Old AM Broadcast Towers Get a New Life

Esther Schindler shares an article from Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Video may have killed the radio star, but other media certainly make old AM radio towers superfluous... maybe. "As once-loyal listeners tune away, most AM stations are barely holding onto life, slashing staff and budgets as deeply as they can while struggling to find a return to profitability," reports HPE. "Once upon a time, having a broadcast license of any kind was like having a permit to print money. In today's world, that's no longer true." But, with some 10,000 AM broadcast towers in the United States stretching high into the sky, there may be an opportunity for wireless carriers who don't want to argue with community opposition from neighborhoods where residents don't want yet another cell tower. The amount of money an AM station owner can pocket by sharing its tower with a wireless partner varies widely, depending on the tower's location, height, and several other factors. But it's certainly more income -- and a way to keep "old" technology from becoming obsolete. "Using an AM tower, which has very often been in place for many years, avoids many zoning and other permitting issues, versus going in and creating a new site for a tower," Behr explains. He says local residents, businesses, and officials rarely complain about an AM broadcast tower that suddenly begins serving as a cell site. "That tower was there before they were, and it doesn't bother them," Lawrence Behr, CEO of Greenville, North Carolina-based LBA Group, says. "Hanging a few things on it is rarely controversial, so that's a real good thing for AMs."

Comments

If AM radio is dying, it is because of the

[mark_reh]

crap that is broadcast on it all day, every day. Right wing political rants, conspiracy theorists, and religious kooks have taken over all the space between the baseball games. Every station broadcasts continuous running advertisements interrupted occasionally by "programming", which is itself mostly advertising. We have a lot of stupid people in the US, but how even they listen to that for more than a few minutes at a time?

AM broadcast radio is going the same way SW radio (also AM broadcast, except at higher frequencies) did back in the 80s and 90s. The big players give up on it, then the religious nuts take over, then it fades into obscurity.

We need to keep ALL of that old infrastructure.

[jenningsthecat]

The AM broadcast-band, (and its close relatives, the short wave bands), allow for long-distance radio communications. Even in the daytime the coverage is pretty good; but at night, when the ionosphere allows for 'running skip', its reach is truly impressive. There may be times in the future when that's crucial for reaching people over very large geographical areas. We really need to backstop our wired networks with wireless analog broadcast capability. It can reach anybody who has a $5 pocket radio, it continues to work even when all you have is batteries or generators and a tower, and it doesn't rely on hard links that can easily be broken. And it's already there, fer chrissake - all we have to do is maintain it.