AM Radio

What are AM Radio Stations?

When you listen to music on the radio or watch tv you will likely come across names such as AM FM, CB, digital, UHF or VHF. If you were to ask the general public what all of these meant, about 95 percent wouldn’t have a clue. Some may come up with radio frequencies, which is, in one sense, correct, but you would only have to look at the front of your radio to figure that much out.

Radio is conducted by radio waves. These are electromagnetic waves that are sent out via an anntenae. Your radio is actually the receiver for these signals. When you scan or turn the knob you are actually tuning your receiver to pick up a certain frequency. All radio and television stations in the United States have to be licensed by the FCC, or Federal Communications Commission. When the station is licensed, it is told what frequency it can operate on and then is given a set of call letters.

So when you are traveling along in your car, listening to the radio, you will hear the DJ pop on and say, “you have been listening to 99.1 WWJX”. What he or she is really doing is stating that the station is broadcasting on FM frequency at 99.1 megahertz or millions of cycles per second. They are operating with the FCC call letters of WWJX.

AM radio operates in much the same way. All AM radio stations must get FCC approval and be licensed. What sets AM apart from FM are the frequencies that they broadcast on. FM broadcasts on frequencies of 88 to 108 megahertz and AM stations operate an entirely different set of frequencies. AM stations broadcast between 57 kilohertz or thousands of cycles per second, to 1.7 megahertz.

If you listen to AM radio, you may hear the DJ say something like “this is AM 750 at WXYZ”. This means that they are operating at the frequency of 750 kilohertz and their FCC call letters are WXYZ. One may think that AM is weaker since it broadcasts at a lower frequency but actually this is not true as the frequency number makes very little difference. AM radio actually has been around a lot longer than FM so the low frequency numbers have more to do with radio history than strength of signal.

Signals and frequencies are all things that we now take for granted when we listen to our radios but they are vitally important to how they work, and how we recognize the radio station we are listening to.

» Download Radio   » Listen To Music