More sports on FM: WIP(AM) to simulcast on 94.1

[Martin Waters]

--- On Fri, 8/19/11, Dan.Strassberg <dan.strassberg@att.net> wrote:>Without question, WIP (AM) has the best signal of any 5 kW-U AM in the
>Philadelphia market . . .     Many of us who hang out on this newsgroup are still interested in AM radio, but the public -- more strongly the younger the people are -- just doesn't listen to AM radio, period. It doesn't matter what's on or how good the signal is. To the average person, just the fact that it's in mono makes its sound quality extremely inferior to FM.    Looking at the Arbitron top-line numbers, it looks like only somewhere around 10-15 percent of the overall radio listening now is to AM stations -- and it's been declining just recently. On FM, someone using the scan button might stop on your station, discover it, and keep listening. AM is like the tree falling in the forest when there's no one to hear it.     Except maybe in some fringe-rural places, the trend is extremely strong toward only a handful of heritage stations nationwide with a combination of huge signals (read, Class A stations), formats not duplicated on FM (read
 news, sports, talk -- an advantage now beginning to disintegrate) and long, long-time prominence in the market still pulling any significant numbers. And even they are beginning to simulcast on HD-1 signals or change bands altogether.      So it's more than an issue of coverage maps. And even they, IMO, overstate most AM stations realistic listening area. Your average person is horrified if they drive past a utility  pole with an improperly grounded electrical transformer or drive beneath a 500 kv electrical transmission line, etc., and hear a few seconds of nasty-sounding interference. And most of them quit ever turning on AM radio back in another century. There's my extremely bummerish $0.02 for this morning. So, shoot me. :))