AM in Decline

I don't think that I'm making much of a stretch to say that the friendly old AM radio band is rarely used these days.  The band may be going as strong as FM, but its programming is regulated to mostly news (whether its 1010WINS style or talk) or sports (whether that be talk or actual games).  There really hasn't been music on the AM dial for a long time, although when I scan the dial for some reason, I do come across a lot of Spanish-language stations that might include music.   I concede these points, but if anything in radio is fading, it's got to be the AM band, predominantly because of the quality which has an effect on programming for stations on that band.  So it really should not come as a surprise that Entercom is essentially moving AM stations to FM frequencies.  Now read that story and you might assume quite the opposite; the picture that's painted there is that the FM station is not doing as well (even though it's a "ratings leader"), so to attract people to the station they will simulcast the AM talk station to the FM dial.

There's the point though: Listeners spend their time on the FM dial, some newer tuners don't even bother with the AM (on MP3 players and the like), so to attract more listeners to the FM station that may be struggling to compete with other stations using the same classic rock playlist, they make the news/talk station simulcast the front of the FM station.  The classic rock station is still broadcasting on the web, and the secondary HD-FM channel, so listeners with the newer tuners can still listen in, but they might be surprised, even intrigued to hear issues debated where they thought the Stones might be rocking the same tune one more time.  I think this does clearly point out though, that AM is fading.  FM is certainly struggling, but perhaps by joining together the two dials can make a more consolidated and interesting set of programming for the listeners.

Maybe this is the saving grace of radio.  Depending on your market, there are a lot of stations, and too many that compete to get the same listeners, even though they have pretty much the same playlists.  Classic rock stations aren't really going to diverge from one another, unless they decide to aim for older or younger versions of "classics."  Might as well phase the talk radio back in.  As with my post last week, it's the personalities and opinions that keep listeners engaged these days, not the same old tired tune.  Perhaps AM will become the band for community radio, or more emergency frequencies can be put there.  But with the digital radio system, it's easier for a station to put multiple broadcasts on one frequency, so each media giant can have one small area of the band for each of their programming formats.  And if you like the way that Clear Channel does it, you can keep your radio on the Clear Channel frequency, and just change which station plays as you decide to change format.  Ok, maybe that's not that likely, but it's an idea.  I do think that AM will not be the wave of the future for radio, and this trend is probably on going to continue.

By the way, there is a lively and interesting discussion from the people who know these stations best on Radio-Info's online community boards if you'd like to see what actual people from Buffalo think of this change, although the change has happened elsewhere, too.