Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

There were two other factors to the downfall of Atlantic 252. One was the location of the mast at Clarkestown, west of Dublin which lost a lot of groundwave propagation due to Wales standing between it & London. The other was the 252 frequency being given clearance for use by a 1.5 megawatt Radio Algeria service, which used to swamp reception in southern England, especially at night when Clarkestown was restricted to 100kW output.

When the radio Cleveland frequency was dropped in 1992, the ILR service for that area (Radio Tees) was already established using 1170kHz. I can only speculate that two changes occurred around this time with other ILR services that may have caused contention issues, as both Radio Forth & Radio City had to re-site their 1548 masts due to local issues.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

I always thought it odd that two Liverpool stations (City and BBC R Merseyside) had AM frequencies consisting of the same four numbers (1548 and 1485). :spin:

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

The issues you describe re Atlantic 252 meant that it wasn't able to get a signal to the London area. Iirc the signal stopped being satisfactory to the eats of a line running from The Wash to the Bristol Channel.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

Just about as close as they can get to each other without interference. The same was true in London although slightly further apart (BBC Radio London on 1458, Capital Radio on 1548).

As far as Radio City is concerned, this was the biggest AM blunder the IBA made as regards radio sites. The original AM site was a 3 mast directional array at Rainford. However, the IBA had not accounted for the fact that the phased signal would cross the water, hit north Wales & come back out of phase. There were many comments that reception was better in Blackpool than in Merseyside. The mast was moved to a new site next to Port Sunlight (Bebington) a few years later.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

Back in the day, BBC Merseyside and City both preferred to advertise their AM service as metres rather than KHz. I guess they just fitted better on window stickers. The BBC was on 202 and Radio City was 194 - which was the basis of their name and their main jingle well into the 1980s when it was our evening listening of choice (they went deep into the comedy jock genre with this bloke who called himself Cousin Matty IIRC, may have been (but probably wasn’t) American, had an echo effect permanently on his mic and had people phone in to pledge allegiance to him (I will have no other leader!).

One … Nine … Four … Radio Ci-tyyyyy!

Around the mid-late 80s the BBC’s on-the-hour preamble to the news was a lot more pedestrian, something along the lines of “On fourteen eighty five kilohertz, and ninety five point eight FM VHF in stereo, this is Radio Merseyside”. This was my mother’s station of choice.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

and there were several different stations across the UK using both frequencies and this would not have helped with reception, especially after dark.

It always seemed strange that so many frequencies on MW across the UK never seemed to get used.

---------- Post added at 12:35 ---------- Previous post was at 12:33 ----------

I always assumed that the removal of all of the MW transmitters for BBC local stations in the early 1990s was so that they could be re-used for news commercial stations rather than just those surrendered by BBC Radios GLR, GMR and WM.

---------- Post added at 12:36 ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 ----------

as did Radio 1, which was seen as bring on 275 and 285 rather than 1089 and 1053. However, BBC 5 Live always said 909 and 693.

---------- Post added at 12:39 ---------- Previous post was at 12:36 ----------

In the USA there were stereo broadcasts on AM (MW and not LW as radio in America didn't use long wave). I wonder if it would have worked in the UK and if so, if it might have extended the lifespan of AM, and maybe stereo broadcasts might have been very helpful to the gold AM stations, Virgin 1215 and Atlantic 252.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

It was tested by the IBA in the early 1990s (an ex school friend/work colleague who worked for the IBA was involved in the Foxhall Heath C-QUAM tests) & was successful. However, as with most new technology it was expensive kit & with better quality available on FM, plus the release of more frequencies in the upper sub-band up to 108Mhz it never took off.

An explanation of how the system worked went out in the IBA weekly “digest” for the TV & Radio trade at the time, a copy of which is on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg3X6dVAYBs

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

All UK MW radio station frequencies are divisable by 9

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

Yep! As set up by the Geneva Frequency plan of 1975, all European MF services were standardised at 9 KHz. Previously they had varied between 8 & 10 KHz, which produced an audible “whistle” on some receivers due to inter-carrier interference.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

Out of curiosity I went looking for a demo of what AM stereo sounded like. I was amazed at how much of an improvement there was over AM mono.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

Thank you for that reply Nodrog.

I recall seeing an edition of Engineering Announcements on YouTube which featured AM stereo hut as you say it never really got beyond testing. I never saw AM stereo receivers being available, and thinking back the best way to introduce AM stereo would probably have been through car radios.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

When you consider costs only go down through mass production. No other countries in Europe were testing it, let alone promoting it. Who would pay a premium to upgrade their car stereo when a far superior transmission method (FM) was already available & fitted to the cars already. The system was also never tested on national AM network, where phasing between adjacent transmitters on the same frequency could have been a problem. The BBC have always synchronised their transmissions across their AM networks so that audio sync & carrier interference was kept to a minimum. The national commercials have never done this, which is very noticeable in fringe areas. Indeed if you listen to TalkSport at night, even turning a directional radio away from the good signal, you will usually hear out of sync audio coming from adjacent transmitters. It was even more noticeable with Virgin & then Absolute.

Also with more expensive kit going in at transmission sites, there would have been inevitable increases to the IBA rental charges & therefore operating costs for the stations involved.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

Top band on AM those were the days

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

I think AM stereo in cars would have been rolled out gradually initially for high end vehicles.

However your point about out of synch audio is one of the reasons why MW was always not an easy listen, especially after dark. Maybe this was less of an issue in the USA which is why AM stereo got off the ground.

Re: AM Radio fading into history
 

More bad news for fans of AM radio. TalkSport want to close 4 of their sites immediately, with another 17 to follow on a rolling programme that will only leave 5 high power sites remaining.

https://radiotoday.co.uk/2023/02/tal...s-am-coverage/