Talk:KGB-FM

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"This is KGB. We know where you are."

Those words supposedly startled Yakov_Smirnoff. Do they still do the monotone Russian accents on some announcements? _____________________________________________________________________________________________

Obbop says "Howdy." Back in the 1970s KGB-FM produced and sold a series of vinyl records under the title of "Homegrown." There were several yearly releases. The profits from the album sales went to the San Diego United Way charity. Local musicians were invited to send in tapes of their musical works and the best were selected for inclusion on the album. I still have several of these albums. 209.50.1.38 23:25, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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BetacommandBot (talk) 18:34, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Early history?

"KGB-FM was one of the early adopters of the FM album oriented rock format in the early 1970s..."

So, what happened prior to that? Did the FM station just not exist before then? Jeh (talk) 02:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If memory services (and I was born 1970), FM didn't become widely available until the 60s, late 60s I believe. My father certainly remembers the AM only days (with my grandfather swearing every time The Chords "Shh-boom" came on the radio; once, with the additional comment, "I hope this shit doesn't catch on!" Fortunately gramps was wrong.).

Yeah, I was right. Check the FM Broadcasting article's FM Stereo section.

I've been told by a number of people that the FCC initially banned AM stations from broadcasting in stereo in order to allow FM to get a foot-hold in the market. That bans been dropped and a number of AM stations also broadcast in stereo; however since almost no-one has an AM stereo receiver (I don't even know if any are commercially available) it doesn't look like AM Stereo is going to catch on anytime soon; esp not with HD/Satellite Radio in the picture.

AM, however, is still the dominant format, if for no other reason than its signal is much less likely to be affected by environmental or interference from structures. Country music was long AM's mainstay, now, however, talk radio is; according to a recent statement by Rush Limbaugh (NOV 2008) there are now 2005 AM stations carrying talk radio programming.

PainMan (talk) 04:14, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's fine, but this article could still use some precise information on KGB-FM's early history. I know that during the AOR phase the FM side simulcast with the AM side but I don't know if the FM operation started earlier than that. Before rock moved to FM, FM was primarily classical music and "beautiful music" (read: elevator music) formats.

For that matter, San Diego didn't even have a classical FM station as late as 1969; the librarian in my high school went to great lengths to receive LA's KFAC at that time.

AM stereo works very simply, by putting one channel on each AM sideband. You can receive it with two receivers, tuning one a bit lower than the station's nominal freq and the other a bit higher!

I don't know about AM being "the dominant format". In terms of what? Numbers of stations? Total audience? Advertising revenue? There are a lot of different metrics and they often give different answers. Certainly AM is what you listen to if you're driving an 18-wheeler across the Midwest, since FM just doesn't go that far... but those listeners are very few compared to those in the cities. Jeh (talk) 05:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The use of "one channel on each AM sideband" was something tried at XETRA 690 as the first experiment with AM stereo broadcasting (Kahn, 1960), unfortunately a standardised format hadn't been adopted until the 1980s (with the FCC reversing itself at least once on what to use, and acting very indecisively). The Motorola C-QUAM AM stereo system was on many stations in the late 1980's, but few radios could make full use of it as radio manufacturers somehow realised their clientele were too stupid to catch on that "AM - FM Stereo" only means that the FM is stereo - the AM could be low-quality monaural and getting steadily worse. There were a rare few models (Radio Shack carried one car and one home component version - made by others and store-branded to RS - and AM stereo found its way into some factory car radios and more than a few Chryslers. Unfortunately, these were the exceptions, and by the end of the 1990's we were losing AM stereo stations as no one was listening.) Clear Channel Inc. was particularly notorious for buying stations and turning off the stereo AM, replacing mediocre-quality stereo with no-quality mono. --66.102.80.212 (talk) 01:45, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

history section rewrite

Right now the history section is just a collection of bullet points. Needs to be rewritten in wikipedical format (i.e. paragraph).

Added {{trivia}} template this date.

PainMan (talk) 04:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The {{trivia}} template doesn't really apply as all the information in the list is indeed "history". There is a different template for "less list, more prose", which I'd have applied, except for this: Almost all of the information there doesn't apply to the FM station, only to the AM! The FM side didn't even exist for most of the decades described here. Most of this info belongs in the article on KLSD (formerly called KGB-AM). I've been trying to find a RS (or, heck, any source) on just when KGB-FM began, with no success so far. Jeh (talk) 05:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]