On FM, though, the frequencies from the bottom to 92 MHz are reserved for non-profit stations. You can find the local NPR affiliates there, but also college stations and lots of weird & wonderful one-offs. Like KKUP around here:

https://kkup.org/

Or religious stations, which operate as commercial in all but name. Non-profits and education and weird one-offs (I’ve worked for more than one) struggle to get by independently and are largely subsidized by some larger entity with actual cash flow. Maintaining the licenses and broadcast equipment is no small cost. But yes you’re correct, not all stations are Channels that are Clear or patronized by Snt. Clarity.

Or religious stations.

KKUP, which I actually volunteered at once, is 100% listener-funded. I just heard a song on there that I haven't heard in forever, this morning: Working Class Hero (John Lennon).

Just out of interest what sort of test do you have to pass to be a "Religious Station" ? If I start a cult of Elvis Presley followers do I get to operate a "Religious Station" ?

There's no test. You just have to be a non-profit.

It's a corporate filing status. That's your hurdle. There's a bunch of unusually generous benefits religions get.

For instance, religious workers is a separate and more forgiving visa process for immigration.

Next time you drive down through an immigrant community and see some implausibly high density of churches per block, that's what's going on.

Religious organizations are also exempt from minimum wage laws and have special carve outs for things like food inspection and OSHA.

Also they don't have to do property tax. They get all the protection of the state with zero of the responsibility.

He was talking about owning a radio station, though. Not all that stuff.

> If I start a cult of Elvis Presley followers do I get to operate a "Religious Station" ?

The 24 Hour Church of Elvis[0] definitely should have had a radio station.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hour_Church_of_Elvis

"At the end of the tour, Pierce would try (often desperately) to sell t-shirts."

Heh heh, I bought one!

You and me both.

Real question: where does the 4-letter radio naming scheme comes from? This seems to be a unique US thing.

These are called a “call sign” [1]. The International Telecommunication Union issues prefixes[2], and in the US the Federal Communications Commission issues four- (formerly three-) letter call signs under their prefixes[3][4] to commercial broadcast stations. They also require (or required? not sure what the modern regulations are) stations to regularly announce their call sign for identification purposes, so a lot of radio stations folded the sign into their branding since they had to use it anyway.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_call_signs

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_prefix

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_signs_in_the_United_State...

[4]: Notably, ‘K’ and ‘W’ generally indicate geography, west/east of the Mississippi River respectively.

I know Canada uses C, ex: CHUM-FM and Mexico uses X like XETV in Tijuana that used to be the Fox affiliate for San Diego

Yeah what happened to terrestrial radio is a prime example of PEGs utterly obliterating everything they touch. iHeartMedia and Cumulus Media, two of the remaining conglomerates, are billions and billions in debt. I don't know how they still function

> Advertisers mainly want to pick from this menu

Stations publish their ratings by demographics and their rate card. Most national ads are moved by agency and this is all they look at. "Popular with women 25-35 at less than $60/minute? Perfect."

Local advertisers might care a little more, but not much, typically. If they're a long lasting business, they get media buying savvy pretty quickly. It's not absurdly complicated and the whole process is generally shepherded by sales executives that make pure commission.

> That put AM in a down-market position

The ratings and demographics drive this. AM is mono at 10kHz and doesn't penetrate buildings or daylight particularly well. FM is stereo at 30kHz and has far fewer issues.

There is a station driven side, but it's mostly costs. AM stations are more expensive to run. There are more modern modulation techniques, but standard AM is a power hog. FM is far more forgiving and allows you to create gain with multiple antennas in a way that AM does not. FM is easier to make directional and allows for co-location and combination in much less physical space and cost than AM. Complicated AM arrangements require an "array" of up to 5 towers to create the correct directional day/night pattern signal granted by the license.

> which is a big sign pointing to the "niche" door of relative commercial obscurity.

It was around 2006 that AM started to lose it's ratings ground. Unsurprisingly it's when you saw things like "Air America" come into existence, and XM and Sirius launching satellites and gobbling up talk formats. In my view from the time it was all a response to the big killer.. the internet.

It was at this point in time it was starting to become obvious that the internet could entirely replace radio, and for national syndicated talk formats, it could most easily replace those. For those in the industry who knew where to look, they could see the writing on the wall. They were viewed as pariahs and it fell on entirely deaf ears, but they were there and they were trying to communicate all of this.

> but the decisions are made entirely on commercial grounds.

That's where I disagree. It was technical grounds. The listeners moved. Advertisers follow the listeners. It's not some sad story of purely monetary pressures destroying an old industry, it's a hopeful story of a new industry still desperately trying to break free of the vestiges of the old ways of operating and thinking.

I don’t think we disagree much if at all. You’ve expanded on my points nicely.

Well, maybe you’re more hopeful than a curmudgeon like me.