Saturday, November 2, 2013

Haven't I Read Something Like This Before?


F. C. C. Plans Sweeping Changes to Bolster AM Radio, by Edward Wyatt.   (The New York Times, 11/1/2013)

Excerpt:    The proposed changes, supporters say, could salvage a technology that once led Americans to huddle around their radios for fireside chats and World Series broadcasts but that has now been abandoned for the superior sound of digital and online music and news outlets.

A Quest to Save AM Before It's Lost in the Static, by Edward Wyatt. (The New York Times, 9/8/2013)

Excerpt:   The digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series.

When I think of AM radio, I recall the clear-channel broadcasts of CKLW, whose signal beamed across Lake Erie and 60 miles beyond to Warren PA 16365, day and night, during the mid-to-late 1960s. 

Thanks to program director Rosalie Trombley, CKLW featured the most adventurous playlists of any AM station I've listened to -- outside of WZUM in Pittsburgh.  But during the year I attended Pitt's library school (1973-74), WZUM was basically an FM station that somehow found its way to the AM dial.  Its program director was a big fan of Genesis.

No comments: