AUSTRALIAN AM STATION 6WF to Leave the AM band for FM

The transmitting tower for sunny Perth, Australia's ABC radio station 6WF, which is moving from the AM band to the FM band after decades of serving Perth and a large part of SW Western Australia.

If you look closely, you can see the Perth skyline in the far background. The tower is in the Perth suburb of Hamerslsy, in the northern part of the city. 

photo from ABC.net.au

A radio station I used to listen to -- at least when they had a shortwave relay -- is leaving the AM band for FM in late February this year, after 94 years on the AM band.

6WF, Perth, Australia's main ABC Radio outlet, is being moved to FM as the ABC determines that with more and more cars being FM only, taking 6WF off the AM band is the best way to serve listeners. The switchover from AM to FM will occur on February 23rd.

6WF-AM has been on the air in the Perth region for 94 years, as the transmitter installation and tower date from 1934.

For those who don't know it, Perth is a large city of two million people on the Indian Ocean, and it's the capital of Western Australia, Australia's largest state by area. Perth is also known as the 'most isolated capital city in the world', being that it is farther from other metros than nearly every other national or state capital on the planet.

A CITY WITH AN EXTENSIVE MUSICAL HISTORY

Perth is the city where late AC/DC singer Bon Scott lived as a kid, after his family moved there from Kirriemuir in Scotland. He got his musical start there as a singer for the Valentines. The Australian rock band INXS also got their careers kickstarted in Perth (they were in Perth for 10 months, as the 'Vegetables'). The lead guitarist for the Divinyls, Mark McEntee, was from Perth, and the excellent Aussie glam rock band Supernaut were also from Perth.

I used to listen to 6WF back when I got my first good Shortwave radio, my Realistic DX-160, which was a Christmas gift. With that radio I listened to a lot of different stations, including Radio Australia, various Indonesian stations at night, 'tropical band' radio stations out of Venezuela and Columbia, and 6WF.

SHORTWAVE RELAY STATIONS FOR THE OUTBACK

How could I receive 6WF? Well, back in the day the ABC had several Shortwave outlets to serve the Outback and desert regions of the Australian interior, and being that more than half of Western Australia is desert, with a lot of isolated mining towns, other small towns and farming and other 'stations' in the interior, SW was the best way to reach those people. 

Queensland also had a Shortwave relay station, VLW4, which I think I heard once. It was used to beam ABC radio to the Outback from Brisbane. The Western Australian shortwave relay came in better here, I think because they beamed their signal more in my direction.

The 6WF shortwave relay was officially called VLW6, and their frequency was in the 31 Meter Band. One night (early a.m., actually), I heard a DJ on 6WF play a bunch of music by the La De Da's (including their cool song 'The Place'), and another night he played almost half an album by the band called Flowers, which changed their name to Icehouse.

The transmitter cable for 50KW AM station 6WF in Perth.

photo from ABC.net.au

The shortwave relay station always identified as '6WF/6WN'. The relationship between the two ABC stations I never clearly understood, but 6WF was the main one.

During the early 2000's when I discovered online radio I 'tuned in' to 6WF a few times, as by then they'd switched off the Shortwave relay.

Of course, today Australia has no Shortwave presence at all, aside from the Reach Out Australia religious station in Kununurra, in the Kimberley district of NW Australia. They broadcast religious programs to ethnic minorities in Southern and SE Asia. I posted a short article on Reach Out Australia and my hearing them a couple years ago, which you can read here.:

https://interrocknation.blogspot.com/2024/05/dxing-reach-beyond-australia-hearing.html

The ABC, thanks to the Australian government, pulled the plug on Radio Australia about 6 or 7 years ago, in a move that not only saddened SWL's all over the world, but maddened rural people in the Australian Outback who depended on Radio Australia for news and information.

It's another case of governments not caring about serving people in rural areas. The US took a similar move with pulling the plug on VOA, which took America's message to rural people in Africa and Asia.

