Better hang onto your horse and buggy

 
by Don Keith N4KC

There continues to be a rabid land rush among AM broadcasters to file for the newly available FM translator channels (very low-power transmitters on relatively low towers designed to re-broadcast the signal of an AM station on the current FM commercial broadcast band).  This get-'em-while-you-can free-for-all is a ploy by the FCC (the government agency that regulates over-the-air broadcasting) to try to save the quickly dying AM broadcast band.

Read a few of my other posts below to see what I think of allowing AM station owners to "move" to FM in order to "save" AM.

In today's online broadcast trade journal INSIDE RADIO there appears an interesting--and uncharacteristically candid--article about some of the negative aspects of such a shift.  Read it HERE.

I understand the thought process behind allowing this mass creation of interference, poor signals, marginal formats and stations that will likely not be promoted or supported by either advertising or technical maintenance. How many of us really believe AM-only operators are going to spend money on promotions, research, personalities, a sales staff and more for a hundred-watt dim-bulb station getting clobbered from all sides by much more powerful signals?  I don't.  Not when their chances of gaining any sizeable audience with such a marginal signal is so very, very low.

I also understand that the FCC has little else they can do to help struggling AM outlets. About the only other thing they are doing or considering involves relaxation of some arcane technical rules that will not make a bit of difference in the real world.  A real world in which even those 100,000-watt well-researched FM stations are losing audience to all the other audio choices available to today's listeners.

The one result of this whole thing so far?  It will make AM stations have at least some value.  So if you are an AM station owner, you may want to hold onto it so you have an excuse to lease out your low-power FMs to the big operators to put on the air to help further clutter up the band.

To me, it's like the government telling you that you can only put a car on the highway if you have a horse and buggy locked away in a barn somewhere.  And the regulators don't have the money or personnel to make sure you feed the horse and grease the wheels on the buggy.