Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffhs
I live in northeastern Ohio, near Cleveland (30 miles from town, within a half mile of the south shore of Lake Erie), and at night can hear many stations on most of my AM radios from within the 750-mile radius you mention. The FCC has done away with "clear channels" on the AM broadcast band; these were frequencies on which, after local sunset, there was only one 50kW station in operation all night long; during the day, other local stations were on these frequencies as well, but they were required to sign off at local sunset time. After the local stations left the air for the day, the "clear channel" stations could be heard almost nationwide after sundown.
The abolition of the clear channels ended that, but the FCC has a new system in place now where these former clear channel stations can be heard within a 750-mile radius after dark. The clear channels were done away with so that former daytime-only AM stations could operate 24 hours, with directional nighttime antenna patterns and lower nighttime power. There are a few "daytime-only" stations left; one of them is a 1kW ESPN sports radio operation in Cleveland on 1540 kHz. Many "daytimers", however, have taken advantage of the new regulations and are now operating 24 hours a day, again with directional antenna patterns and lower power after sunset.
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I've picked up your Cleveland ESPN Station on my old Westinghouse Tombstone radio at night, I've also picked up WGN From Chicago on my radio as well and I think I can pick up WOWO AM 1190 out of Fort Wayne on my radio as well (WOWO was one of those Clear Channel stations you spoke of and they still do operate at 50kW both day and night).
I have also picked up a Station from Toronto Canada that is an Oldies station that plays music from the 1940s-1980s.