You can read the ABC.net.au article on 6WF here.:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-15/perth-am-to-fm-switch-goes-ahead/106343336

IN OTHER LIFE....

The weather here has taken a turn for the cold again, after a two week respite. The barometer has fallen below 30 inches of mercury, which usually means a low pressure system, which usually means more rain, which usually means higher temperatures in Winter. But that's clearly not the case.

I recently rediscovered my Dad's old barometer -- it's a Stellar brand barometer made in what was then called Western Germany. It seems to be reasonably accurate, despite its age. It's been through a bit over the years. An uncle who was staying with us in the 1980's put it in the trash in a drunken rage, and my former GF shoved it in a box of junk because she didn't know that a) it had been in my family for years, and b) I don't think she really knew what a barometer was.

I'm still not sure if you can forecast the weather by reading the changes in a barometer, but it's still cool to track it.

ON SHORTWAVE, THERE IS NOTHING ON BUT HF STOCK TRADERS

OK, I may be exaggerating here a bit, but not really. High Frequency Stock traders -- a.k.a. 'HFT' stations -- get a lot of criticism from hams and SWL's, but they really aren't taking over the SW spectrum. How can they, especially when the SW spectrum is increasingly nothing but static?

And if you look at the actual number of these HFT stations, there really aren't that many of them. Those stations do put out a pretty solid signal, though, and even when the ionosphere is DOWN, their signals still seem to be UP. At least one of them I've heard recently blasts out a massive signal.

HFT aside, radio here has been a bit dull lately. The Shortwave radio conditions have been absolutely abysmal. Last night I tuned around and there was nothing but static, a couple weak ham radio operators out of Oregon, Nevada and California that I couldn't read through the static, and a digital HFT transmission on 6838 kHz, which was around S3 out of 5, signal-wise. I have no idea where this HFT station is located. Most of the known HFT transmitters are in Illinois, but this signal is too strong for Illinois. I only know it as an HFT (High Frequency Trading) station because signals experts on HFU and elsewhere have said the 6838 Digital hash is HFT. 

One of them said that the HFT Digital signal I'm hearing on 6838 kHz, which slams all my radios with S3-S5 signals (even my little XHDATA D-221 picks that signal up -- just off the whip!), may be located in Ritzville, WA -- a small town in Eastern Washington, about 250 miles east of me, in the middle of desert and wheat country.

This begs the question: if that station is indeed in Ritzville, why is a High Frequency Trading station located in WA state, and slamming the airwaves with a signal that is estimated to be 400 KW PEP? Are they sending trading data to Japan? South Korea? Taiwan?

Who knows.

When the station on 6838 is not transmitting Digital hash, it often just puts out a carrier. There is another carrier, on 6938, that I often hear. I've not yet heard a digital signal on that frequency.

Down below the 40 Meter ham band is a lot of interesting stuff -- pirates, Indonesian chanters, Latin American fishermen, mystery carriers and military signals, Chinese OTHR, and now, apparently, High Frequency Trading stations. Of course, you'll only hear most of this when the ionosphere is UP. When the ionosphere is DOWN, you don't hear anything except the strongest signals.

And most of Shortwave is basically dead right now. And we're supposedly still in a peak solar cycle period. I'm not buying it, of course. I've said before that this Solar cycle sucks, and I think the relatively dead SW conditions back that assertion up.

EUV is down, and eUV is what makes the ionosphere ionized, and according to NASA, the ionosphere is less ionized than it was in 1995 -- eUV ionization has been consequently dropping since then, and who knows when it will come back?

I've got no idea about that.... Solutions to that problem are far above my pay grade. :-)

BACK TO MEDIUM WAVE

Consequently, I'm getting back into my first radio 'love', MW DXing. Now, the ionosphere sucking also affects the AM band, but there still is plenty to hear on the AM band, especially if you have a good radio and a loop antenna. After a night of hearing nothing but static and unreadable signals (and HFT digital hash) on Shortwave, I grabbed my trusty Sangean PR-D4W and tuned the AM band. It was like night and day. 

