Re: AM (was Re: LPFM Rules)

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

On Feb 4 Mike Thomas wrote:
>Yeah, I notice a pattern.  All these stations are clear channel
>blowtorches with
>a ton of heritage, sports play by play and 16-18 minute spotloads per hour.
>Outside of these, and a few other large markets, AM does diddly squat
>around the
>country.  I agree that these stations do very well, but they are the
>exceptions,
>not the rule.

        To me, clear channel blowtorches is the key phrase in your post.
That's about what it takes for an AM station in most larger markets to have
a signal that's competitive with any old run-of-the-mill FM in the same
market. If each big market had 10 or 15 50-kW clear-channel AM stations (a
technical impossibility, of course), the audience using AM would be bigger.
In Boston, you can count the AM stations with better 24-hour signals than
WFNX (1.65 kW, 137m AAT) on one hand.
        I looked at a few numbers that come at it another way than
individual AM stations being successful. In the summer 99 Arbitrons, I just
picked out a few markets and added up the shares given to all AM stations.
You could round it off to 20 percent. Boston was 21.1, NY was 21.5,
Nassau-Suffolk (18th market) was 22.8, Denver (23rd) was 19.1, Hartford
(44th) was 20.8, and Birmingham (55th) was 18.0. A footnote on Denver: an
AM/FM simulcast had another 3.1, but it's a music format and I didn't
credit any of it to AM.
        An interesting local thing (for me) is that of those markets,
Hartford sticks out because one AM station, WTIC, with a 12.0, accounts for
more than half the total AM audience. Plus a 12 share is high for anyone
these days, even in a medium market. There's still an echo of WTIC (AM)'s
historic dominance of the market.
        And, BTW, I added up San Francisco (#4), and it's definitely a high
share for AM compared to the others. Dan Strassberg has said in the past
that the geography there--above-average good for AM signals and unusually
bad for FM signals--contributes. For that market, I added up to 23.6 for AM
plus a bunch of AM/FM simulcasts that I know nothing about so I don't know
what to credit as estimates to AM. For San Fran, an additional 11 share
total is listed for those four simulcasts, and some of it must be on AM, I
would guess.