Radio Survivor

I’ve known about this station for well over a decade now. As a metalhead living in Central Illinois I’d occasionally travel north to the Chicago area or Milwaukee to see concerts and encounter banners and fliers for an all heavy metal station on the AM band called Rebel Radio. However, I can only recall hearing the station once when on the highway between Milwaukee and Chicago.

Music radio on the AM dial is nearly an anachronism now, and most of the practitioners now are either ethnic stations or easy listening. Nevertheless there are a few hold outs–mostly mom and pop operations or stations owned by relatively small groups–that program niche formats on AM stations. Being on the air for about sixteen years certainly qualifies WPJX 1500 AM in Zion, IL as a true AM music veteran.

Unfortunately, WPJZ isn’t exactly a powerhouse when it comes to transmission strength. In fact, the station broadcasts with just 250 watts from the far northeastern Illinois town of Zion, a good 38 miles from the Chicago city limits. What that means for a city dweller for me is that I simply cannot tune it in, no matter how hard I’ve tried. The stations serves southeast Wisconsin about as well as Illinois, still missing most of the major north suburbs of Chicago. Adding to the frustration is the fact that Rebel Radio does not yet have a web stream, although its website currently promises one soon.

Then, today while perusing their website again I noticed a note saying Rebel Radio is simulcast on a co-owned station, WKTA 1330 AM in Evanston, the first suburb north of Chicago, on Sundays from 4 to 8 PM. So this afternoon I tuned in Rebel Radio for the first time, thanks to WKTA.

First off, this is truly a heavy metal station, playing many examples of the genre from the more mainstream–like Metallica–to the lesser known–like Armored Saint. At least during this four-hour window there’s a live DJ spinning the tunes and talking quite knowledgeably about the bands and songs, pointing out local concert dates as appropriate. That element alone is quite refreshing and rarely heard on commercial radio, even if it also includes a too-long inane phone call from a friend of the DJ calling in from a Renaissance Fair.

In terms of fidelity, I’m not terrifically impressed. Contemporary heavy metal has a pretty broad frequency range and often is not mastered to be optimized for radio like a lot of pop and mainstream rock music. That means there’s a fair amount of sound in the high and low frequency extremes that AM radio doesn’t cover well. I think it takes some pretty good EQing and signal processing to make metal work well on AM. On the whole the station doesn’t sound bad, but the midrange and high end sounds pretty crowded and compressed. A little strategic equalization might let the high end come through a little better and make the station a little more listenable. I acknowledge that the main station WPJX might sound better than the simulcast that I can tune in. And, to be fair, on a portable radio or boombox the sonic compromises are far less perceptible.

Listening to Rebel Radio I was reminded of the Z-Rock syndicated heavy metal format. I first listened to it when I lived in New Jersey in the late 80s and early 90s when it was broadcast on an AM station out of New York on 1480. It didn’t always come in well in Passaic County where my parents lived, but I did tune in occasionally when looking for something different on the radio dial. Even at the time I didn’t think the sonic quality of metal on AM was that great.

Nonetheless, Rebel Radio proves that there must be a very loyal audience for heavy metal on the radio willing to deal with the compromises inherent in music on AM.

Where is the beef? Not on AM HD Radio.

One of the supposed advantages of HD Radio is improved fidelity over analog. As I observed in my listening test of HD on FM, there’s almost no real improvement for HD over the analog signal. The advantage for HD on FM, then, is the addition of one or two more channels of audio. However, due to the more limited sonics of analog AM radio, we are led to expect HD AM stations to offer significantly better fidelity; they don’t offer any additional channels.

But compared to FM, there are much fewer HD stations on AM. This is largely due to the fact that the AM band is seriously congested, with quite a bit of interference. Adding an HD Radio IBOC side-channel to a station greatly increases the potential for interference to adjoining analog stations. A secondary reason is that the AM band is dominated by talk radio formats where fidelity improvement is less important.

In Chicago iBiquity (owner of HD Radio technology) says there are seven HD stations on AM. Over the course of several days throughout the last few weeks I was only able to tune in the HD signal for three of these stations, WSCR, WBBM and WGRB. My Sony receiver detected an HD signal on two–WRDZ and WVON–but could not tune it in. The receiver detected no HD signal for two stations, WMVP and WRTO.

