I was discussing baseball games on the radio last week when a coworker said she hated AM radio and couldn’t listen to it. She’s only 28 (I’m 35). I grew up listening to country music on AM radio, and still listen to sports and news on the AM dial. The limitations of AM I’m used to and don’t faze me, but I can understand why younger listeners can’t stand the static and compression. Can you listen to AM or is its sound quality too much of a turnoff?
I listen to AM all the time, but I only listen to news, sports, and talk radio.
My parents have an alarm clock that only has AM radio (I don’t remember them ever having a different clock) and they wake up to an “oldies” station which plays music mainly from the 60s, and the combination of AM radio playing the Beatles every third song and the ancient alarm clock means that every time I hear it, it’s like I have been transported back in time to the actual sixties. It’s kinda cool, really.
yes
damn kids these days are spoiled
I’m 22 and I listen to AM radio when it’s baseball season (although with Dave Niehaus gone it’s gonna be weird) and for oldies music in the car when I’m bored with whatever CDs I’ve got with me. The only time the limitations of AM radio bug me is when I drive under certain styles of traffic lights and the signal cuts out. I like the occasional static.
The only time I listen to AM radio is during election night when driving home and I can hear results - that means about every two years, on one day, for about 20 minutes if I happen to be in the car on the drive home in the evening and want to hear how the East Coast voted.
I guess that means “no” for me.
Perhaps she dislikes AM because all they play in those stations is news and sports, and she likes neither of them?
I don’t listen to AM because of that. Although, when I lived in Baton Rouge, there was a New Orleans AM Latin music station that I could get on my radio. So I listened to that AM station because of the music.
I grew up listening to AM radio news. Now, when I’m driving my parents, I explicitly forbid them from tuning into any AM station.
My clock radio is set to the AM all-news station, so, yeah, I guess I can.
I still listen to news/talk on AM stations, especially at night to pick up 50 thousand-watters on skywave and find out what’s happening in distant cities.
I can’t believe the cellphone generation is all bent out of shape about occasional static (which isn’t generally a problem for AM stations close to you).
I’m younger than your coworker and one of my favorite stations is an AM station. There aren’t many I can really pick up, however. Most of them have so much static that you can barely make out what’s being said.
ESPN and whatever they’re now calling Air America are what I primarily listen to in the car.
I listen to AM talk radio all the time. The sound quality doesn’t bother me at all.
I listen to AM sports talk on the way home from the lab.
I switch from one station to another at about the midway point because of signal drop-off.
Of course, this time of the year, the Atlanta station drops off quickly since the transmitter cuts wattage at sunset. So, then it is NPR. On FM, natch.
In the car, I listen exclusively to sports, news, or talk on AM. One of my favorite thing about road trips is hearing new stations I don’t normally get to hear. I also like driving late at night and picking up AM stations from a few states away.
I’m also an exclusive AM radio listener in the car. I love talk radio.
It’s FM radio I can’t listen to any more. My daughter will put on her stations, and I have to put up with Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, M&M, and others whose names I don’t know. The occasional time I flip to one of my stations I get “Stairway to Heaven,” “Another Brick in the Wall,” “Start Me Up,” “Fly Like An Eagle,” “Hotel California” and I just shake my head and flip back to the news.
Ahhhh…
I don’t have a problem with listening to AM radio.
Yes, but only for news or sports. The last time I can remember listening to music on AM radio was in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico (Chaco Culture National Historical Park)in 2003. While I was sitting in the parking lot, waiting for my wife to get done in the gift shop, I turned on the radio, and started hunting around for a signal – that far in the sticks, AM was going to be the only thing that would come in. I found a station playing Johnny Cash…after the song ended, the DJ mentioned that Cash has passed away earlier that day.
Listening to music (or not) on AM is, in part, a decision that’s been made for many listeners, years ago. Most AM stations (at least in bigger markets) don’t have a popular-music format anymore. You find a lot of talk on AM now, as well as some more niche music formats (ethnic, oldies, etc.).
Living in the Atlanta area, I listen to the news on WSB in the shower and on the way to work in the morning. On the way home I listen to tapes, to NPR on FM or to WMLB 1690 AM, “the Voice of the Arts” (shameless plug). They play a wide range of music such as old rock n’ roll, old jazz & blues, old country, folk & ethnic music, cutting edge rock, and so forth. I don’t care much about sound quality as long as it isn’t absolutely terrible. I used to listen to all the old stuff on AM car radios and cheap record players back when I was a kid, and I enjoyed them, so why should it be any different than today?
I can’t stand talk radio.
I listen to baseball on the AM radio every night during baseball season, including the post-game show. I’m 31. We’ve got a great, powerful AM station here WTAM 1100 so I’ve never had a problem with reception. My ears aren’t good enough to care about the compression or whatever.
That being said, I cannot listen to the station one minute before pre-game or one minute after because the non-baseball programming makes me want to die.
I have no idea what goes on on the rest of the AM dial here in Cleveland. I’m too scared to look.
As someone else said, my clock radio is set to the local AM news station, so I wake up with the latest news.
I also listen to talk radio on AM sometimes. We are lucky in that not all the talk radio hosts here are right-wingers. Is that true in most other places?