Do you know a lot of people who don't listen to radio?...

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I think one other thing is very telling of the state of radio in general too: Look at any major retailer's selection of radio offerings.
 

I also bring up the lack of radios at retail now and then as something the radio industry must ponder.

My focus is on the lack of a good radio that can sit beside the bed,  or in the room where you read the morning paper,  out on the workbench in the garage, etc.  I used a term in one of the forums one day that immediately brought into focus the demographics of radio and radio listening.  I complained about "the lack of table radios" in the market place.  It quickly became obvious that the more youthful among us cannot even picture such a device in their mind.  The immediate response was "WHAT is a TABLE radio?"   

But you focused on the car radio.  That may say as much about or more about the car business than it does the radio business.  I have a twelve year old "beater" sitting in my driveway with 160,000 miles.  ("beater" is a word that may be peculiar to Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and northern parts of Illinois and Indiana.  Other folks have them... I don't know what they call them.)

A beater is the car you drive to work on the days when the snow and ice is getting ahead of the snowplows.  Why risk the good car on a guaranteed fender-bender day. 

My beater is still running on it's original brake shoes,  original muffler,  ORIGINAL RADIO.  I did replace the battery once.  Think of all the things I would have replaced in the first 12 years if that car had been purchased in 1972!!!  (Been there, done that,  made a living for a while doing that for other people!) The "quality revolution" has changed all that.  Our Japanese friends ate Detroit for lunch starting in maybe the 1980s and Detroit has responded with a quality emphasis of their own. 

To some extent the people who buy car radios today are a bit like the people who have audio-phile speakers in their homes with little needle point feet that punch through the carpet to contact the wood floor.  They are a tribe of limited population size.

[CTListener]

Interesting info!

I think one other thing is very telling of the state of radio in general too: Look at any major retailer's selection of radio offerings. Most auto parts stores have gotten out of selling units for the car, places like HH Gregg and Best Buy have them tucked around the corner as the front area is dominated by all the other technology, and even 'ol Wal-Mart has a very small selection of both home and auto radios too. I don't believe Radio Shack even sells a car radio anymore save for a boxed CB or scanner. Plenty of Sirius receivers though.

The Shack still has an AM/FM/SW portable or two on its shelves, but the audio from the built-in speaker is crap. There used to be quite a number of decent-sounding AM/FM portables but it's been years since I've seen one at RS.

[carmen]

shack has AM/FM portables of Grundig/C-Crane/Eton with decent audio. biggest if you are using internal speaker, or smallest if go over to Goodwill at Dudley Sqr and pick up a Sansui or Cambridge, MA made bookshelf speaker (check the backs) for a grand total of under the price of lowest-end ipod nano. but nobody does, that i'm aware

[nocomradio]

 Table radios. I have about 15 of them from various eras, scattered around my home. Zeniths, RCA's and Grundigs, along with a rather large Blaupunkt Virginia that requires a rather sturdy table to support it! The one Grundig 1060 sits beside my bed and gets regular use if that tells you anything about the current offerings......

 The last true table radio I can recall on the market was probably in the mid-80's or so from of all places Radio Shack. It was still in a wood (simulated) cabinet and had a slide-rule tuning arrangement. I never bought one, but remember them on the shelves as there was a Radio Shack dealer just a little distance from my home at the time. Everything since then was a portable or boombox as the term then came to be. I guess BOSE would still be considered a true table radio if anything though. An expensive one at that.

 Car radios probably have suffered from the non-universal nature of vehicles these days too. You need a plethora of hardware and adapters now to install a head unit into some vehicles, given they are also part of the architecture as well. Many factory units are also incorporating MP3 inputs and making that a very prominent feature.

[Uncle Kaimbridge]

Table radios. I have about 15 of them from various eras, scattered around my home. Zeniths, RCA's and Grundigs, along with a rather large Blaupunkt Virginia that requires a rather sturdy table to support it! The one Grundig 1060 sits beside my bed and gets regular use if that tells you anything about the current offerings......

I still use the AM/FM/SW Radio Shack Dx-440 (= Sangean 803A)——since
April’89(!)——as my Dx/bedside radio.  I tried the Sangean ATS-909X back in April, but it just didn’t cut it.   

[CTListener]

Table radios. I have about 15 of them from various eras, scattered around my home. Zeniths, RCA's and Grundigs, along with a rather large Blaupunkt Virginia that requires a rather sturdy table to support it! The one Grundig 1060 sits beside my bed and gets regular use if that tells you anything about the current offerings......

I still use the AM/FM/SW Radio Shack Dx-440 (= Sangean 803A)——since
April’89(!)——as my Dx/bedside radio.  I tried the Sangean ATS-909X back in April, but it just didn’t cut it.   

My RS DX-392 gave up the ghost last year, so I bought a Grundig/Eton G3. Audio unbearably tinny without phones.

[Skynet74]

 It's hard to remain loyal when there are so many other options now. I can still see value in radio if you like specific personalities or news/talk. But I think music formats have really taken a huge hit. These days people can carry their own music library around in their pocket. If you are at home, you can go to youtube and type in any song you can think of. BAM... it's there for you in two seconds. Radio has a lot of challenges these days.

