Is fm dead?

PermanentWaves, you're right, as far as the 90's go, and even the 80's for the most part.

But there was a time in the early and mid 70's when FM adult oriented rock radio was finding it's way, and it kicked ass.

Especially the very early 70's. Very experimental. At least in northern California.

I bet there were a few radio stations in the late 60's that did some great things, too, I just wasn't old enough to know. I turned 10 in 1969.

Like anything successful, someone corporate finds a way to distill the thing down to the lowest common denominator and suck the soul out of it.

And you're too young to know what limited choices you had back then. You just had a handful of television stations, cable had about 13 channels back then, and you had radio. No internet, twitter, facebook.

I don't think you can relate to it, coming from the era you're from.
 
the radio station's here in the st. louis area SUCK!!
its all rap and hip hop now..

there used to be 3 classic rock stations, than a normal rock station, than a metal station..
not any more.. the metal station became a pop station, the rock station became more fruity/modern and there are only 2 stations left that play any classic rock, but now they also play alternative rock and stuff like incubus and candlebox.
they have all become poor and depressing.. i dont listen to the radio anymore. :thumbsdn:
 
when i'm not sitting in front of the stereo listening to music,i have fm on one of a few classic rock stations. i am 90 miles north of van.b.c. and get vancouver and seattle stations in stereo and they sound great! i use a splitter on my t.v. cable and have cable hooked up to the tuner.i have done it that way for years and hope to for many more. my only complaint is the lack of variety or imagination (zeppelin did more than "rock and roll" and queen did more than "bohemian rhapsody"......)
 
I live in the sticks, hundreds of miles from a major metro area, and FM is just terrible here. I've had XM for several years, but lately I've been doing several hundred miles a week in a ride with only FM. I couldn't take it any more and moved my XM over to that system.

I had forgotten why I got XM in the first place, I guess. I thought, at first, it'd be fun to see what the airwaves had to offer after a lengthy break. After wearing out the "Tune" and "Seek" buttons, I'd had all I could take. I was ready to gouge my ears out with icepicks.
 
Permanent Waves said:
Good riddance to radio, just another corporate commercialized consumeristic marketing ploy that has no relevance in the internet age of free and easily
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Wow! You were on a roll there. Nice rant. Agree about commercial music & its mediocrity, but there is an alternative.

College radio still jams no matter what your tastes in music. :thmbsp:

College (alternative) radio will be around as long as people can still major in broadcasting, studio engineering, etc.

Fav's for my neck of the woods

UT- Austin: KVRX - 91.7FM
http://www.kvrx.org/

Trinity University in San Antonio: KRTU - 91.7FM
http://web.krtu.org/

San Antonio College: KSYM 90.1FM
http://www.alamo.edu/sac/ksym/index.htm

It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?

--Bruce
 
I empathize and feel sorry for all of the folks with no or sucky radio. I must be one of the lucky folks that live in a zone where radio isn't totally worthless.

I listen to radio every day for hours sometimes and I don't live in a major city. I tune in mostly on the lower end of the dial, but there are several stations I can get with no fancy gear (i.e. car radio) and at home with my tuners and antenna I can get 50+ miles away in a hilly/mountainous area. I get music, news, public affairs, more music, etc. and it's not all classical music or NPR. One thing I do avoid is most commercial station because the commercials -- JUST like on TV, drive me nuts.

Maybe a better antenna might help increase what's available and worthy of your time.
 
In Canada and Australia there are the (shudder in horror) government channels. CBC and down here in OZ ABC. These are completely commercial free and cover the entire country. The population in both of these countries is too small for the money boys to cover anything but the major areas so the taxpayers actually get something for a change.

I think in those places that the distances are too large and the money too small for any big changes. The government in Australia has made noises about changing to some DAB format but they haven't even managed to cut off the analogue TV yet. FM is here for a while.
 
I dont believe FM is dead or ever going to be dead. That is media that gives you news and weather. Doesnt matter what you listen to. We have several stations here that play everything. I like classic rock. So I have my tuner sitting on that station and I listen to it everyday...even right now at 4:15 in the morning.
 
fm wont die out.. it will just start playing music nobody wants to listen to except 15year old girls and boys who want to be girls.
 