I didn't hear any super DX, but I listened to KOAC out of Corvallis, Oregon (550 kHz), with a BBC special on the Indian economy, and then heard some music on KSWB, Seaside OR (840 kHz) and some cool classic hits on CKOR Penticton BC (800 kHz). And it was all in high fidelity, as the PR-D4W has the best sound and performance of any MW radio I own.

You don't even really need an external loop with the PR-D4W, but a loop like the AN-200 will add a db or so, which helps with the weaker stations.

DSP SSB Radios -- they work really well

I'm working on an article about 3 DSP/SSB radios I bought last year -- the Tecsun PL-330, XHDATA D808 and Raddy RF760. My PL-330 has gotten heavy use over the past year, but I've noticed that it does overload, especially on the CB band, and when there is strong, pulse-type RFI. 

A 150 ohm resister clipped between the wire antenna and the Tecsun's whip antenna seems to have cured most of that. I'm hoping the issue (bleedover, blocking, AGC over-reacting to changes in signals, unexpected whistles here and there) is just overloading. We'll see.

I'm also working on an article about a music scene that rose and sort of fell -- the Norway pop music scene, which seemed to really put out a lot of great music ni 2014. That article will come along in 3-4 weeks.

I'll close this article with a great track by the NZ/Oz band The La De Da's, who -- when they made this track -- were headed by guitarist Kevin Borich, who then went on to have a lengthy solo career in Australia.

This is the track I heard on 6WF one warm summer night. "The Place".:

And this track by FLOWERS, the band that became ICEHOUSE, was played a few years later on, some time before 6WF's Shortwave relay went off the air. The song is 'Skin".:

This track, one of my favorites by ICEHOUSE, was not played on 6WF, but it's one of Icehouse's better tracks, from 1984, 'Sidewalk". It's got a kickass bass line and guitar chords, and really cool use of the Fairlight Computer.:

Until next time, stay warm, friends (for those of you in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Peace.

C.C., Feb. 19th, 2026.

Another Newspaper in Peril -- The WASHINGTON POST lays off 30% of its staff

The tower of the Washington Post, one of America's 3 or 4 most important newspapers (the other ones being the NY Times, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal). The paper that brought down a President in 1972 is in financial trouble.

(photo courtesy CBC.ca and Reuters)

As the internet and social media gain more and more influence over all information and news dissemination, Newspapers continue to decline in importance and revenues, and just today one of the two or three most influential newspapers in the US has announced that they are laying off one third of their workforce: The Washington Post is laying off 30% of their news staff.

This comes after previous rounds of 400 layoffs over the past three years.

You can read more about this in the CBC News article linked here.:

Washington Post to lay off a third of staff in newsroom and other departments | CBC Accessibility

This comes a year or more after the Los Angeles Times laid off 110 staff -- 20% of its workforce -- because they have been losing revenues. The New York Times, the third big national newspaper, has added staff, but only because of its Games and Wirecutter, non-news divisions.

Here is a link to the NY Times' "Games" division page, where there are links to the Crossword, and other games like Dominos and a Spelling Bee game, that the paper publishes. As you can tell, the Games are NOT part of the News division.

Games | The New York Times Company

NY Times' Wirecutter is a "product review website" which is also NOT News related. You can read about it here.:

nytimes.com/wirecutter/

As you can tell, these two NY Times sites have NOTHING to do with News. 

Now, the NY Times' branching out to being a gaming platform as well as a product review website is smart business -- but it is NEWS? Nope. It's smart yes, but not news. And although the NY Times appears to actually be making money off their news division -- they made $805 million last year, with over 12 million subscribers, they have tuned into outliers.

The general shape of the newspaper industry is that it is in decline.

