By Steve Faguy
IT WAS SUPPOSED to be to FM radio what FM was to AM: Better audio quality, a way to expand to more channels, and a future replacement with some cool bells and whistles.
In the 1990s, Canada’s radio broadcasters spent millions of dollars on new transmitters and devoted a lot of airtime to marketing the new technology: DAB, or digital audio broadcasting.
“The radio industry is primed to reinvent itself for the digital age and 1997 will be the first year of the revolution,” read a 1996 article from the Vancouver Sun. “Within a generation, AM and FM radio will virtually fade out of existence.” It quoted a CBC executive saying “we think DAB’s the future of radio.”
It was. But in Europe, not in Canada. Here, DAB went over like a lead balloon, and within a decade of DAB stations launching, the industry had given up on it.
“Canada had a strategy and it didn’t really work, and one of the main reasons was because it didn’t follow the American strategy, even though I think probably was a better strategy,” says Rod Schween, president of the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.
The United States opted for the proprietary HD Radio system for its digital radio transition, an incompatible technology that involved adding digital signals to existing FM transmissions.
Canada’s DAB had a lot of great features with “CD audio quality,” song titles and lyrics, even the theoretical ability to charge a subscription fee — but with receivers hard to come by (and very expensive, with some more than $1,000), there was no audience.
“It was harder to get placements in vehicles, it was harder to get transmitters, and that became a real challenge for the digital strategy that originally was thrown out in Canadian radio,” Schween says. “If we had been stuck in the middle of Europe somewhere (where DAB adoption was more widespread), that strategy probably would have been pretty successful.”
Despite digital radio’s advantages, most Canadians were happy enough with FM and didn’t feel the need to switch. Those who did adopted satellite radio instead.
With AM radio, there’s still a need for change. The audio quality is poor enough that there are few AM music stations left in the country (the rest are talk or sports), the cost to operate large antenna towers is high, and interference in large city centres makes many stations almost impossible to listen to (under streetcar wires in downtown Toronto, AM reception is nil). On top of that, many electric vehicles don’t offer AM radio anymore because of interference issues, and many cellphones and other electronic audio devices have FM but not AM because they can’t fit an AM antenna in them (and phone makers just don’t want to bother).
Many Canadian broadcasters are trying over-the-air digital again, adopting HD Radio on an experimental basis. It offers similar advantages as DAB did, including the ability to add new channels, and it’s used in the United States, so a lot of cars have it built-in.
But its main use among large Canadian broadcasters has been as an alternative way to listen to their AM stations. Corus (in Hamilton, Vancouver and Calgary), Rogers (in Toronto and Vancouver) and Bell (in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver and Victoria) have added HD Radio transmitters on FM music stations to simulcast AM stations in those or adjacent markets. Evanov, Durham and ZoomerMedia are also doing this at some of their stations.
“I think we’re better off getting people to figure out how to plug their phones into their cars and listen to our channels through apps.” – Julie Adam, Rogers
“Hearing those broadcasts in HD quality is awesome, but the adoption rate is challenging,” says Julie Adam, senior vice president of news and entertainment at Rogers Sports & Media. “If you want to hear 680 News you have to go to 92.5 FM and then pick HD channel 2. I mean, I have a hard time explaining to people how to get it to work.”
“I think we’re better off getting people to figure out how to plug their phones into their cars and listen to our channels through apps.”
Some of the 40 FM stations authorized to use HD Radio have been a bit creative. Some ethnic stations are using it to offer several channels in different languages. And a handful of stations use it to offer a second music channel, like the classic country channel on Woodstock’s Heart FM, or ICI Musique in Montreal offering a classical-only digital channel.
In some cases, HD Radio transmitters are being installed as a defensive measure. Some listeners of Kiss 92.5 in Toronto with HD Radio receivers would find their radio instead picking up the HD signal of WBEE-FM in Rochester, N.Y., which operates on the same frequency. Similarly, Bell’s CKKW-FM in Kitchener (KFUN 99.5) would get interference from WDCX-FM in Buffalo. The Canadian stations installed HD Radio transmitters so local radios would pick up their stations instead.
But HD Radio is still more of an added-value thing than a revolution right now. “Unless there’s a big breakthrough, we probably won’t do much more with it,” Adam says.
So if DAB failed, HD Radio has limited success, and streaming hasn’t been universally adopted yet (partly due to complexity, partly due to fear of high rates for wireless data plans – even though audio streaming has little data impact compared to video), what do owners do with AM stations?
It seems the foremost thing on their mind is to find a way to move them to FM.
Rogers made a bold move in December when it replaced its 100-kilowatt station Country 101.1 in Smiths Falls, Ont., with a simulcast of its AM all-news station in Ottawa, which it rebranded CityNews. The country programming (and its CKBY-FM callsign) moved to 92.3, replacing a classic hits format.
“The decline in AM audience versus FM audience is stark and there are no signs pointing to the longevity of AM, so I’m pessimistic about the technical quality but wildly optimistic about the programming and the content, particularly news,” Adam says. “CityNews is a brand we believe in. It’s got a great heritage in various markets and we didn’t want to tie ourselves any further to an AM frequency because we don’t think that’s the future.”
No decisions have been made on other markets yet, Adam says. But Rogers and others want to move more AM stations to FM, and they don’t want to have to sacrifice a very profitable FM music station to do it. So they are hoping to get the CRTC to relax ownership restrictions to allow them to own more than two FM stations in a single market.
Pattison’s Schween said the existing regulation punishes some owners who operate clusters of stations in small markets.
“I’m sure that those AM listeners would much rather be listening to an FM signal that has much better audio quality.” – Rod Schween, Pattison Broadcasting
“In order to operate three stations in North Battleford, Sask., I have to have one on AM,” he says. “And I’m sure that those AM listeners would much rather be listening to an FM signal that has much better audio quality.”
If AM stations move to FM, though, what will be left of commercial AM radio?
“I do think that in some parts of the country, AM also still has a fair bit of life left in it, particularly in places like Saskatchewan where AM, due to the nature of the landscape, has a lot more reach,” said Troy Reeb, executive vice president broadcast networks at Corus Entertainment. “Part of the viability of AM radio stations is being able to reach corners of rural areas that can’t sustain a local FM station on their own.”
AM is also still alive in large cities like Montreal and Toronto, where the FM band is full and broadcasters are forced to choose an AM frequency if they want to get on the air.
But AM is almost no one’s first choice. The technology, developed more than 100 years ago by Canadian Reginald Fessenden, and first used commercially on Montreal-based XWA, is an awkward compromise that the public is slowly drifting away from (though some AM stations, like Montreal’s CJAD, VOCM in St. John’s, or Vancouver’s CKNW, remain top-rated overall in their markets. Good content is good content after all, even if not in stereo sound…).
According to the CRTC, Canada has 216 operating AM transmitters remaining, of which half are commercial originating stations, and more than 50 are low-power CBC transmitters (the CBC has been systematically converting such transmitters to FM as those installations degrade). Statistics show AM radio revenues declining an average of three per cent a year.
It’s a slow death, but an inevitable one. And time is limited for commercial broadcasters to figure out what to do with it.
The Future of Radio (Part I): The good, and the bad, of the generic brand trend
The Future of Radio (Part III): Pandemic ad famine accelerated structural shifts
The Future of Radio (Part IV): How the pandemic changed listening habits
The Future of Radio (Part V): The online transformation