Two of the three stations with an HD signal I could receive are primarily talk stations, WSCR and WBBM. The HD signals of both had a modestly extended frequency range than the analog signal, but with clearly audible digital artifacting on the high end, similar to a medium bitrate MP3 (say about 96 kbps stereo or 48 kbps mono). However, wider frequency range is of negligible use for talk programming. For these stations the primary benefit of HD is the loss of background noise and interference, which can be distracting even on a strong AM signal.

One HD signal, WGRB, features both talk and gospel music programming. Depending on the source–some programs are recorded live in churches–there is a perceptible improvement in fidelity with music due to the extended frequency response. However, the high end artifacting and distortion due to the low bitrate is sometimes too distracting to my ear, leading me to prefer the analog signal, even if the compromise is less high end.

On the whole the only real benefit I can see for HD Radio on AM is the significant reduction in background noise. On FM this is a limited benefit, since background analog background noise is already very low by comparison. But on AM it’s quite noticeable and losing it is mostly welcome. At the same time, I can’t say it’s worth the trouble.

Of the three HD stations I could receive, the only one I’m likely to listen to regularly is news/talk WBBM, where I also heard the least sonic improvement. I chalk this up to the likelihood that the station’s airchain has been optimized for AM. Because the HD signal is broadcast as a lower power level than the analog, I have to work, moving the antenna around, to tune in the HD signal. When I’m not specifically trying to test HD reception, it’s unlikely I’d bother with the effort to get the HD signal.

Much more so than with FM, I consider HD Radio on AM to be mostly useless and not worth the effort. It’s especially not worth the loud digital hash noise I receive on my analog-only radios on the frequencies adjacent to the HD stations. It’s like a line of digital litter strewn across the AM radio highway.

After the jump are my technical details and listening notes for each station.
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KLOK's South Asian Format

I really like the idea that someday soon there will be a radio revolution and the FM dial will once again be returned to passionate music-loving DJs playing an eclectic mix of sounds at locally-owned radio stations. In the meantime, I will continue to troll the left side of the dial to hear my fellow weirdos in college, community and high school radio because that’s where the really exciting radio action is.

But just in the past few weeks I began to get the sense that something might be brewing on AM radio. As Paul wrote last week, a newish station near Chicago called the Avenue is playing an uncharacteristically diverse list of artists, from Tom Waits to Eartha Kitt. A few college stations, like Portland’ s KPSU are located on AM (tune in to catch a show that only plays 7″ vinyl or another devoted to psychedelia and garage rock); but I didn’t realize until a few days ago that in my own backyard there’s an AM station playing South Asian music (including Bollywood sounds) or that lucky listeners near Chicago get their very own metal station WPJX (“Rebel Radio”) at 1500 AM in Northbrook, Illinois.

Since June 2009, San Jose commercial radio station KLOK 1170 AM has been devoted to South Asian programming. Initially they launched with a 24 hour a day format of non-stop South Asian music, but as of today their schedule is mostly made up of brokered programming produced (and funded) by members of the community.

Music is woven throughout the schedule and Bollywood sounds are guaranteed if you tune in on Friday nights for the Desi Nights Radio dance music show or during the wee hours of 2am to 5am on Mondays through Wednesdays. Other shows on KLOK include a call-in show with a dentist, an astrology & meditation show, and an inter-generational show that discusses the differences between American culture and traditional Indian culture. Although it’s a commercial station with an out of town owner, it’s refreshing to hear that they are doing something a little different from the norm and that it is deeply tied to the local community.

Have you discovered something extraordinary on AM radio lately?

One night last week I was tuning around the AM dial here in Chicago before going to sleep when I happened upon a station playing a nice, but unusual mix of vocal jazz standards. The music set was long, interrupted only by an ID for “950 the Avenue.”

The next morning I googled the station and learned that it’s a relatively new one, debuting August 2009 in Chicago after starting on the FM dial in Osh Kosh, WI in January 2009. Since then I’ve tuned in a number of times intrigued both by the introduction of a new radio format and the fact that it’s a new music station on the AM, rather than FM dial. In particular my interest in piqued since this discovery came just a week after Jennifer’s post on the Aesthetics of AM.

