AM Radio in 40s to 60s.

[Tom Wells]

Streaming audio is just a glorified long distance phone call.
 
I wondered in 1966 or so why it was not possible to dial up and listen to KHJ somehow in Chicago on the phone. (age 5)
I knew phone calls were expensive, and in 45 years years cost HAVE come down enough to where it's feasible to pay
the phone company to listen to radio over the phone.

Now that the phone co doesn't have to maintain the purity of an analog signal, the throughput is much cheaper.
If the resolution and bandwidth available to the digtal exceeeds the needs of the analog, the "pipe" seems to disappear
to the user, and it IS much like what happens in radio, but it only works when FULLY connected to a manmade network
that's still spotty at best.

To the casual user it may seem like radio.
As someone who enjoys listening to the highly amplified sounds of an empty rf channel on shortwave, waiting, hoping
to hear a distant signal, the sound of the ether itself is too much a part of what "has" to be there for it to be radio.
I don't really need to hear that effect or any degradation at all but find various "radio effects/noises"
a comforting verification that I'm listening to the radio.

It IS the difference between fishing, cooking and eating vs. just going to a restaurant for fish.
And the reasons why someone enjoys (or doesn't ) these two very different experiences of "having fish".

[NightAire]

I don't disagree that there's something very satisfying about hearing an announcer, for example, talking about a storm building off to the west...  and hearing the crackle start to pick up on the dial...  but...  and this is a BIG but:

MOST LISTENERS DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DELIVERY MECHANISM.

When I was a kid, I made tapes up to sound like a radio station and passed them out around school every week.  When I went to summer camp and the bus we took had a tape player, I made tapes for the entire drive there with accurate time checks and current temps based on the (generous) predictions of one of our local TV meteorologists.

Not only were the kids loving the "station," the adults were confused that the signal was never fading.   

It didn't matter that it wasn't over the air.  It didn't matter that it wasn't live, even.  All that mattered was that they liked the songs, and the DJ told some pretty corny jokes that made them laugh.     (It was REALLY funny when I told them it was me!  How did they not recognize my voice?  Good grief...)

I hate that at many stations, the delay of digital processing means I can't monitor my talk breaks directly off the air.  HD is even worse.  The internet has so much delay, I can aircheck myself during my show; about the time I take off my headphones, my break comes streaming back.

None of this matters to listeners.  They get their TV stations over cable, they get their newspaper on their eReader, and they're getting their radio over the internet.

It's interesting to hear about all the hurdles and barriers to listening to internet radio, because I have numerous listeners who leave us on at work all day.  Those are hours they are NOT listening to their local "listen while you work" station.  A friend plugs his iPhone into his car stereo and drives all over this part of the station with hardly a hiccup (we sound GREAT through his stereo; I'm jealous!). I have numerous listeners tell me they take us with you on their Android phones and tablets.

I have a Livio radio on my nightstand that is my clock radio, waking me up to my station every morning...  and it was easy to set up.

Certainly this is not everyone's experience, but I wanted to provide a balance to the "impossible" listening experiences mentioned above.

A just-released internet radio listener survey finds more than 20% of the audience says they split their listening time 50/50 with broadcast & internet radio.  49% say they listen MORE than half of their listening hours to internet radio vs. broadcast radio.

That means a whopping 71.5% of those listening to radio are doing more listening to internet radio than broadcast radio.

(Here's the survey in case you want to take a look.)
http://www.audiographics.com/spclreport/survey55.htm

If it is any consolation, think of this: we're trading yesterday's static and fade for today's stuttering and hiccups.  It's less-dependent on location than broadcast is, but internet radio is still harder to listen to from the other side of the world than it is next door, generally, because of the many jumps it has to make to get to you.

Tomorrow's internet DX'ers will brag about being able to hold a 128 kbps stream solid from somewhere in the Australian bush for an HOUR last night...  no stuttering or dropouts or nothing!   

This argument reminds me about the noise and fury when CDs began replacing records.  Even today, there are "purisits" who HAVE to have the turntable rumble, clicks, pops and tracking distortion to enjoy a song.  Add in more distortion from tube amps, and they're in seventh heaven.

Nothing wrong with that...  it's just the rest of the world has left vinyl (and in many cases, physical media of ANY kind) behind.

I didn't like losing all the artwork the LP provided.  I SURE don't like only getting a compressed file instead of an uncompressed CD...  a file that can disappear the next time my hard drive crashes...

Few things are as satisfying to me as hearing my own voice crackle over the AM band...  but those days are going away, and sooner rather than later.

[nocomradio]

TV stations over cable, they get their newspaper on their eReader, and they're getting their radio over the internet.

It's interesting to hear about all the hurdles and barriers to listening to internet radio, because I have numerous listeners who leave us on at work all day.  Those are hours they are NOT listening to their local "listen while you work" station.  A friend plugs his iPhone into his car stereo and drives all over this part of the station with hardly a hiccup (we sound GREAT through his stereo; I'm jealous!). I have numerous listeners tell me they take us with you on their Android phones and tablets.

  That may be the case in many metropolitan areas and where cell coverage and internet access is excellent.

 Try it out here in the sticks. The only way to get internet is either through dial-up or satellite. Satellite has bandwith limits that prevent you from doing much streaming or video watching. We are beyond the reach of wireless broadband, and there isn't enough demand to install fiber optic or cable due to a small population and the rural location. Add to that, that a few well-placed mountains around make for a really odd mish-mash of usable cell signals, and you really need radio. That is if you want any music or news. Some of the local stations do a halfway decent job with very reliable signals.

