KNBR (AM 680) Antennas, Redwood City, CA, 2024
All the pixels, less risk of electrocution or falling, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54131419266
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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AM broadcast is a technically interesting and somewhat endangered medium. The low frequencies mean that signals routinely travel well beyond their local coverage areas, especially overnight in winter. So there's a bit of mystery in tuning around the dial late at night; you never know what you might pick up.
Sadly, industry consolidation and the growth of higher bandwidth media (FM, satellite, podcasts) has greatly reduced the variety and local focus of programming. But it somehow hangs on.
@mattblaze@federate.social on the road in Canada, often CBC's mediumwave broadcast is the only thing that works. And definitely not mass produced right wing nonsense.
The rapid decline of local content on the mediumwave bands has considerably reduced the romantic mystery of tuning around and seeing what you find. It's mostly now a sterile mix of mass-produced, syndicated right wing talk, sports, and so on. But there are still a handful of stubbornly local stations producing their own programming.
@mattblaze@federate.social agreed, and many of those unique, local broadcasters are operating at relatively low power levels, while the QRM from poorly shielded switching electronics gets louder every day.
kind of feels like MW AM isn't the only communication medium suffering this kind of SNR degradation lately.
@mattblaze@federate.social The graveyard still produce a glorious at night...and this past winter I spent some time Sunset Skipping...and can still hear some local daytime stations in Virginina/Tennesee/North Carolina playing country gospel with local small business ads from my QTH in Brooklyn...but not like it used to be.
@pirateradiomap@toot.community I can regularly (in summer, overnight) receive identifiable stations on all but 11 of the MW slots. A few gems in there, but also a lot of monotony. And yes, the local ads are often the best part!
@mattblaze "produce a glorious mush" that is
@mattblaze Also I miss the clear channel (the band allocation, not the company) overnight Trucker shows. The Road Gang from WWL New Orleans was my favorite.
@pirateradiomap and WWVA’s overnight trucking show.
@mattblaze@federate.social
With Big John Trimble! My favorite though was Big John Parker, the weekend guy on the Road Gang...he was what I like call to a "cornball nihilist" He'd come up with these crazy pranks for the truckers to do...like look for the missing hour during the change back to standard time. And he would record the truckers who would call in and then he'd edit the tape to make them say weird things.
@mattblaze And he was a collector of vintage country music on Sunday mornings between 4-6 AM he had a specialty show called "Country Music the Way It Used to Was." I"d stay up all night to tape it and would switch over the WRVA to catch The Silver Star Quartet an old school Black Gospel harmony group doing request sfor people who were getting up for church. Caught a few of those on tape.
@mattblaze
I've probably got about 100 hours worth of the Road Gang on cassette...a digitization project I should get to post haste given I recorded them in the mid-late 80s.
@pirateradiomap Oh, that definitely needs to b e online!
@mattblaze@federate.social Yeah! I've got some digitizied...I'll try to put them up soon.
@mattblaze@federate.social I used to enjoy listening to radio stations from over a thousand miles away when I was a kid. They still played music on AM back then.
@mattblaze@federate.social Sadly, the Irish AM LW transmitter was shut down in 2023. I see there is a plan to shut down the BBC Radio 4 on LW in the UK, but there seems to efforts to stall that.
@dwmalone@mastodon.ie Yeah, the BBC station has been "about to go off the air" for at least 10 years now. You can pick it up on the east coast of the US on winter nights sometimes.
@mattblaze@federate.social I keep meaning to write something to decode the phase modulated signal on top of the audio, but I've never got around to it. Maybe they'll delay it long enough for me to retire and have enough time to try...
@mattblaze@federate.social
just tell me you'll pay shipping (from Pa) and it's yours.
@cpm@spore.social very kind, and I’m drooling! But sadly, space.
@mattblaze@federate.social
indeed
@mattblaze@federate.social Yeah, I remember very well growing up (and into my early adulthood) being able to pick up far away AM stations when the conditions were right. It was fun back then to see what you’d find!