top-40 music with news at the top of every hour and community news updates throughout the day. It was sold at least twice, served for a year or so as a local relay for a classical FM station that moved to a frequency unlistenable anywhere east of Cleveland, and was most recently sold to its current owners who do not seem to care beans about quality radio. This is something I've mentioned here before, and it is an extremely sad commentary on what is happening to AM radio in the US these days.

I read Reece's comments regarding the FM station in his area that used a record changer to provide the music, and was amazed. That sounds like something an inexperienced kid would do to get a 100-milliwatt (0.1 watt) Part 15 AM station on the air; it is no way to program a commercial FM station. Most automated stations use taped programming from reputable music services, which does not skip grooves as phonograph records can; however, the music stopping when the tape breaks or ends, with no clue to the listeners that there is a problem, is today's equivalent. I also wonder how this "automated" station in Reece's area handled it when the changer played the entire stack of records and ran out of music in the middle of the night, or after hours, when there was no engineer available to restock the changer with new platters. There must have been plenty of times when the station was broadcasting little more than dead air when that sort of thing would happen at 3 a.m., or some other unearthly hour of the morning.