When I initially encountered the station it was playing an Ella Fitzgerald number that I can’t recall. So at first I assumed it was an adult standards / nostalgia format station that I’d somehow never heard before or that was coming in from a more distant market due to the luck of nighttime AM propagation. But a couple of songs in they played Steely Dan, which might qualify as classic rock, but is way too recent and rocking for an adult standards playlist.

The Avenue bills itself as “timeless cool,” drawing on artists who seem to have classic jazz elements as a point of commonality, but otherwise might fall more solidly into rock or adult contemporary camps. The website’s masthead features pictures of Norah Jones Diana Krall, Ray Charles, John Mayer, Nina Simone and Harry Connick, Jr–a somewhat more eclectic array than I would normally expect from a commercial station. Even if all these artists have each sold millions of albums none of them are big radio mainstays.

At the same time, many of the artists heard on the Avenue, like Ray Charles, were once radio mainstays, especially during the heyday of AM popular music radio in the 1960s and 70s. So their music sounds quite at home in the restricted audio bandwidth of AM. Many of these other artists, however, came to prominence in the FM and CD era of high fidelity and low noise. I haven’t heard any John Mayer on the Avenue yet, but music from Norah Jones and Harry Connick sounds pretty well at home on this AM station.
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When was the last time that you tuned in to AM radio to listen to music?

Although I’m a huge evangelist for the ongoing importance of terrestrial radio (especially non-commercial radio), the AM slice of the radio band is a place that I only turn when I’m in my car looking for news, weather, and traffic information. But back when I was a kid, AM radio was huge and was the home to some of my favorite DJs and music shows. So, what happened?

In a fascinating essay, “The Day the (AM) Music Died,” in the PopMatters “Retroactive Listening: Perspectives on Music and Technology” series, Jay Somerset provides some historical perspective about how and why AM radio moved away from music to talk programming. He also discusses how the mono sound of AM contrasts with FM stereo and why certain styles of music were more suited to AM. He writes:

“Welcome to 1982, the oldies endpoint; the year the music froze, on the AM dial at least. Nowadays it seems ridiculous, but there was a time, before the fragmented niches offered by Internet and satellite radio came along (third-wave psychobilly radio, anyone?), the music dial was divided into two camps: contemporary hit music — almost exclusively AM’s domain — and older, or classical, or college, or jazz on newfangled, niche FM.

If you wanted a hit single, you produced it to sound good on AM radio, which meant eschewing deep bass and the low end for something that would sound best on the treble-heavy, tinny sound of an AM receiver, such as Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound production… To sound good on mono AM, you needed a dense, reverberant, everything-at-once sound rather than a dynamic, stereo recording that only sounded good on FM, which the majority of people never even listened to.”

He goes on to make the point that when music programming left AM for the cooler realm of FM radio around 1982, AM radio became the home for talk radio, sports, weather, and news. Despite the dominance of talk radio today, there are some holdout AM oldies stations that are mostly playing hits from 1965 to 1982.

As he wraps up his essay Jay talks about the trend for some modern musicians to simulate lo-fi, AM-friendly sounds and he wonders if any of these artists will ever actually get played on AM radio. He speculates that with changes to the terrestrial radio landscape, AM music radio could transform into a place that embrace these indie artists (he mentions Kurt Vile, Best Coast, and Neon Indian) who now find their homes on satellite, Internet and college radio: (more…)

The University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s student-run station WIPZ has apparently been on the air since the early 1990s, broadcasting on AM, then FM and online. The station has never had a license, presumably operating at very low power under what are known as Part 15 regulations which govern unlicensed operation of devices that radiate radio frequency power. These are the same regs that dictate the operation of the small transmitters sold to broadcast an MP3 player into a car radio.

Last week WIPZ learned a tough lesson from the FCC when agents showed up and determined their signal was broadcasting at a level way above the limits set by Part 15 for the FM dial. In fact, the agents reported measuring the signal at 334,559 microvolts per meter (uV/m) at 3 meters. Compare that to the Part 15 limit of 250 uV/m at 3 meters. My rough back-of-the-envelope calculations say that WIPZ must have been operating at around 5 watts of effective radiated power. Generally speaking, anyone who wants to broadcast in accordance with Part 15 should keep their power under 100 milliwatts (.1 watts).

I’m a little surprised that anyone at a university station would think it was legal to broadcast with that much power without a license. FCC Chicago district director James M. Roop told the Journal-Sentinel, “Somewhere they were misinformed by people who told them that operating a station by low power would be OK.”

