The move is being made to shut down FM radio stations and move programming to digital broadcasting. The success of satellite radio has shown that old FM broadcasting can not match the quality of digital broadcasting. It is thought that by 2022 there will be no more FM stations.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/norway-first-country-end-fm-790131 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/norway-first-country-end-fm-790131)
When the FCC decides to shut down FM radio in the United States, most of the commercial stations will be able to adapt to the new technology just as the TV stations did, but how will that impact stations such as WKTL and other low power non profit stations? Here in the Youngstown market, most of the FM stations are owned by large corporations that own hundreds of stations such as IHeart (Clear Channel). Again from the consumer side, the old FM radios will become obsolete and consumers will have to invest in new equipment.
I hope they wait until I'm done here............
I suspect converter boxes will allow folks to keep using their legacy, analog FM
radios....much the same way that we treated the transition to digital tv with
older sets. When FM first came out, a lot of people were using converters with their
older AM radios.
As for the independent stations, I'm sure there's already lots of digital equipment out
there to make the change.....it's all about cost, who can afford to make the change
when the time comes.
This will help FM radio to continue to be rellevant in the age of the internet and
digital everything. It also opens up more channelization (more available frequencies)
as time progresses, just as it did for free to air television.
When FM first came out back in the mid 1930's many AM stations simply simalcast their AM programs on FM, but then there were not as many FM stations on the air. It wasn't till the 1950's as AM started dying as the dominant media that FM stations started seperate programming mainly music, and FM's popularity started to take off and labs started to work on ways to improve the quality of FM broadcasting and soon there was stereo FM.
Locally, WFMJ had FM early on, but one of the Program Directors convinced Mr. Maag that FM had no future since all it was doing was simalcasting the AM programs and WFMJ-FM was shut down. Somehow the station managed to hold onto their FM license even though it was no longer being used, so when the station was sold, the new owners brought it back on the air.
Today the FM band is full of stations ... so full in fact that FM lost the very qualities that seperated it from AM.
[Old] WFMJ-AM ... [New] WNIO ... Owner Iheart Media (Clear Channel)
[Old] WFMJ-FM ... [New] WQXK ... Owner Cumulus
Wht is the difference bwt FM and Am?
Because of the amount of space it would take to answer your question I'll simply direct you to the following two links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting)
http://inventorspot.com/father_of_fm (http://inventorspot.com/father_of_fm)
iwasthere, the big difference between AM and FM is the frequency and their natural characteristics.