Musings on AM/FM radio

[Foxbat]

I was happily blessed to be coming of age when a local FM station switched to an "Album-Oriented Rock" format. Their call-letters? WAOR! Pretty much everyone in my high school had 95.3 tuned-in on their car radios.

They switched formats about a decade ago. Like many others, SiriusXM has filled that void with Classic Rewind or Classic Vinyl. I also like their Deep Tracks variants of some of the Rock channels.

WVPE, our local Public Radio station, is based out of an Elkhart school and features Jazz and Blues music. In addition to NPR, they have shows from APM and BBC World News. They went to HDRadio a few years back and now their 88.1-3 is full-time Jazz and Blues music, no news or talk radio.

 

[bhelms]

I too grew up surrounded by radio, mostly AM as FM programming was in its infancy when I first discovered it, IIRC. My folks bought me a Sony 6-transistor AM radio for Christmas one year and I used it at night with the "crystal" earpiece to listen to Pirates ball games announced by Bob Prince. (I think I still have that radio in my electronics junk somewhere.) Later, our local "pop 40" music station was KQV AM and I listened to that while doing homework. At one point in the late 60s I bought an Olsen tuner that had FM stereo and discovered "underground" FM radio - I listened to that mostly with a Radio Shack "Nova Pro" stereo headset as my folks could not stand the music. I was a real rebel in those days! When I went to college my roommate and I started a pirate AM station broadcasting over carrier wave (we built our own transmitter) and that eventually was approved by the university to become WSHR radio. I donated most of my DJing equipment and records to that cause, never found out what happened to it after I left. Now I listen to mostly classic rock, some on a local station on 99.5 "The Bus", or on WDVE 102.5 when in The 'Burgh. Both stations offer HD signals and both of my vehicles have HD capable radios, so I have enjoy that experience, compression/processing and all. Our local PBS station also is in HD (first in our market) and one of its subchannels is full-time jazz. I don't particularly like that genre but listen to it occasionally for the HD experience. Now I mostly stream music when I'm too lazy to load CDs (I have a decent collection of SACDs as well) but I have to confess that I mostly listen to talk radio on a local FM channel at 95.3. All of this spans 6 decades...

 

[TRG]

WVPE, our local Public Radio station, is based out of an Elkhart school and features Jazz and Blues music. In addition to NPR, they have shows from APM and BBC World News. They went to HDRadio a few years back and now their 88.1-3 is full-time Jazz and Blues music, no news or talk radio.

You are lucky to have a full time Jazz and Blues presence on HD. I wish we had one here.

We have a blues "show" every Thursday night on a local college radio station that I try to catch. They also do a Jazz show from 12 to 1:30pm every day. If I'm working from home I try to tune in to that one. They also have a show called Psychedelic Radio Head Shoppe - "Deep tracks from the rock 'n' roll underground. Electric music for the mind and body from the '60's & '70's." That one starts at 10pm on Saturday nights which is a little late for me. I'm usually getting ready for bed around that time. But it's not unusual for me to have the Bose Wave radio in the bedroom on for a quick listen.

 

[telstar_1]

Also, I didn't intend my post to spark partisan bickering (yes I pick a side but it's a matter of holding your nose), I try to leave politics out of technical discussions because I like technical-ese haha. I mainly like to hear if others go way above average for their radio reception (any kind of radio, anything RF actually), or if I was born 40 years too late (I think so).
Additionally, I'm not defending every radio station out there, a lot of them suck actually. But there are some darn good ones still around. And I have my techniques for avoiding commercials (don't they seem to be more annoying by the year?), mainly, recording stations in the overnight hours, far fewer commercials.
Thanks all!

We need to stop picking sides & holding noses and get to some party diversity. Having 2 and only 2 political parties can only end up in dangerous polarization as we see today.

 

[osu1991]

I never think to switch over to am/fm having used SiriusXM for 15 plus years now. However I went ahead and cancelled SiriusXM 2 weeks ago when my last 1yr deal expired. Been getting phone calls daily until I went off on them yesterday for the call at 8am. I’ve been using YouTube music most of the last 3 months since getting a new vehicle.

I’ll have to look at the HD radio stations next time I can remember it. The local college used to have a jazz and big band HD subchannel. 40s big band is my predominant listening genre.