[tvreader]

Outside of an occasional traffic report and sports PBP via XM radio, I haven't listened to AM or FM since I left the business seven years ago.  Yes I keep an eye on it because I still have friends in the business and I care what happens to them, but that is the extent of it.

[Tom Wells]

Back in the late 60s my family (I was a teen) was contacted to be a "Nielsen family".  After the month long trial was over they they told us "Thanks, but no thanks.  Your viewing habits are too  different from the norm."

You know if they get too many people that aren't just "cardboard cutouts" of the ideal consumer,
they might have to admit the world is not just two dimensional.

I can't stand listening to music on little private thingies. 
That's why my private music runs on automation,  extreeeem processing, gentle but huge reverb, tight cuts and commercials I want to hear,
then runs on pt 15 AM so I can listen to them on the many radios, table, bedside, backyard around the place.

Nothing sounds better than music on a great AM radio.
 
I've tried to make other sources sound as good, but there is no substitute for a perfect 150% positive modulated AM signal.
Unless it's a great recording of a  perfect 150% AM signal.

I wonder if it's less about radio vs other modes as it is about "the masses" becoming accepting of whatever is sold
without regard or consideration that there ought to be standards of some sort.
I'm dancing around but avoiding the "q" word.
I can't accept any headphones for listening.  I love them for TASK work, if they're my expensive old Sonys.

When I am listening I MUST have a loudspeaker/cabinet of some minimum size before it is a "radio" and out of the "portable radio"
category.  This happens at about the size of an average box of tissues. 
The younger set seems to be able to tolerate the boom and rumble of single wire headphones from physical movement and friction.
I find the music completely overpowered by such noises unless I sit perfectly still to listen.
This is why I prefer my music to follow ME around the room, as happens when the radio is on.
When you turn on a really physically LARGE radio like some of the top-end mid-1930s consoles, a very modest volume
fills the entire house in a way that is very very different from the headphone or tiny clock radio perception of radio.

A friend just brought over a very early General Electric transistor portable a "potential girlfriend" of his just bought and would like aligned and
put into shape. I'm guessing its about 1959 or 1960, and it has a balanced armature speaker instead of a moving solenoid "voice coil" type!
Anyway, this lady is in her late 30's, and is engaged enough in radio to seek out a  50 year old AM radio and find
someone to repair and align it.   

I won't use an anecdote to extrapolate what others do, but returning to Pirate Johnny's comments, there is a lot more
variation than metrics methodolgy wishes to admit.  It would just be too hard a job unless "preconditions" are gently maintained
to ensure the measurement serves certain perspectives.

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Nothing sounds better than music on a great AM radio.
 
I've tried to make other sources sound as good, but there is no substitute for a perfect 150% positive modulated AM signal.
Unless it's a great recording of a  perfect 150% AM signal.

Tom:  "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  They tell us that phrase in one form or another has been around since the Third Century B.C.  And I think we can say that "Good sound is in the ear of the listener."

I enjoy reading and watching you struggle as you try to take the elements of life today and force them squeeze them,  shape them until the world fits what you want it to be.

We all do that.  I often come here and force, squeeze and shape... not so much because I want the world to fit my concepts,  but because I want to make sure people who disagree with me have had a least one person present an alternate view of what may or may not be reality.  It's what we call "conversation".  I went searching for another word a few years ago and my favorite wordsmith suggested the word I want is SALON...  but unfortunately that word has become the name of a prominent modern day media.. and the word SALON is being forced, squeezed and shaped.

For those of us who have participated in what we like to think was The Grand Era of AM radio,  it is likely that we find the typical elements of AM Radio as very warm and fuzzy.  I think of it as "comfort food for the ears".....   if you were here during that era.

I remember an event from 1954.  An older-than-typical freshman college student who had a fatter-than-typical wallet so he equipped his room with an honest, genuine HI-FI set-up.  This was before stereo was in the market place.  And from his previous business he had worked out a deal with his local radio station.  They subscribed to Columbia Records Subscription  service for classical music.  He reimbursed the station for the cost of the LPs and they were in his dorm room.  The first time he put a Columbia Records classical LP on his HI-FI and "cranked it up"... I was standing there asking:  "What is that noise?"  (Today I enjoy turning on NPR in the evening and hearing some of those same classic tunes...  with a whole new smell, touch and feel.  The technology has changed some.  My ears have changed some.)

If you want to be technical about it Tom,  my memory is that a good AM signal for a pop music station (pre-rock&roll) had a different smell, touch, and feel from say a good AM signal for a country music station,  and an NBC network affiliated station had a different small, touch and feel from either one of those.  And driving across country and tuning across the dial,  even on our somewhat primitive car radios,  I always had the feeling before the announcer cracked the mic what kind of station I was listening to.  Just by the smell, touch and feel of what was coming out of the speaker.

Tom... there are something like 300 million people in this country and I have a feeling there are 196.666 million different ideas about what sounds good to the ear.  And I don't have any idea that there is another one of those 300 million people who hear the same way I do.

How many people do you suppose expect the same sound from a speaker.... that you expect?  A dozen?  4,000?

I hope every day you get at least ONE OPPORTUNITY to hear audio..... your way!