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Mr. Luddite

On 4/24/2016 11:22 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 24 Apr 2016 02:58:30 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/24/2016 1:12 AM, wrote:
On Sat, 23 Apr 2016 16:05:49 -0500, amdx wrote:

On 4/23/2016 1:37 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:

I was reading the other day that most of the AM stations are being shut
down or sold to special interest broadcasters. Affected is the first
commercial radio station in the USA ... WBZ in Boston. I used to
listen to 'BZ all the time as a kid ... Red Sox games and then Dick
Summer and Larry Glick at night. Too bad to see them being shut down
but they are another casualty of the Internet and technology.

I listened to WBZ in the 80's and part of the 90s. I lived in Michigan
at the time and WBZ came in very well in the evening. I enjoyed Larry
Glick in the middle of the night, starting at 1 or 2 am. Glick had some
hilarious skits. Anyone recall him calling the Hawaiian pay phone? I
also listened to David Brudnoy earlier in the evening, around 10 or
11pm, Brudnoy was very intelligent and did more serious interviews.
After I moved to Florida and got up an antenna, I only received
WBZ very clear for about 30 seconds one evening and then never again.
I sent a letter to them asking if the were going to put their
programing on the internet, I got a response, "not at this time", some
CBS rules as I understood it. Years later, I received an email saying
their programing was now on the internet. They must have saved all the
emails asking about internet programming.
Sorry to hear they are shutting down. Good Memories.
Mikek

When I was in DC we went the other way and listened to Dick Biondi on
WLS in Chicago. A good super het radio connected to a 100' antenna
locked it in like it was local at night.

We used to have one good AM talk station here that was all local
during the day and went to syndicated shows like Dr Dean and that
travel/money guy.
The local show was good because it was mostly local stuff and they got
the real guys on. I called in one day, talked to the Lee County DOT
director and got the light at the end of my street retimed within a
week.
That was also where we heard the real story about James Billie (indian
chief and casino manager) and the panther he killed. We also heard the
real story about Reahart and his fight with Lee County that made it
all the way to the steps of the SCOTUS who let his ruling stand (the
government has to pay if they rezone your property)
Both of them just quietly went away in the news.

Rush Limbaugh killed local talk. He started giving his show away and
it was cheaper than paying local people for a bigger audience.

I looked and we have 16 AM stations that you might be able to hear.
Half are spanish, 1 adult contemporary, 1 country, 2 news and the rest
are sports talk.

WBZ is one of the "clear channel" stations meaning there are very few
other AM stations that broadcast near WBZ's frequency assignment. Last
I knew it was a 50,000 watt station and at night it's signal is
listenable over a good part of the country, especially the mid-west.
I have a friend who occasionally co-hosts a call-in talk show on WBZ
that runs from midnight to 5 am. She gets calls from listeners from
Minnesota, Colorado and other states across the nation.

Yup, when we were doing "AM DXing" there were 3 or 4 far away stations
we could get at night if the atmospherics were right. I have picked
up WLS on I-95 in the Carolinas while I was on my way to Florida. It
is weird because it will pop up as clear as a bell and a while later
it just fades away. The old Childrens Band worked that way too.
Occasionally you would hear someone from 1000 miles away but they just
came and went. Whether you could actually respond was another thing.
(although it was technically illegal to do so)

During the CB craze of the 80's I specifically bought a certain model
base station sold through Radio Shack because it could be easily
modified. When I finished the "mods", a push of a button could change
the frequencies to what was called the "upper" set. No local chatter
there. Of course you could only talk to someone who also had a modified
radio.

The other major modification was to increase the power output that could
be controlled with an added external potentiometer. Straight AM went
from the regulation 4 watts up to a max of 16 watts. Sideband could be
adjusted from the regulation 12 watts PEP to about 30 watts.

I used to be able to talk to a guy in Italy on Sunday mornings from our
house on the shoreline of MA. At night I could talk to people as far
away as CA. Skip, of course.