Is AM Radio Dead in Rochester?
It all depends on who you ask
By John Addyman
You know what AM radio is. Your kids might not. Your grandkids certainly don’t have any idea.
When we were growing up, the radio stations we listened to most were, for a long time, on the AM dial. Not FM … AM only.
If you wanted to listen to a sports broadcast, it was on an AM station. The latest weather? AM. Local news? AM. And a lot of music? AM.
Today, not so much. At least you may not think so.
And you’d have company.
Last year, Tesla and Ford manufacturers started making noise about not including AM frequencies on their new car radios. They announced their new cars would no longer have AM/FM radios, just FM radios.
The AM stations and the companies that advertise on them went a little nuts and a piece of bilateral legislation was formed in Washington with a lot of support to make sure AM radios come with a new car. As of mid-February that bill was still awaiting almost certain approval.
“If you think about it, the last thing you hear before you go into a store is probably radio…that’s pretty big,” said Phil Mercado, program director at WHAM AM 1180 in Rochester, a news-talk iHeart radio affiliate that highlights local voices like Bob Lonsberry as well as national personalities Sean Hannity and Mark Levin.
“You like the personality of a radio station,” Mercado said. “You feel like you’re a part of the station, you may end up endorsing a product you heard about on radio.
“When you ask someone if they listen to AM or FM radio, they’ll say, ‘No, I listen on my smart speaker.’ But what they’re listening to is on AM radio — they’re listening to a radio on that smart speaker.”
“Fourteen-year-olds aren’t necessarily coming to AM radio,” Mercado explained. “But certainly if you’re a sports fan and want to listen to the NFL, that’s where you’re going to find it. More people listen to AM [and FM] now than they did 20 years ago, proven by Nielsen ratings.”
News and Talk
“The best way to describe AM and I’ve been in this for 60 years,” said Bob Savage, president and founder of WYSL AM 1040 in Avon, “is that back when I started, everyone was playing top-40 music that contained a lot of messages.”
For Savage, successful radio has always been a gathering space for like-minded people. “Back then, in the ‘60s, we had the music and a youth movement. Today it’s local news and information and people are very concerned about politics. The big growth and most successful format on AM is talk; in larger cities with larger audiences, it’s all news and talk.”
Indeed, WYSL’s format as “the voice of liberty” news and talk is successful enough that Savage is buying two more stations in Hornell, where he started out in radio all those years ago.
He says owning an AM station today is attractive to small-business owners and there’s a good deal of entrepreneurship in the industry. It’s an attractive investment to get started. Keeping it going is something else.
“If the station is not run well, they’re in a lot of trouble,” he said.
For an AM station to succeed, it has to be well-run and meet the needs of a viable audience, Savage said, naming WACK AM 1420 in Newark as an example.
“We do community ascertainment to determine the most important issues in our community and surrounding area,” said Jack Tickner, president of WACK. The number one industry in Wayne County is agriculture, so his station features a farm news segment. Live interviews on local subjects are featured every morning.
WACK also does something few FM stations do — broadcast live local high school basketball and football games. There’s also programming for the Yankees, Syracuse University, NASCAR “and every major sporting event,” Tickner said.
“They emphasize the things that radio is built for,” said Savage, “service elements for the community, news and sports.”
Jeanne Fisher, vice president for radio operations at WXXI AM 1370, points out that her station provides local and national news and feature perspectives through National Public Radio programming, the BBC, American Public Media and an extended daily midday locally generated talk show hosted by Evan Dawson.
“We provide news and community service for people to share their thoughts and views,” she said.
“We have national programming throughout the day and we try to focus our efforts on how to serve the local community.”
Fisher said WXXI’s demographic “is the 45-plus range” and noted that “the industry is changing so much that we will see more media platforms. Our talk show streams on YouTube. There will be more and more different ways to access news and music.”
She termed the overall spreading of these different mechanisms as “terrestrial radio.”
Religious Radio
An important component of choice for local listeners is religious radio.
WDCX AM 990 in Rochester is what general manager Brett Larson stresses, “life-changing radio.”
“Radio brings people together,” wrote WDCX local personality Neil Boron, who has a daily show. “Radio is way more personal, and in those raw, real and heartfelt conversations, miracles happen.”
A Bible-teaching station with national and local contributors, WDCX is “simplistically operated, with ministries from all over the place,” Larson said.
Echoing and expanding on what others station leaders said, Larson pointed out that “AM fights for the attention of people. AM is still viable if it is content people want and are interested in. It has become a niche-type radio. AM radio used to be the focal point of community as mass-media center; that’s changed.
“Core audiences are interested in the content that certain radio stations put out — sport, news, talk…ours is Christian teaching radio. AM is not ideal for music, but even certain types of music are fine — oldies, legends format. There’s a place for AM radio now and there always will be. AM is more segmented toward what people want as we see people ingest new media. Today, people consume media at a much greater rate. The pie has gotten bigger. A chunk may have come off AM radio, but the pie is bigger.”
Larson also had advice for someone with the AM radio station bug: “Be surgical about your audience — know who you are, don’t deviate, don’t chase other things, be proud of AM radio, serve your core audience, serve your people and you’ll do a lot better. If you chase FM or internet you’ll never compete because you’re not the same — find the uniqueness of AM and embrace it.
“I think you’re seeing a growing fondness for AM radio, almost a nostalgia. People tired of overdone, over-formatted radio. People want something real. There’s a realness to AM, a rawness, I think we’ll see a resurgence,” he said.
WHIC AM 1460, “the station of the cross,” is Catholic radio.
“Our main programming is national,” but a segment of every hour is locally generated,” said president Jim Wright. “That programming comes from EWTN, Ave Maria and what the station itself develops locally — public service announcements, community calendar, weather and an ‘Ask a Priest’ show involving clerics, some of whom are local.
“Our motto is to teach the truth of Jesus Christ with clarity and charity. We have honest, well-thought-of hosts who do a great job of entertaining in a Catholic way, with a Catholic spirit, proclaiming the faith.”
Mother Marian and Father Robert McTeigue are two hosts with a faithful following.
AM radio doesn’t look or sound like it used to. But it’s obvious a lot is going on behind the scenes to attract and hold listeners, especially the ones who have an ear to that radio all day.