Skip may keep commercial interests from ever lusting after the band. Who wants a radio system that would regularly be interfered with by folks using the same frequency half way across the country? Also, the entire standard broadcast band is barely one megahertz wide (about a sixth of the width of a single television channel). There’s hardly enough space there to make it worth fighting over.
Because of AM’s ability to propagate over long distances, high-powered clear channel stations (not to be confused with the Evil Empire) were initially intended to provide radio coverage to rural areas who might not otherwise get radio at all. Of course, other stations sprang up to cover these rural areas, but they must still power down at dusk to allow clear channel stations to operate at full power. You were most likely listening to WSB-AM at night, when the signal could easily reach Memphis.
Technical details aside, people like AM stations because they’re most likely to have news, weather and traffic throughout the day, and they also offer programs that are designed to keep people tuned in. FM music stations generally don’t lend themselves to that kind of long-term listening, and they’re getting competition from mp3 players.
Robin
Music on AM can sound great.
Tune in AM 740 from Toronto at night (nearly anyone east of the Mississippi should be able to pick it up) and hear how good the tunes sound.
Ditto how far AM can travel at night: I get KSL 1160 AM from Salt Lake City all the way up here in Havre, MT clear as a bell most nights. I also get a station from Denver, but I don’t listen to that nearly as often. (KSL broadcasts old-time radio shows. While I can download them online, there’s something magical about knowing how far the signal has come and having to adjust things just right to get the best signal.)
Speaking of that, why didn’t shortwave take off in America? Is the FCC too strict about licensing for a band that can travel around the world, or is it just a chicken-and-egg problem?
Okay, lots of posts on how popular AM radio is. But… isn’t analog television also popular?
It’s popular, all right.
It also won’t exist in another year or so.
In the days of clear-channel AM and radio networks, there wasn’t much need for shortwave. Later, when radio switched over to different business models, the FM band was ready to handle music broadcasts, and the trusty AM band took over for other purposes.
Privately owned shortwave is around, but for large-scale broadcasting it is dominated by religious broadcasters and some fringe groups.
Not for long! But the good news is that the Gummint will be offering coupons for conversion boxes. The link is to a PDF file, so here’s the important part:
Canadian TV will continue to broadcast in analogue. So all you folks along the border can continue to watch the CBC. 
(I believe there is a limit date for Canadian analogue TV transmission, but it might be 2011 or 2013.)
I like to watch the Olympics, especially, on CBC*, rather than on NBC. I have an HDTV, so I wish they would make the switch.
- although they have this unexplainable tendency to focus on Canadian athletes, rather than American ones, as is proper.
In large cities, not every AM station has a successful talk, sports or news format. I’ve noticed that most major markets only have a few successful AM stations, while the rest have fallen far from their glory days in the 1960s and 1970s. They either jump from format to format on a nearly monthly basis, play mostly paid programming (mostly religious shows or fake interview-style infomercials), or cater to very small niche audiences (gospel stations, trucker stations, Radio Disney, etc). Twirl the AM dial around here, and with only a few exceptions it’s overmodulated Baptist preachers and 30-minute long vitamin commercials disguised as talk shows. Back in my hometown, there are stations that play the Hail Mary on a loop for hours at a time, or so it seems.
You are overlooking, All News, All Sports and All Talk. Most large cities have more than one of each of these formats. (at least most East Coast Large Cities & Chicago)
I believe the CBC broadcasts in HD. Yes.
Yeah, but you won’t know that if you keep the thing hooked up to American cable, eh.
Twirl it manually.
I don’t think the “seek” feature on radios works as well on AM.
I actually have the problem that my seek stops at almost every position. . .even stations that are total static.
I don’t know how they’re designed, but presumably they have some sort of “signal strength” indicator with a critical point. Your point is set too high. Mine too low.
Anyway. . .no way is AM going away. There are several big AM stations here in Baltimore. I listen to AM every day. We have several different sports stations, all talk, all news. Lots of AM action.
That’s what she said.
Anyway, for up-to-the-minute local coverage one can get anywhere within city limits with cheap reliable equipment, it’s kinda hard to beat AM. Frankly, it always kinda bugged me when various Star Trek shows acted as though conventional radio was amazingly primitive and they’d have to adapt their fancy-schmancy gear to compensate. I don’t see any reason an 800kHz analog signal won’t be as useful 400 years from now as today, even if it’s only carrying a homing beacon or some other low-info signal.
Plus, listening to baseball games on FM radio just isn’t the same. It’s gotta be AM.
West Coast large cities too.
Ed
Thanks, I couldn’t speak for those, so I amended before I submitted.
I understand what you are saying. I have ratcheded through and found almost nothing. Maybe there are more stations but are they transmitting with less power? It also seems obvious that the manufacturers of tuners have ignored any attempt to improve AM reception. I thought that maybe the AM stations with licenses to transmit at high power had just given up. Again, this is just an observation.