Are you still listening to OTA radio?

[mpeirce]

I listen to AM talk radio a lot. I hate the commercials, and I just turn the volume down when they come on. Luckily it is predictable how long you have to keep the volume down. It's a learned routine for me now.

I do this too.

 

[jazz4cash]

Since I drive a 2004 Highlander and I'm out of cassettes, I listen to OTA radio. Strangely, IMO anyway, there's tons of good music stations out near Ocean City MD, in an area that is mostly rural. But in the DC Metro area with a million people around the music radio choices suck, and I listen mostly to NPR with a little Bloomberg thrown in for variety.

Just bought a low audio quality Bluetooth speaker for my 2002 Chevy S-10 ($10) so I can use iPhone and listen to podcasts and internet radio. I’ve always been a fan of various audio formats including OTA and I pay for XM and NPR. News, sportstalk, The Quiet Storm and jazz, of course. I’ll pretty much listen to anything. It’s great being able to listen to internet radio from around the world and maybe the additional revenue will support OTA stations. Newspapers have a harder time monetizing internet traffic.

 

[ls99]

Many years ago gave up on radio on all wavelengths, OTA short wave or Satellite, along with TV in any form.
Have a couple of ancient Ipod Touch's in two vehicles with music, and USB stick in the Truck for music. Got sick and tired of constant loud inane commercials, interspersed with some useful information or a few tunes... Talk radio never interested me, used to listen to music on OTA.

When I was a kid used to listen to western music on shortwave radio, made by me: galena crystal, coil, long wire antenna, High impedance headphones. No battery, not needed, could not afford it anyway. Could not buy electron tubes for amplificiation, unobtanium, even if I could have had money. Listening was tough sice the commies were jamming most western stations with squeaks and beeps. Of course the fidelity sucked big time on shortwave in addition to the stations fading in and out. And of curse there was the barrage of propoganda from Voice of America, they transmitted in about twenty languages. BBC was reasonably good in the fifties and early sixties.

The preferred stations for AM (AKA Middle wave), there was no FM then. Music could be received from France, Germany,Poland, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Italy, England,though I did not understand the languages. They were within reasonable distance for middle wave broadcasts. The local radio had lots of classical, opera, operetta, and native music. On short wave when Ionospheric propagation was good, was fun to find far away stations, like Ulan Bator.

 

[Jerry1]

No OTA. Just Sirius and Apple Music.

If you don’t mind my asking, which of those do you prefer, and why?

I have Sirius XM and Amazon Music. I also listen to Pandora.

Sirius is different than a music service in that you can't pick an album to listen to. I don't even think you can pick an album or song and play it directly with XM, though I'm not positive.

I like Sirius in the car but honestly, I wouldn't pay for it except that this year they offered it for $60 for a year. When that ends, if I can't get the same deal, it will be gone.

Not sure about Apple Music, but Amazon Music is not as good as Pandora in one respect. Pandora does a much better job in selecting music that I may like. Amazon actually sucks in that regard. They offer up stuff I can't stand. Pandora usually offers up some pretty good music. It may have more to do with how long I've been with Pandora and doing the thumbs up/thumbs down thing.

And, back to the thread - I do not listen to OTA radio unless I'm in the car and a sporting event is on that I want to catch. Otherwise, when I'm in the car, I currently use XM and I'm good with Pandora.

Re: Pandora - it's free but you have to listen to commercials (unless you're willing to pay). I think that's a fair trade off and their commercials, while they can certainly be annoying, are less frequent and on for less time than OTA radio. It also works well in conjunction with Waze so it's good for driving.

At home, I prefer Amazon Music because I'll pick an album and listen to it. It's like having a huge collection. I will also pick a play list. And, while they don't do the "my favorites" very well, they have "stations" that focus on a certain artist and similar music. That will usually present a good selection of music. I don't really listen to XM while home.

 

[Ronstar]

If you don’t mind my asking, which of those do you prefer, and why?

So far, I primarily listen to Sirius when I’m driving my truck. I’ve only listened to Apple Music while driving a few times.

Whenever I listen to music in the house or workshop, I always play Apple Music playlists. And I always listen to Apple Music while riding my bike. I haven’t set up Sirius in the house or as a phone app yet. I talked to the Sirius rep a few days ago and they sent an email on how to stream through their phone app, but I haven’t attempted that yet.

