[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Tony V

I'm embarrassed to admit that i have everything in the pics and then some except for the Magnavox tv. The funny thing is that i rotate my radios alot so when guests come over they think i just bought a new batch of radios. Its a fun hobby though and i enjoy it. I agree with Chad though thats theres not alot to choose from as far as AM radio broadcasts these days but i'm fortunate enough to pick up an oldies station out of Toronto at night and we have a local classic country station that i can listen to duringthe day. The rest are just talk radio stations. I have a radio transmitter but its not as fun as listening to over the air broadcasts.
-Tony

The oldies station you mention is CHWO AM 740, 50,000 watts, in Toronto. It claims to have the widest coverage area of any Canadian radio station; it covers SW Ontario and much of the northeast US during the day, with wider coverage yet at night. I live in northeastern Ohio near the southern shore of Lake Erie and can hear 740 just fine on almost all my radios (except an el-cheapo clock radio on my nightstand in the bedroom), all day and into the night, so they aren't kidding about that wide coverage.

I looked on TVRadioWorld.com at the radio listings for Staunton and Waynesboro, Virginia a few minutes before starting to write this and found a classic country station in Waynesboro, WKDW, on 900 kHz. The station runs 2.5 kW (2,500 watts) daytime and 128 watts nights. Could this be the station you listen to on your vintage radios? If you are right in Waynesboro you should be able to get that station just fine any time, even when it drops to its lower nighttime power.

You are so right about most AM stations in just about all major cities being talk stations these days. In the Cleveland area, almost every station except one is either talk or sports, although one station on 850 kHz was a music station for years; then it went to 50,000 watts (from 10kW day/5kW night) about four years ago and promptly changed formats--to ESPN sports (the latter is the format it has today). The one station in the Cleveland area that still plays music is the Radio Disney affiliate at 1260 kHz, WWMK. This used to be a top-40 rock-and-roll station in the '60s-early-mid-'70s under the call sign of WIXY; it promptly went to all talk in 1978, simulcast a local FM station (Majic 105.7) for a year or so after that, then went to a Catholic religious format as WMIH in the '80s. The station was bought by ABC Radio and became Radio Disney in the very late '80s. The new owners installed a 10kW transmitter (its 5kW day/night signal wasn't giving it the coverage the owners had hoped for) to give WWMK the areawide coverage it should have had from its very beginnings (as WIXY it did not, as their 5kW signal at that time would become all but inaudible at night by the time you got about 20-25 or more miles east of Cleveland).

The same thing has happened with AM radio in every major city in this country, with hit music having migrated to FM; all of this began some 20 years ago and shows no signs of letting up, with AMs switching to talk, news and/or sports all the time. Radio stations that stream over the Internet now can boast not only nationwide but worldwide coverage, so the reception problems these stations may have had are history. Add to this the radio stations on XM and Sirius satellite (my Winamp media player came bundled with some 20 channels of AOL Radio with XM, not to mention Winamp and Shoutcast radio, which I now listen to more than I listen to standard FM), and it is clear that AM radio's glory days ended some time ago. Many new cars today are equipped with AM/FM/CD/satellite radio receivers, and the small XM "Roady" receivers are becoming very popular in older cars with standard in-dash stereo systems; many new home theater receivers are also equipped for XM satellite radio (the receiver hardware is built into the HT receiver), although the antenna and the XM radio subscription itself are sold separately. Since XM satellite radio is commercial-free, it has virtually continuous music and few or no interruptions, even from such things as EAS (Emergency Alert System) tests, although I recently read on a broadcast-industry website that even XM and Sirius satellite radio will eventually be required to run regularly scheduled EAS tests, if the FCC and/or the Dept. of Homeland Security have their way about it.