[BC] Overcrowding & noise floor on AM

[Phil Alexander]

On 18 Mar 2007 at 21:14, WFIFeng at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 03/18/2007 6:26:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> thebeaver32 at gmail.com writes:
> 
> > I'm still puzzled by how the AM band is so "overcrowded", when I can travel
> >  a hunded fifty miles of highway here in Mississippi, and find listenable
> >  stations on about 10 (out of 200) channels.
> 
> Ah, but that had to have been mid-day. Try the same thing again around 
> midnight. Whole different ballgame.
> 
> Several folks, including myself, have discussed the idea of moving the 
> "graveyard" stations to a new band. We have all kicked that idea around many 
> times... and it is an excellent idea, too bad it won't happen due to foolish 
> politics. The best possible scenario for the "Mom and Pop" stations would be to move 
> to a VHF band, like below 88Mhz, by vacating TV 6 and 5 and re-assigning those 
> frequencies to FM service specifically for the displaced AM's. 

That was the idea of Class A FM's "back in the day" 
but AM was king and FM had no receivers. You can 
forget TV 5 and 6. They are slated for pub safety
and biz radio. The biz radio part looks like a high 
ticket auction while if they gave out replacement 
channels they wouldn't get a nickel. This is a non-
starter, today, tomorrow and 10 years from now.

The ONLY useless frequencies they have are the ones 
below the AM band, but the same problem - no receivers.


---------------------------------------------
Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology 
(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation) 
Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037