I’ve seen a number of references to WIPZ being a carrier-current station, which is a type of very-low power AM broadcasting where a building’s electrical wiring is used as a big radiator for an AM signal. Schools are permitted to operate carrier current stations provided their signal obeys Part 15 limits with regard to the signal’s transmission off school property. WIPZ probably used carrier current back in its AM days. However, there are no similar rules for FM broadcasting; there is no such thing as a carrier-current FM station.

My best guess is that the station’s management confused the more lenient restrictions for unlicensed AM broadcasting with the tighter ones for FM. Working in and around universities for some 20 years I’ve often heard misguided educators claim they can legally set up FM transmitters using several watts of power provided the signal stays on campus. But the simple fact is that this is not true.

It appears that WIPZ will attempt to return to air using power levels that obey Part 15 limits. They will probably be disappointed at how limited their broadcast range will be. They might actually be better off going back to AM and taking advantage of the techniques devised by the sizeable community of Part 15 broadcasters.

While we commonly accept that broadcast stations and, especially, their licenses to broadcast have a market value, for most of US broadcasting history there was no direct cost to obtain that license. Sure, there were engineer surveys to conduct, lawyers to pay, and so on. But the license itself came at no cost from the FCC. That license was supposed to be in exchange for operating in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” Given that this obligation was rendered mostly unenforceable, if not laughable, by 1996, Congress figured it was better to try to cash in.

So, for all intents and purposes the Telecommunications Act of 1996 pretty much changed the whole free license thing for commercial stations, instituting an auction process for new commercial radio licenses whenever there are competing applicants. Since there it’s a rare occasion when there’s only one applicant for a commerical frequency, in practice most new licenses are auctioned off. There hasn’t been much hubub about this change in part because there have been relatively few new broadcast radio licenses available in the last fourteen years; most major metropolitan radio dials pretty well filled up by the 1990s.

Nevertheless, there are a few spots on the dial left, scattered about the country. In fact the FCC will be auctioning a total of 15 radio licenses this coming July–thirteen commercial FM, one commercial FM translator and one commercial AM [public notice PDF]. Before you start counting your pennies and cashing in savings bonds, understand that if you haven’t already submitted an application to the FCC, then you’re out of luck. The participants in the auction are already determined because they’ve submitted applications for frequencies for which there are other competing applications.

The number of bidders for a single frequency range from just two to as many as seven (that’s for a spot on the dial in Idalou, TX, just outside of Lubbock). The FCC sets a minimum opening bid, which each bidder must also submit as an upfront payment. This opening bid is based upon the prices obtained in earlier auctions from the same market. To bid on a license in the Hudson Valley town of Rosendale, NY you’d have to pony up $100,000 to start, whereas in New Holstein WI, about 25 miles northwest of Sheboygan, the starting bid is just $15,000. A hundred grand may not sound like chump change for a station license, but compared to the market value it’s a bargain. An existing station in New York’s Hudson Valley is likely to be at least five times that, if not more.

We’ll be watching to see what the selling prices end up being when the final gavel falls. Stay tuned.

I started reading the Professor’s detailed travelogues of his AM and shortwave radio band excursions back when he was writing for WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. After he quit contributing to BotB I learned that he was keeping things going at his own Radio Kitchen blog.

The Professor belongs to a group of radio enthusiasts who record what are known as “airchecks,” which are simply off-air recordings of radio stations. Usually created as a form of historical record, air check recordings serve as an often valuable capture of what is an otherwise mostly ephemeral medium.

In the analog era airchecks were mostly recorded on boombox style radios with built-in cassette recorders. Enthusiasts often traded copies of these tapes with folks from other parts of the country or the world. You see before the internet that was the only way to hear what local radio sounded like somewhere else without traveling.

Only the fanciest radio cassette recorders come in woodgrain.

In the digital era you’d think that recording and sharing radio airchecks would be much easier, given the near ubiquity of digital audio and video recording devices. But while radios with built-in cassette recorders were omnipresent at any electronics or discount store in the 1970s through the 1990s, there are few digital equivalents in existence in the 21st century. Although Apple recently included limited FM radio recording capabilities into its newest iPod Nano, it only records up to 15 minutes, and has no AM reception. So what do you do to digitally record hours of AM or shortwave radio?

