In keeping with the discussion of AM's demise I agree with Artisan that a lot of it has to do with programming as much as being outdated or from interference.
I post on Facebook daily about my station on 1630 in Toronto(don't give the exact location) and picture a CHUM Chart of a certain year and week to illustrate what is heard and huge numbers of likes and comments more than I imagined. People are coming out of the woodwork in droves. And not just old people. I am getting more followers weekly. This is telling me there is a very large segment of the population, not just baby boomers but Gen X too that would listen to AM if they did what I do and "make it great again" by reviving what it was in it's heyday. As Artisan calls retro radio. The commercial stations have abandoned the baby boomers and Gen X....not because the audience isn't there but the advertisers won't support it as they want the demographic that they can sell products to. The downfall of AM is the abandoning of it's listening audience. If I was a commercial station and doing what I do on the hobby one I could be a success.
Audience wise but not advertising wise. So the question is why don't the multibillionaires that own the stations take a little less profit and they will still be multibillionaires and make AM radio more appealing? They can make the bulk of the money from FM. But I blame the smartphone for a lot of terrestrial radio's demise, FM as well as AM.
Also the NAB and Canada's equivalent pressure the governments to pass the AM in all cars act. The article blames AM out of cars as a big part of the prediction of ten years left.
I post on Facebook daily about my station on 1630 in Toronto(don't give the exact location) and picture a CHUM Chart of a certain year and week to illustrate what is heard and huge numbers of likes and comments more than I imagined. People are coming out of the woodwork in droves. And not just old people. I am getting more followers weekly. This is telling me there is a very large segment of the population, not just baby boomers but Gen X too that would listen to AM if they did what I do and "make it great again" by reviving what it was in it's heyday. As Artisan calls retro radio. . ..
Also the NAB and Canada's equivalent pressure the governments to pass the AM in all cars act. The article blames AM out of cars as a big part of the prediction of ten years left.
Well, if the act doesn't pass then it would be a major blow.
Where is your 1630 in Toronto Facebook page? I can't find it, but online I found "The Breeze XTRA, a "Drive-In Radio" service in Toronto, is that you?
https://www.getmeradio.com/stations/driveinradio1630-3924
Drive In Radio!
AM1630 The Breeze XTRA - Classic Oldies Radio, 1630 The Breeze XTRA, Drive In Music Radio! CRBZ-DB
Toronto AM1630
@mark by the way, I had to Google CHUM chart, didn't know what that was interesting history at wiki about it. Chum appears to be the equivalent of the Billboard magazine charts in the US.
There's a Chum tribute site: https://chumtribute.com/
@richpowers A different subject, will start a topic for this later today.
@richpowers Actually, CHUM was just a large radio station in the Toronto area. But because it was so large, it was fairly influential over the rest of Canada. Pretty much all radio stations did have their own charts or surveys, or whatever they called them. I managed to find and download the charts for the 3 Top 40 radio stations in Vancouver in the late 1950s and 1960s, and they were quite different from CHUM.
RPM, a Canadian magazine, attempted to do national charts.
Audience wise but not advertising wise. So the question is why don't the multibillionaires that own the stations take a little less profit and they will still be multibillionaires and make AM radio more appealing? They can make the bulk of the money from FM.
Have you ever owned a business?