HDRadio: Killing the AM Band

Coming very soon: HDRadio on the AM band at night. The FCC has granted full time use of the “In Band, On Channel” digital radio broadcast after sunset on the AM band — and that will essentially kill long-distance AM listening at night.

No more picking up WOAI, KOA, and KOKC at night. Those 50,000 watt stations could have their signals jammed by stations close by on the dial. The promise of HDRadio plays best on the FM band, and on AM, a HDRadio signal of AM is iffy.

Where I live, I can listen to KNX-AM 1070 with HDRadio. Sure, it’s impressive, but “Traffic on the Six” is still … a traffic report on the LA mess. While driving, going near a power line or under a bridge, KNX looses the HD portion of the signal. Likewise, KOGO, San Diego’s only HDRadio AM offering, sounds great — however, a talk show on KOGO remains a talk show on KOGO-HD. KTIE in San Bernardino was a catch at 590 AM. No more, from my Oceanside home. I can “hear” the AM hash of KOGO’s 600 HD broadcast. Likewise at 610, the hash from KOGO is there. This authorized spill over is essentially legalized jamming.

At night, the reception will be worse. KSL in Salt Lake fills the western United States at 1160. What about 1150 and 1170 stations? What if a night time listener to Salt Lake City gets bumped if 1170 KCBQ moves to HDRadio? The FCC will take your complaint and just file it. San Diego county is way outside of the day broadcast range of KSL.

One of the joys I found with my trusty GE Supertuner radio is to pick up stations far from home in Dodge City. (This was in a time when clear channel meant no other station on the same frequency.) Growing up in southwest Kansas, I could nearly capture all of Chicago’s 50,000 watt stations: WBBM, WGN, WMAQ, and the grand master of American Top Forty: 89WLS. Between 1520 KOMA, 15KSTP, and 63KHOW, I was hittin’ the dial hearing what the top songs in Chicago, Oklahoma City, the Twin Cities, and Denver. Each station remains legendary to this day.

The magic of DXing, for me, was in the summer. Baseball. Baseball on the radio. KMOX was the home of the St. Louis Cardinals. I was “there” most nights listening to the play-by-play action — and hoping the skywave held up during an imporant game decision play! (Nothing worse on a pop up fly ball to right field with bases loaded and ….. thirty seconds of waiting for KMOX to come back!) Likewise, while the Cubs played day games in Chicago, when away, WGN had night time baseball. Somenights I could even fetch WCCO from the Twin Cities and listen in.

As technology moves forward, it’s going to be hard to leave behind the distant sampling of cities. HDRadio has its critics; mine is probably unique. I’ll miss the crackle and skywave of the AM band, a distant catch — a random DX card from the station — and waiting for the pop fly to be a base clearing grand slam.

Stay Digitally Tuned

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 8:32 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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