"videonex" wrote in message
...

"Robert L. Herman" wrote in message
...
To ansdwer your question.

First of all it's an all day thing. It seems to be all over town. About
a
month ago I was riding out to a place where I play piano music for some
older people at an assisted living place on the other side of town and
the
distorted sound never cleared up from my house to the other side of
town.

As I stated earlier the distortion was heard as far away as Battle
Creek.
To
discribe the sound would bew like running a radio with batteries that
are
about to die. You know that raspy sound that a station makes when the
batteries are about to die.


It's definitely a problem at the station. Many AM stations these days are
only on the air because if they aren't, the FCC will take the license.
The
way those owners operate them, I'm surprised they just don't give the
license up anyway. It's poor maintenance and a lack of caring on the part
of the person(s) who should care and fix the problem.

WKMI is the #4 rated station in its market, which is relatively small and
ranked #182 nationally. I'd be surprised if a relatively successful station,
albeit in a smaller market, is just ignoring a critical engineering issue.
The first suggestion, if the station is one of interest, is to call it and
make a polite inquiry of the manager or program director or operations
manager.

That said, I do take issue with a statement that most AM stations are on the
air to hold the license. Most AM stations are on the air to make money. Not
all do, but many are among America's top billing stations, and those AMs
with decent signals that cover their markets are successful. And many
smaller AMs that have limited coverage have found great success and profit
by serving ethnic communities, minority groups or religious followings.

In some cases, there are over-radioed markets where the FMs have better
coverage and the AMs are inferior (Palm Springs leaps to mind) where the AMs
are all pretty miserable and none even covers the entire market. However,
even in those cases, there is generally someone who is willing to take the
risk of buying the station to program their "better idea."