I prefer Sirius slightly over Apple Music. The music variety I get from Sirius would take a lot of work for me to recreate such a large playlist in Apple Music. And sometimes I listen to talk radio or news while driving. DW gets tired of my classic rock stations on long drives, so the news and talk radio helps add to the variety.

I’m constantly adding to my Apple Music playlist, but it would take me forever to build up a playlist to match Sirius. One advantage of Apple Music is that I can play a certain artist or song at anytime. But it’s rare for me to select a single artist to listen to.

That said, I get extremely peeved when I lose the Sirius signal. Doesn’t happen much in the Midwest, but happens a lot in heavily wooded areas and mountains. So I use Apple Music as a backup to Sirius while driving in areas where I’m losing signal frequently.

I think I’m paying around $6 a month for Sirius and $10 a month for Apple Music. I can’t see myself going down to a single source. I like the variety of Sirius, but I like Apple Music also.

 

[2017ish]

Primarily OTA both in house and car. Nashville has an independent AAA/bluegrass/emerging station that plays a lot of "local" artists, including the youngsters who are trying to make a go of it. We pick up on local concert opportunities via this route as well.

Not bad on commercials, and I don't recall ever hearing a political commercial on the station. Even better, we can use the live stream when traveling by car as long as we have a data connection.

 

[smihaila]

I listen to an HD flavor of OTA (featuring wider audio frequency bandwidth), which my 2014 Mazda3's radio is compatible with, and it sounds like it's out of this world - both in FM and AM.

AM only when in the Colorado's Rockies (Medium Waves penetrate better in the mountains), and it is a form of AM which you will not believe you can hear - sounds better than a normal / non-HD FM radio!

I hate commercials with a passion, so I quickly scan for less-mainstream radio stations, which don't insert ads for too long or/and too often.

SiriusXM sucks audio quality-wise, when comparing to HD terrestrial radio. SiriusXM has narrower freq filter, and to compensate for that, it turns the "treble" higher, and to me it sounds annoyingly hiss-y. Once you hear HD radio, you never go back .

 

[RetiredAtThirty-eight]

I quit listening to OTA radio along time ago. I got tired of all the divisive rhetoric on AM (not to mention the analog static).

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

I listen to an HD flavor of OTA (featuring wider audio frequency bandwidth), which my 2014 Mazda3's radio is compatible with, and it sounds like it's out of this world - both in FM and AM.

I will confess to total ignorance on this. However, I am now of the understanding that, in the name "HD AM" the letters HD do not stand for anything, and the letters AM no longer stand for anything.

Glad to have that cleared up!

 

[Major Tom]

I find the very limited playlists of the majority of commercial stations to be bland and uninspiring, and the commercials to be harsh on the psyche, as well as deathly dull. As a result, I don't listen to the right-hand side of the FM dial, with the exception of 4) below. However, the left-hand side of the dial is a different matter. My OTA listening consists of 3 main components -

1) My own self-programmed station, which was at 1600KHz on the AM band until recently. It conformed to FCC Part 15 rules (no more than 100mW input to the final amplifier stage of the transmitter, into an antenna + ground lead of no more than 3 meters total in length). The station could be heard reliably up to about half a mile away. Programming is fully automated, and music-based, with other features, including an "On This Day In History" hourly feature, as well as an hourly feature on various aspects of American Life, courtesy of the US Census Bureau, and regular health tips, from the Mayo Clinic. Our local neighborhood cat meows loudly at the top of each hour, after the time announcement, and station ID. Many other station ID's, jingles, and promos, are scattered throughout the programming. I spent a great deal of time doing all the production and programming. In my completely unbiased opinion, it sounds very good indeed. It was on the air continuously for about 3 years. I took the transmitter off the air a couple of months ago, due to house construction work, but left the programming playing into a speaker, so that I can still listen in the house.

2) My local college station, KALX Berkeley, has a wide variety of music programming. Far more eclectic and inspired than anything on the other end of the dial these days.

3) The local NPR station, KQED, when I'm not listening to one of the two above.

