In junior high school, our science teacher mocked our radio habits. "FM is fine music," she said. "AM is average music." AM radio was our world. FM was classical and other stuff that was of no interest.
Even more important than the music was the world beyond that came through on an AM radio after dark. The forecasts of lake-effect snow for Cheektowaga, New York were more real to us in central Massachusetts because WKBW from Buffalo was a clear channel station while WMEX, from Boston, dropped its power at sundown. (More about this at the FCC web site: Why AM Radio Stations Must Reduce Power, Change Operations, or Cease Operations at Night).
Because I was driving, I didn't try to record call letters or frequencies. I'd listen for a while and move up the dial until the tuner circled back to the beginning. I listened to
- Red Sox, Yankees, and Mets games in English and Spanish
- bloviating gasbags such as Michael Savage who had a sore throat and wondered if the Communists had put some Gulf shrimp into his Chinese take-out
- preachers who sounded too much like Reverend Lovejoy
- nationally syndicated broadcasts of various loonies, such as a guy who rattles off a lengthy list of eye-of-newt type of herbal formularies to treat a woman's husband who has a long list of ailments that she's determined to cure for him.
- very little music
- identifiable local content only from the all-news stations from New York and Montreal and from Dan Rea on WBZ with a particularly evasive Charlie Baker.
By the time I arrived home, it was well after dark and the station lineup had changed from near to far. Even with all of the consolidation of media outlets and homogenization of formats, AM radio mixes it up pretty well. You won't fun tunes to rock your world, but you will get a dose of what Steinbeck said of Cannery Row:
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| Cannery Row - Google Books |
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