In this letter to the editor, the author responds to a recently-published letter by Paul Shinn titled “To Cure AM, Look to the Past.” Comment on this or any article. Email [email protected].
Responding to Paul Shinn’s call for a petition to make AM stereo the standard: Every one of us who’s in support of AM stereo also needs to petition each other to get it together. Makers and marketers have some things to figure out. So do AM stereo’s fans.
I’ve wanted to hear music in stereo on AM since the 1980s when I was a teen and first learned it was possible. But I have never seen such receivers in any stores. They were always catalog items or special orders the consumer couldn’t try out first. How glorious it was when I occasionally got to drive cars equipped with factory model AM stereo radios in the 1990s and 2000s. My search for after-market receivers with that capability for my own cars was in vain.
In the 2010s, I learned how proponents of each AM stereo system bashed the other systems from the outset, about the litigation when the FCC first tried to pick a standard and about technology licensing squabbles. I thought things were looking up in the 2020s after I joined an AM stereo social media group which, at the time, was rich with technical information and history.
Then one day, I read a Radio World article about whether some FM stations would have an advantage going mono. I feel that stereo going out of vogue in any mode is something we who like AM stereo ought to be concerned about, learn from, and combat. Yet when I tried to alert the social media group, the founder scolded me and told me to never post anything there again. I don’t know how I upset him. How despairing to want something for so long and to think I found like-minded people only to be told to go away.
I would support Mr. Shinn’s call. But the incompetence, egos and infighting that have held AM stereo back for more than four decades must end. Or do we like where all that has gotten us?
— Rick Wiegmann Koshko
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