4) When traveling in the Santa Cruz/Watsonville/Monterey/Salinas part of the California coast, I'll tune to KPIG-FM. With it's playlist that can best be described as characterful Americana, and homegrown slightly oddball humor, it's the only commercial station I can listen to.

5) When not listening to any of the above OTA signals, I'll occasionally stream BBC Radio 4 or BBC 6.

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

1) My own self-programmed station, which was at 1600KHz on the AM band until recently. It conformed to FCC Part 15 rules (no more than 100mW input to the final amplifier stage of the transmitter, into an antenna + ground lead of no more than 3 meters total in length). The station could be heard reliably up to about half a mile away. Programming is fully automated, and music-based, with other features, including an "On This Day In History" hourly feature, as well as an hourly feature on various aspects of American Life, courtesy of the US Census Bureau, and regular health tips, from the Mayo Clinic. Our local neighborhood cat meows loudly at the top of each hour, after the time announcement, and station ID. Many other station ID's, jingles, and promos, are scattered throughout the programming. I spent a great deal of time doing all the production and programming. In my completely unbiased opinion, it sounds very good indeed. It was on the air continuously for about 3 years. I took the transmitter off the air a couple of months ago, due to house construction work, but left the programming playing into a speaker, so that I can still listen in the house.

Wow! That is fascinating (both the fact that you are allowed to do that, and the fact that you created that programming).

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

I find the very limited playlists of the majority of commercial stations to be bland and uninspiring, and the commercials to be harsh on the psyche, as well as deathly dull. As a result, I don't listen to the right-hand side of the FM dial, with the exception of 4) below. However, the left-hand side of the dial is a different matter. My OTA listening consists of 3 main components -

1) My own self-programmed station, which was at 1600KHz on the AM band until recently. It conformed to FCC Part 15 rules (no more than 100mW input to the final amplifier stage of the transmitter, into an antenna + ground lead of no more than 3 meters total in length). The station could be heard reliably up to about half a mile away. Programming is fully automated, and music-based, with other features, including an "On This Day In History" hourly feature, as well as an hourly feature on various aspects of American Life, courtesy of the US Census Bureau, and regular health tips, from the Mayo Clinic. Our local neighborhood cat meows loudly at the top of each hour, after the time announcement, and station ID. Many other station ID's, jingles, and promos, are scattered throughout the programming. I spent a great deal of time doing all the production and programming. In my completely unbiased opinion, it sounds very good indeed. It was on the air continuously for about 3 years. I took the transmitter off the air a couple of months ago, due to house construction work, but left the programming playing into a speaker, so that I can still listen in the house.

This sounds like great fun. I gather that you aren't making any effort to profit off of your station with advertising.

I worked at my local college station as a freshman/sophomore but then ran out of time to devote to it. It was ultra low-power that made it to the far edge of the union parking lot on a good day. IIRC, the transmitter got its power from a 9-volt battery. But ... we had a stereo generator picked from a commercial station that a crusading woman acquired to convert its rock n roll format to easy listening.

I like to tune into a station in Madison, Wis., called WORT-FM. It's not an on-campus station but a listener-supported independent (i send them a few bucks now and then). They stream online in addition to broadcasting OTA; I can get their signal pretty well about 40 miles from their transmitter. Their website has streaming capabilities, and their programming is well worth a listen, IMO.

I think radio can be the most creative of all electronic media because it leaves space for the listener's head. "Theater of the mind" is what CBS called it.

Speaking of which, my favorite old-time radio program is a gumshoe classic starring Jack Webb called "Pat Novak for Hire." Check out the florid wordplay -- "It's a good living, if you don't run short of bail bonds and Benzedrine..."

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

When I was a kid used to listen to western music on shortwave radio, made by me: galena crystal, coil, long wire antenna, High impedance headphones. No battery, not needed, could not afford it anyway. Could not buy electron tubes for amplificiation, unobtanium, even if I could have had money. Listening was tough sice the commies were jamming most western stations with squeaks and beeps. Of course the fidelity sucked big time on shortwave in addition to the stations fading in and out. And of curse there was the barrage of propoganda from Voice of America, they transmitted in about twenty languages. BBC was reasonably good in the fifties and early sixties.

