"Dave" wrote in message
...
David Eduardo wrote:


Anything outside the local metro is not salable, and thus, irrelevant.

Are the people who rely on such stations also irrelevant, because they
live 50 miles out of town? Why don't we pile up the 50 KW stations like
we do on 1240 and 1400? Build one every 300 miles like TV channels?

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§ 73.21 Classes of AM broadcast channels and stations.

(a) Clear channel. A clear channel is one on which stations are assigned
to [SERVE] wide areas. These stations are protected from objectionable
interference within their primary [SERVICE] areas and, depending on the
class of station, their secondary [SERVICE] areas. Stations operating on
these channels are classified as follows:

Your addition of the word "serve" is totally in contradiction with
everything the commission has done over the last 70 years. Stations, when
proof of "service" was required by community ascertainment lists, etc.,
determined the ijnterests and needs of the city of license and the
surrounding communities... not the outlying communities nor those reachable
by night skip, etc.

The purpose of the clear channels was to provide night service for the
networks back in the 30's when there were only a few hundred stations on the
air (in 1941 there were still less than 1000 of them) so the affiliate
serving Palm Springs was in LA. Radio nets don't care much about nights any
more, as that is TV's territory, and the nets that exist can pick up three
or four hundred affiliates for a show like Delialah or six hundred for Coast
to Coast, obviating the need for night skywave.

If you look at http://www.davidgleason.com/Radio_Annual_1941.htm in the
pages near the front there are maps and lists of the Mutual, CBS, Red and
Blue webs, and you can see why the networks wanted the clears and got them
assigned.