[Scan-DC] WSJ article on AM DXing

[Andrew Clegg]

The Wall Street Journal is on a roll this week...



Why Nighttime is the Right Time for the Great American Road Trip

After dark, you can see only as far as your headlights, but the journey takes on new dimensions when it’s all about looking for far-flung AM radio stations

By Dan Neil
May 18, 2018 9:32 a.m. ET

THE GREAT American road trip is typically a daytime affair, and with good reason. It’s hard to see the sights when you can’t see. But there is another kind of road trip available to nocturnal travelers that has its own roadside attractions and most particularly its own sounds.

Nighttime is the right time for the AM radio.

Unlike FM radio and TV signals that require a line of sight to be received, AM radio waves travel farther because of what’s called groundwave and skywave propagation. AM’s long wavelength and low frequency signals (between 530-1700 kilohertz) ricochet off the ionosphere and around the curvature of the Earth, especially at night. Most AM stations have to power down or sign off at night to avoid overlapping with distant stations assigned the same frequency.

But not all. Implemented in 1941, the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement set aside dozens of frequencies known as clear channels for the exclusive use of big broadcasters (50,000 watts or more) serving large swathes of the country. These Class A stations didn’t have to reduce power at night and still don’t. As a result, their signals, rattling between Earth and sky, can travel thousands of miles, if the conditions are right.

Like they were one night in March 2010 on Interstate 40 in Arizona. My family was moving back home to North Carolina from Los Angeles. The kids and wife had flown ahead while I drove the minivan cross-country. Having the car, and especially the car’s sound system, all to myself was a treat. I was getting pretty tired of "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack.

Late that first night, somewhere east of Kingman, it must have been, the FM stations faded away. I starting sweeping through the AM dial. Out of the crackling ether came the announcers on CBW 990 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, complaining about snow drifts. They were in a studio about 1,700 miles away.

Most legacy clear channels are in major markets including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles (the venerable KNX). But they beam in from more exotic locations too. There is a clear-channel station in Nassau, Bahamas (ZNS-1). There are three in Newfoundland: in St. John’s, Grand Falls-Windsor and Corner Brook. Alaska has 16 clear-channel stations, including KOTZ in Kotzebue, a remote village of about 3,200 souls known as the "Gateway to the Arctic."

Broadcasting was once called the Kingdom of the Air but these days it’s more like a slum. In the 1970s FM broadcasting, with its higher quality signal, eclipsed big-time AM, the format that built rock ’n’ roll. Most clear-channel stations today have a talk radio/news format featuring the same syndicated shows of the same conservative talking heads. What’s left are the commercials, wall-to-wall, often back-to-back: Gold. Hospital beds. Funeral insurance.

So, for me, it’s not about the programming but the scientific wonder of it—reaching out into the dark as if with a fishing pole, trying to catch a big one.

Sometimes if I’m in car at night I’ll try to pick up WSM-AM 650 in Nashville. Famous as the radio home of the Grand Ole Opry , WSM popularized Appalachian and old-timey country music during the Great Depression, booming out 50,000 watts from its toothpick-shaped antenna mast, which is still in operation off Interstate 65. It’s fair to say WSM changed American music history. And it still plays old-timey, which is nice.

Just to the right on your AM dial, at 700 kHz, lives the famous WLW in Cincinnati. Founded by radio pioneer Powel Crosley Jr., WLW stood for “World’s Largest Wireless,” and for a while it was. In 1934, WLW threw the switch on an experimental mega-transmitter, a 500,000-watt monster with a signal so intense it was reportedly heard in mattress springs. WLW’s supersize signal drowned out stations hundreds of miles away.

Still, the most memorable radio I’ve found on the road was coming from small community AM stations, 5,000 watts or less, whose signals flicker to life for a few minutes before dying in static. Sometimes, if the farm report is really good, I’ll pull off to listen a while and maybe watch the tower lights flash. You can learn a lot about a place that way.

I’m not doing anything, officer. Just sightseeing.