Category: Radio

The AM Sound

When I was doing AM radio DJ duty, I could monitor either what was going to the transmitter from the studio, or what the transmitter was putting out over the air.

If I was working alone on a weekend, I always monitored the over-the-air signal. What I heard wasn’t quite what listeners with regular AM radios heard, because the station’s AM receiver had wideband reception.

My GE Superadio III, now almost 30 years old, has wideband AM reception. It’s only useful during the day, on stations that are well separated on the dial from other stations. Here’s an example of the difference in sound quality, for all that it matters anymore. 🙁

DJ Memory

Hearing this one puts me right back at the mic in the radio station broadcast studio. This video is funny, because Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks sang the backing vocals, and they aren’t in the video.

Here’s another one. Except by the time this single came out I was functioning as a one-man news department. The circumstances of my quitting that job are painful for me to recall.

The short explanation is that I was working 72+ hours/week for $110 net pay. The station owner needed me to do something that was one thing too many for the hours and the pay. Having made myself as valuable to the station as I could, I left just when it needed me most. I was as young as Randy VanWarmer was in this video.

Me back then.