Nothing to do with anything, but this made me smile. At the very moment, I have a "crystal radio" set up as part of an electronics teaching lab. (I am a professor.) I shinnied up a tree and strung an antenna of about 20-30 yards. I have one germanium diode, one 47 k resistor, one variable capacitor, and one homemade variable inductor (wire wrapped around a PVC tube). Luckily, in the 21st century, you can easily get VERY high impedance headphones (piezoelectric) rather than you many-windings headset. Hit-or-miss, I can tune in to stations across the city. It is a little bizarre to think that some person across the city is pumping enough electricity up and down a metal pole to make my eardrums move (without any additional electrical power on my end). The kids get a kick out of it to see just how simple this whole setup is.

Then I port that signal over, to make it a bona-fide "transistor radio." Exactly TWO transistors worth. (I amplify the voltage, then pass it to a power resistor to up the current.) Now it can drive a conventional speaker, and we all can hear it. The kids get a kick out of this, too!

 

[Badger]

Even though I live in a large city the radio stations in this area don't have programming I would be interested in listening to. So I have a few well known streaming sources (some free and some with a fee) that I use for a variety of music, news, comedies, old radio programs, holiday music, etc. For other times I have my own CDs of music from which to chose. I don't like listening to commercials whether it is radio or TV. Nothing about them interests me or has anything I want or need (at least 99.9% of the time).
However, that crystal radio would be fun again. I assembled one (the cat whisker type with a real crystal) when I was 7yrs old living on Okinawa in the mid 50s. The only station I could get was all Japanese music. Lots of fun.





Cheers!

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

I want to thank @ls99, who pointed out the silly mistake below that I made:

Then I port that signal over, to make it a bona-fide "transistor radio." Exactly TWO transistors worth. (I amplify the voltage, then pass it to a power [-]resistor[/-] transistor to up the current.) Now it can drive a conventional speaker, and we all can hear it. The kids get a kick out of this, too!

 

[ls99]

As per my previous post, the US broadcast bands are mostly filled with stuff of no interest to me

The magic of listening to radio when I was kid behind the Iron curtain was to hear scheduled broadcasts from different countries in my native language. Thus hearing different cultures and countries viewpoints on the world's affairs. Internet did not exist 1955 to 1965 when I listened. Arrived in US 1965 summer.

The prime benefit to me , of broadcast radio, was to hear music of different cultures. Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Polish, Chinese, Bolivian etc.. some came through on what Americans call AM, we knew it then as Middle Wave. Most were on Short Wave well above the the "AM" band. To re-iterate, music on short wave is highly bandwith limited to use a modern expresion. It works well for speach and morse code. Anotherwords most of the high and low frequncies were missing.

Nowadays I do listening via interenet. Hearing the same varieties of music once internet radio was available to me in the US around 1999 or so was truly an "ear opener". Was on ARPA net a lot earlier, but that is a different story. A whole new musical experience.

I know of no international varieties of music in the US braodcast bands AM or FM. Even on XM or SIRIUS for which I would not pay. Since my primary interest is in listening to music, for the foregoing reasons I don't listen to OTA radio.

 

[kcowan]

I downloaded an app (apk) on our Firesticks called 100% Internet Radio. It has 35 channels of music and no commercials. It is from Germany. It is free.

It serves as background music as a change from our iTunes playlists.

 

[youbet]

I know of no international varieties of music in the US broadcast bands AM or FM. Even on XM or SIRIUS for which I would not pay. Since my primary interest is in listening to music, for the foregoing reasons I don't listen to OTA radio.

Back in the day, I did a lot of SWLing (Short Wave Listening) for the same reasons you listed. Many of the big, easy to hear, stations have either gone off the air or become less interesting in their programming. I'm talking about VOA, BBC, Radio Moscow, Radio Havana, etc.

I still do some BC band DXing and you can find some interesting stations (with international varieties of music) if you work at it. I can sometimes catch a powerful station out of Del Rio. And there are several stations from Central and South America coming through from time to time, especially when we're camping in Florida.

Speaking of camping....... we also enjoy listening (briefly) to small town AM/FM stations when camped in rural areas. For example, there is still a station in Ely Minnesota that literally will broadcast messages to canoe campers out in the BWCAW as a public service. Or listening to the advertisements from small town businesses, school lunch menus, death lists from the local mortuary, etc., etc. Gives you a quick feel for the area in a short time......

