Quote:
Originally Posted by maxhifi
You started with antique radios around the same time I did. I have one RCA made in Japan clock radio from the 60s or 70s. The clock movement itself is from the US, and is a transformerless chassis. I use it in the garage. To be honest, I think collecting old radios was more fun when there was music on AM, it seems like there's less to listen to all the time, and FM is holding on only because of the car market.
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Yeah, AM in my area consist of windbag talk and religious stations. We had a good music AM station up until 2005. This station had real live on the spot DJ's who played a wide variety of music. Then, the man who owned the station passed away and his son took over. It wasn't long before he started seeing dollar signs and, one day, he suddenly announced that the station was changing to a black gospel format the next morning and then he fired all the old DJ's. From what I was told, that move caused many thousands of angry listeners to call the station; but, it did no good. I talked to the original owner before he died and he was one of the rare radio station owners who was not hung on on making the most money. He had already made his money and he told me that he felt like the older music needed to be heard. Now, I suspect that they are making no more money as a black gospel station than they made when it was a real music station.
FM mostly consist of the usual automated 50 song playlist crap. The classic rock station gets their programming from a satellite feed and there are no DJ's. They brag about their "no repeat work day"; but, you'll hear the exact same songs the next day. The "classic country" station is the same way and most of the songs are from the '80's and '90's with some '60's and '70's with two or three songs from the '50's thrown in from time to time. The top 40 station is unlistenable. I remember, 20 years ago, when they had a show called "lunchtime at the oldies" where they played music from the '50's, '60's, and '70's. Now, it's called the "lunchtime buffet" and they won't play anything earlier than 1990. We had an FM oldies station; but, they have since changed formats no less than 3 times since dropping the oldies format. I can understand why they had to change the format because they were one of those stations that had a 50 song playlist and you were guaranteed to hear "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Brown Eyed Girl", and "California Dreamin" at least 5 times a day.
We do have an automated station that's owned by the local community college that plays a wide variety of pop/oldies music from the '40's through the early '90's.
In the near future, I plan to purchase an SSTRAN AM transmitter and my station will play a wide variety of oldies, classic country, standards, and OTR shows.