Michael Black wrote:
The "AM" stations moved to the FM band some years back in some major
municipalities. Actually, I thought it would have included more on that
list of yours.

Seems to be an ongoing process. Commercial stations aren't immune
either. DXers are only half-joking when they ask "would the last AM
engineer in Canada please turn off the lights"...

The amusing thing is that here in Montreal, when CBC AM (now renamed
"CBC Radio One" moved to FM, there were complaints about reception problems
in some areas, so they took over another frequency for a secondary
transmitter. So much for the vaunted "better coverage" that they moved to
FM in the first place for. Meanwhile, I can get a non-local CBC Radio One
station on yet another frequency.

Thing is, with AM they have a fair signal everywhere but don't have a
real blasting signal anywhere. With FM they don't have the same areal
coverage, but in the areas the FM *does* cover it gets through the
various noises a lot better. My workplace is only about 10 miles from
the 50kw WSM-650 transmitter but we have difficulty getting a clean WSM
signal inside the building. A 1kw FM at the same site would be a lot
easier to reliably receive.

In a couple of cases in the Prairies, they've been building
modestly-powerful FM transmitters in the major cities while leaving the
associated AM transmitters on the air. There's been an 820-watter on
102.5 in Regina for several years (// 540 CBK); they've recently added
stations in Winnipeg (2.8kw, 89.3 English/90.5 French); Saskatoon
(94.1/4.1kw, English only); Calgary (99.1/1.1kw, English only); and
Edmonton. (3.9kw; 93.9 English/101.1 French) In all of these cases the
FM of course doesn't come anywhere near duplicating the AM coverage, and
they plan to leave the AMs on the air.

Because of the lighter population densities I don't expect they'll ever
shut down the big AMs on the Prairies. I do kinda half expect
CBU/Vancouver will flip eventually and am surprised they aren't doing
more FM conversions in NL. (the N part, as they do seem to have already
flipped them all in the L part)

--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com