Also, public stations that are NOT a part of the corporate giant NPR system. I'm thinking of stations like WDCB in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and WORT (sic) in Madison, Wis., that can be very interesting. We'll also sometimes give a listen to the student stations operating out of North Central College and Northwestern University but they a low power FM so you have to be nearby.

 

[Bamaman]

We listen to OTR in our cars mainly, and it's mostly talk radio and a NPR Jazz station.

Our region has dozens and dozens of radio stations, and I cannot believe there's people listening to them all. Many stations are in tiny towns, and some of the FM stations reach 4 states.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

As per my previous post, the US broadcast bands are mostly filled with stuff of no interest to me ...

I know of no international varieties of music in the US braodcast bands AM or FM. Even on XM or SIRIUS for which I would not pay. Since my primary interest is in listening to music, for the foregoing reasons I don't listen to OTA radio.

Check out the audio archives of the station I mentioned previously, WORT. They have some great Hispanic, Caribbean and Pan-African music programming on the Saturday schedule. A number of world music programs are scheduled on other days.

 

[Dave J]

I listen to AM and FM radio. I listen to talk radio at home and mostly music in the car. I have had Sirius XM in car but don't use it enough to justify keeping it year round.

 

[Time2]

For years my hobby was listening to long distance AM radio. I built many antennas for listening. The antenna building got more serious when I moved from Michigan to Florida. Many more stations easier to receive in Michigan. I needed better antennas in Florida. I listen mostly at night.
Then I got an internet radio, that put my antenna interest on the back burner for 5 or 6 years, I got back into it about 3 years ago.

I now listen more to Old Time Radio shows on my internet radio or phone or podcasts on my phone.
My favorite OTR is 20th Century Radio then Hank's* Gumshoe OTR, but there are many others.


*Hank has a problem keeping his audio from being over processed, But I like much of the programming.

 

[lanceman002]

My wife and I listen 100% to Spotify. We love that there are no commercials, that we can either create a playlist to listen to some that are already created, and that we can share playlists between our two accounts.

 

[Koolau]

Was waiting outside in the parking lot of Kahala Mall - yes, we still have malls - while DW shopped for her GF's BD present. I used my miniature air pump to fill all 4 tires (they were down - a lot) so while I waited for DW and my tires, I listened to our two Oldies stations - heh, heh, I flip back and forth to miss most of the commercials. Of the songs I heard, my favorite was "You Can Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac. Very nice to have some "real" music to listen to while otherwise just waiting. On the way home, I much prefer to talk to DW than listen to the radio. Also, within 5 miles of our condo, the mountains seem to block virtually all FM signal. Once in a while I pick up a station from Maui.

 

[ArmchairMillionaire23]

I was wondering this because there are a lot of OTA radio stations in large cities and of course there are radio stations scattered throughout the U.S. A. So with that, the problem I have with OTA radio, whether it be on AM or the FM band is.... commercials! I hate them, and it seems it gets worse every year.

So I have migrated to online radio. It seems to be better with Alexa in some situations. If you are listening to OTA radio, how can you stand the commercials? The commercials are so very long. So that is what I am doing about it and I have more variety and better stations and less commercials. I would like to get others thoughts on this as to how everyone is listening to the radio.

Our local classic rock station changed ownership and formats this past year and now plays mostly newer hard rock. They used to have '30-minutes of rock' segments every hour so it wasn't too irritating to listen, but with this new format they play one or two songs, then a handful of commercials, then a song or two and then more commercials. I can't listen to it for very long.

I have a 160GB iPod Classic™ containing about 25,000 songs. (6,000 of them from my own CD collection, about 15,000 obtained from friends and co-workers by borrowing their CDs and the rest downloaded back in the day - remember Napster and LimeWire?)
I usually make a playlist of around 1400 songs that I like (favorites from each or certain albums, mostly) and listen mostly to that playlist while driving, walking on the treadmill or even while taking a shower once in a while.

I can't do online radio since I don't own a smartphone. But I'm happy with the iPod Classic™. I also don't watch any TV so if a friend or coworker starts a question "Did you see that commercial...?" I can almost tell them "Probably not" right away and not be wrong.

I also abhor commercials. But at least I don't have to listen to them very often.