I dunno aidynphoenix .... this weekend I heard some great classic blues on FM, world music, and a lot of jazz.

Is that what the 15 year olds are listening to in your neck of the woods ?
 
Our local radio (both AM and FM) is a wasteland, evenly divided between Mariachi music, religious programming and right-wing political talk. The nearest classical music channel transmits from across the border in Tijuana. If it wasn't for NPR and one local station that carries the syndicated "Tech Guy" show on weekends, the only radio worth listening to would be the few LA channels that are strong enough to make it down here.

I do all my radio listening in the car. At home, I've never even bothered to connect an antenna to the tuner-preamp in my main system and my secondary system is integrated amp only.
 
aidynphoenix said:
fm wont die out.. it will just start playing music nobody wants to listen to except 15year old girls and boys who want to be girls.
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You are so right, hey, thanks for that.

I got some fascinating tube radios, sometimes I switch one of them on, and five minutes later I have to switch off again, because I can not bear that totally stupid chat and the incredible unimaginative teenie music.

So my tube radios are just for my eyes only.
 
HarmanKardon said:
I got some fascinating tube radios, sometimes I switch one of them on, and five minutes later I have to switch off again, because I can not bear that totally stupid chat and the incredible unimaginative teenie music.

So my tube radios are just for my eyes only.
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Have you considered getting a low-wattage AM or FM transmitter? You could stream your own programming to your antique radios.
 
DaWoofer said:
Thank goodness for local college stations!
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+1

Speaking of "left of the dial" stations, IIRC this phrase came about because if you owned a station that played less commercially-friendly music & in turn you couldn't afford high-power transmitters, in the days of analog tuners you were placed near the end of the dial, sort of the "bad lands" of radio. That's because the marketing people(?) figured that most people were more inclined to stick to the middle part of the dial because it was physically more convenient to do so. That's what I read years ago, so take it with a grain of salt! :)

FYI: whenever a station offers a hi-bitrate stream, 192kbps and above (192 sounds even better than FM to me), in my experience it is pretty much always a college station, never commercial. And KEXP from U. of Washington is the ultimate so far: they offer a 1411kbps stream - literally CD quality - using the WMA format. And Rice U. here in Houston offers a 256k Real audio stream.

Personally speaking, I've learned about a lot of bands and musicians I've never heard of via the radio, but these days only from college stations and listener-supported stations like 90.1 here in the Bayou City. The internet is definitely a source for this too, but the 'net contains SO much music it can be overwhelming and so it's nice to let the pros sift through it and feed it to me slowly via the box in my audio rack or my car's dash. :D

And there's something about listening to music on the radio that CD/vinyl/etc can't offer: the communal aspect i.e. enjoying something you like with others, very much like watching movies in a theater with a crowd, especially comedies and horror flicks. And for me a good DJ can add a lot to that experience, not to mention learning more about the music itself via they or their guest's stories.

Lastly, this article appeared in the local newspaper last Sunday:

"Let's expand low-power FM"
 
ReelSic said:
Wow! You were on a roll there. Nice rant. Agree about commercial music & its mediocrity, but there is an alternative.

College radio still jams no matter what your tastes in music. :thmbsp:

College (alternative) radio will be around as long as people can still major in broadcasting, studio engineering, etc.

Fav's for my neck of the woods

UT- Austin: KVRX - 91.7FM
http://www.kvrx.org/

Trinity University in San Antonio: KRTU - 91.7FM
http://web.krtu.org/

San Antonio College: KSYM 90.1FM
http://www.alamo.edu/sac/ksym/index.htm

It's ten o'clock. Do you know where your children are?

--Bruce
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Amarillo College's KACV FM90 was just an epic station back in the mid/late 70's/early 80's. The Friday and Saturday night shows "Dead End Street" were the pinnacle of hard rock programming. But times change, and so did their format.
 
reneborg said:
I dunno aidynphoenix .... this weekend I heard some great classic blues on FM, world music, and a lot of jazz.

Is that what the 15 year olds are listening to in your neck of the woods ?
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sorry... in my area there are no radio stations that play blues music or jazz.. you must be in a better area.
im in the st louis area and radio has gotten bad
 
Alive and well here, but I only listen to CBC radio 1 & 2 anyway. That being said, I listen quite a bit, and want it to sound great when I do.
 
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