The Professor recently took up that very question. One solution one might consider is connecting your computer’s audio input to a radio. The big problem there, however, is that computers generate a ton of RF interference which can seriously mess up AM and shortwave reception. iPods and other MP3 devices wreak similar radio havoc.

In his long, but worthwhile and info-rich, post the Professor gives an overview of the state of recording radio digitally, giving a nice user review of C. Crane’s CC Witness radio, which includes an MP3 recorder.

Aside from recording my own radio programs (usually direct off the studio board), I’ve only dabbled in recording radio airchecks over the years. In the 20th century I also mostly used cassette recorders. Due to sloppy labeling practices I’ve mostly lost all of those tapes over the years. I’ve also done some recordings in the 2000s, primarily to capture source material off shortwave for unfinished audio art projects. I did most of those recordings on minidisc recorders which seem to be very well shielded compared to other digital recorders, injecting almost no noise into the signal. The last Hi-MD models let me upload the recordings directly onto my computer for sharing and manipulation. Hi-MD is also how I recorded my mediageek radioshow for podcast distribution up until last year.

I’m not sure that I will ever record enough radio airchecks to merit spending $179 on a dedicated digital radio recorder. But I sure am glad that such a device exists, keeping alive a hobby that documents the rich history of broadcasting that otherwise would just dissipate into the ether.

After rendering the AM dial a garbled mess after sunset by cramming in too many stations along with space-hogging HD signals, in 2007 the commercial radio industry came a-calling to the FCC with it’s hand out. It’s request? To let AM radio stations have repeater stations–called translators–on the FM dial.

While sitting on the NAB’s proposal for nearly two years, the Commission quietly let AM stations utilize FM translators that their parent companies already owned, provided they applied for what is known as “special temporary authority.” Then, this past July, the FCC made the policy official.

Those of us concerned that the rule would signal an influx of new commercial low-power stations eating up frequencies that might otherwise go to community LPFM stations were relieved. The Commission’s new rule essentially reflected its earlier shadow policy, only permitting AM stations to use already existing FM translators. The Commission also signaled that no new opportunities to obtain a commercial FM translator was imminent.

While I still think it’s bad policy, it could be a lot worse. Commercial translator owners now will have to make a choice as to whether it’s more valuable to repeat their AM or FM stations. Also, the same existing rules apply which limit commercial translator to being located only within its parent station’s broadcast area. This is because the commercial translator station’s purpose is to fill in areas where geographic or other anomalies hinder reception where otherwise one would be expected to receive a station. Noncommercial translators are not subject to this restriction, and may be located any distance away from parent stations. So, a commercial AM station’s new translator still has to be located in its protected broadcast radius.

As the CommLawBlog gleefully reminds us, this new policy kicks into affect on October 1. It will be interesting to see which, if any, AM stations take advantage of this opportunity, or if the rule sparks a spike in selling and exchanging FM translator licenses.

WLS Radio Tower Photo Copyright 2004, Garrett Wollman from The Archives@ BostonRadio.org.

Fandom is an amazing thing and thanks to the Internet it’s easier and easier to find like-minded obsessives who share one’s passion for the most obscure objects, idols, and idiosyncrasies. Radio is no exception. Loads of websites document radio history, with nostalgic archivists collecting ephemera, airchecks, and reminiscences from San Francisco to Boston. Various forums also exist, like those on Radio-Info.com, allowing listeners and industry types to talk shop and share current radio gossip.

And then there’s Garrett Wollman. I recently ran across some of his photographs of radio towers and was fascinated. As part of his work with The Archives @ BostonRadio.org, he’s been traveling around the country meticulously photographing every radio tower that he can find. Sometimes he even ventures into radio and television stations; but for the most part it’s the outside architecture and landscapes that he finds so compelling.

In order to learn more about this project, I contacted Garrett to get the scoop about his love for radio towers and his work to help document the history of radio and television. I was surprised to find out a couple of things: 1) Garrett’s a young guy—a rarity in radio history circles and 2) He’s not a big fan of current radio offerings. After chatting with Garrett, I also was made aware of pursuits like DXing and county counting, making me realize that there’s so much more to the radio scene than I ever realized. On to the interview: (more…)