  The technology infrastructure is really not very widespread, nor complete across many areas of the country, and probably won't be for a long while to come in some places. Often times, folks who visit me here, will complain or comment on the fact they can't get a decent signal or the access to the 'net is spotty. They have been so used to and spoiled by their urban or suburban living that they assume that it is the same everywhere.

 Still though, I love it. My nearest neighbor is about a mile away and its really dark when I turn off the lights at night!

[Tom Wells]

It's hit or miss, urban or wherever.
Nowhere on the north side of Chicago into the near north suburbs have I ever found a route to work that
either has enough signal or hands off the call to the next cell so that streaming would work.

That's on this laptop. 
When I've tried to make cell calls, they almost always break up or drop in that 20 mile drive. 
Now why would I want to add internet service to yet another device that won't work well enough to bother with?

Will I really have to put one of those little 1990s "car phone" antennas on the windshield and rig some kind of
coupler to the phone?

Will AT&T ever build out their capacity to a meaningful level? 
Will they ever set up their cellular coordination to hand off calls to the next cell instead of just dropping them?

Until I see some evidence of this, it's just wishful thinking.
Nice to know it's working acceptably somewhere.

[billding]

'I was born in 1988, and I loved DX'ing as a kid' - says "Turnpike Tuner". Also...'Listening to KB 1520 and 1530 WSAI when they were kick ass oldies stations', says "Turnpike Tuner"... did I miss an era of KB1520? I remember when they stopped playing music in the early 80's. WSAI and WCKY swapped calls a few times, but "fire and brimstone" brokered shows is all I remember from that station. Must be my senility or alcohol brain syndrome that prevents me from remembering these "great dx years"....

[BobOnTheJob]

'I was born in 1988, and I loved DX'ing as a kid' - says "Turnpike Tuner". Also...'Listening to KB 1520 and 1530 WSAI when they were kick ass oldies stations', says "Turnpike Tuner"... did I miss an era of KB1520? I remember when they stopped playing music in the early 80's. WSAI and WCKY swapped calls a few times, but "fire and brimstone" brokered shows is all I remember from that station. Must be my senility or alcohol brain syndrome that prevents me from remembering these "great dx years"....

Not sure about KB1520 but the WSAI calls moved to 1530 and did a great oldies presentation for a time that IIRC ended on Jan 15 2005. Sounded good to hear that tearing into Florida at night (when on vacation)...did bring a piece of that Skywave DX magic back for me, if only for a while.

[K6JHU]

In the late 50's and early 60's WKBW was a major top 40 station. It is where I first caught up with Dick Biondi who was their evening DJ. It is one of the stations, along with WLS, and CKLW that got me interested in radio.

[bilco]

I graduated high school just outside of Buffalo in 1962.  WKBW was what we all listened to in those days.  Tommy Shannon, Art Roberts, Dick Biondi, Irv Weinstein, Dan Nevereth and several others were our daily freinds.  What they did was one of the reasons I ended up in radio full time.  Caught one of the guys on the air on WWKB a few years back when I was in BUffalo for a reunion and it was refreshing to know where some of them went.  I just missed Art Roberts when I moved to Las Vegas 14 yearas ago.  He died up in Reno, but his daughter had a tribute page for a while.
Bill

[Turnpike Tuner]

'I was born in 1988, and I loved DX'ing as a kid' - says "Turnpike Tuner". Also...'Listening to KB 1520 and 1530 WSAI when they were kick ass oldies stations', says "Turnpike Tuner"... did I miss an era of KB1520? I remember when they stopped playing music in the early 80's. WSAI and WCKY swapped calls a few times, but "fire and brimstone" brokered shows is all I remember from that station. Must be my senility or alcohol brain syndrome that prevents me from remembering these "great dx years"....

Back when FM "Oldies" stations were ditching 55-64 oldies en masse, WWKB and WSAI flipped to "Real Oldies" in the early 2000's. From 2003 to early 2006, WWKB was "KB 1520" - per Wiki: "On January 27, 2003, WWKB returned to music, playing oldies from the 1950s and 1960s. The oldies format was an attempt to recreate the station's history as a popular music station (and was part of a nationwide fad of "real oldies" formats on AM radio stations in the early 2000s), and while they maintained the official WWKB calls for station identification, they also played the original "WKBW Buffalo" jingles and featured many of the classic WKBW jocks including Armstrong and Neaverth. While not performing as well in Arbitron ratings as it had in its golden past, the revived "WKBW" earned the best ratings for the station since the 1990s, with approximately a 2 share, and was beginning to grow."

1530 WSAI was "Real Oldies" from 2003 to 2005 before CC decided to put the calls back on 1360 and returned the WCKY calls to 1530.

Those years (2002 to 2006) were my great dx years since there was KB 1520 and WSAI.

[satech]

On "Real Oldies" WWKB, Jack Armstrong did the best voice-tracked show I've ever heard. Here's a scoped aircheck from his first show on the Oldies format's inaugural night, January 27th 2003:

http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=18793218945094056530

Although there was some fading because I was receiving WWKB via skywave down here in NJ, the distortion and pumping audio was not my radio's fault -- that's how they were transmitting it! It sounded like they dragged an old CBS Volumax off the shelf and put it back on the air. But not too long later, the audio went back to a cleaner, more normal sound -- including a C-Quam AM Stereo pilot tone, although the programming never contained any actual stereo separation.