clifto wrote:
D Peter Maus wrote:

Market drive in broadcast is a hit or miss affair. FM had been
languishing on the edges of extinction since Amstrong took his beating
from Sarnoff. It wasn't until FCC mandated in the 60's that all new
radios produced were to have both AM and FM stages, that FM listening
began to take off.



I never heard of this. Further, from the sixties on, AM-only radios have
been available all over the USA.

Actually, for a while, they weren't.


What made FM take off was underground
radio.



What made FM take off was the popularity of mass appeal programming
found by listeners migrating to FM as FM radios became more widely
available. FM had been around for more than 20 years by the time the
general market discovered it, with programming limited to classical
music, because ASCAP royalties did not have to be paid, and beautiful
music formats because of it's cost effectiveness. Most FM stations had
short lifespans until the 60's, because there was just no one in any
numbers listening. Primarily because of the limited value of making the
investment in an FM capable radio for what little was actually on the
bands. Even as late as the 60's, FM capable radios were expensive.
Portables often running $50 or more. My first FM was a Raleigh 9
transistor, in the late 60's, after FM radios became manufactured in
numbers, and it still cost almost $30, a lot of money then, when AM
radios had been available for half that.

Underground radio went dark for the same reasons most FMs went dark
in the late 40's and 50's: there weren't enough listeners to support it.
At the same time, Top 40 and AOR radio were stealing listeners from AM
in droves, dwarfing the size of underground audiences.