In the case of the Washington Post, even having 2 million subscribers isn't keeping the paper from having to lay off staff. Two million subscribers seems like a big number until you compare that to the numbers of subscribers and followers that popular podcasts like Joe Rogan have.

Even the NY Times' 12.8 million subscribers doesn't come close to Joe Rogan's 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 16.4 million YouTube channel subscribers. Tucker Carlson, the famed ex-Fox News talking head, has 5.16 million YouTube channel subscribers. Just one guy, with about half the reach of the NY Times, and Carlson's only been on YT for 3-4 years. Even some OnlyFans influencers have as many subscribers as the NY Times and WA Post.

It's a tough time for legacy media in the US, but even tougher for one of the most 'legacy' news media out there: Newspapers.

Three years ago, I posted an article about the 2000+ local newspapers across the US that shut down in 2022. I posted that article just after New Year's, 2023. You can read it here.:

Interrock Nation: NEW YEAR'S UN-CELEBRATION, Newspapers Are Dying, + Oz Rock band MANTISSA

According to an article in Fortune magazine, as well as some surveys, over 30% of newspapers in the US have shut down since 2005. In fact, 48,000 journalists lost their jobs since the early 2010's -- over two thirds of the journalists that had employment in the 2000's.

Newspapers in the US have been in trouble for a long time. The first big hit was when online classified ads -- introduced in the mid 2000's -- removed about 40% of most newspapers' revenues within a year or two, because the free, online ads killed off the newspaper classified ads. Then, as the internet became the go-to for print media, newspapers across the US started losing even more subscribers and revenues.

At the time, online news was free, for the most part. Even today, many news aggregators like MSN and Yahoo provide free news. There are online newspapers that have free news -- it's loaded with video ads and some pop-ups, but the news is still free. With many people wary of paying so much for monthly subscriptions, it's no wonder that they don't want to pay for an online newspaper anymore. 

Add to that the biases seemingly inherent in some of today's "journalism", and the fact that a lot of Americans simply do not trust the news media enough to want to pay for news, it's part of a deadly spiral that is socking it to Newspapers, and other news media are also feeling the pinch. Cable TV news viewership is down -- it's aging out. It's the same with network TV news.

Even being funded by one of the world's richest men -- Jeff Bezos, in the case of the Washington Post -- can't save jobs at a nationally important newspaper, as that newspaper -- like all news media -- as competing with every podcast and 'news' social media website out there. The LA Times is owned by a billionaire. That didn't keep him from laying off 110 staff 2-3 years ago.

So what does this mean for the Washington Post? I think it will survive. But it will not be in the same position that it was in the early 1970's when its reporting brought down a President. 

Newspapers are dying. In 20 years, there will only be a handful left, and they will probably be funded by other interests -- the same way that Radio Sports-talk networks are increasingly backed by Sports betting and gambling. Newspapers will have to develop wide, online strategies (like the NY Times has done) to survive the age of social media, TikTok 'news', podcasts, and the internet.

We are one quarter into the 21st Century, and this is definitely the 'Digital Age'. The internet not only has altered the music industry, film industry, and Radio, but it has altered TV, and the News industry. 

Everything is now just another form of internet content. 

And AI, of course, is going to push that trend even further.

Whether those of us who were born in the previous Century like it or not, it is fact. It's just the way it is.

IN OTHER LIFE...

In other life, the weather here has taken a turn for the better. It is no longer below freezing outside at night, which means the unheated rooms in my house are no longer 48-49 degrees F. Yes, some rooms are unheated, because heat costs money. My internet is flakey -- the phone company says it's the modem/router going south. It's only 2-3 years old, but I guess they don't last as long as they used to. I'm still waiting on a new one to show up, then I have to go through the process of getting it online and hoping it is going to fix the internet cut-outs.

Right now I just take a lot of breaks. It seems to keep the router from re-setting all the time.

My cat Bear is getting more used to me. She no longer hides if there is a strange noise in the room (like me opening a plastic trash bag to clean her litter box -- she doesn't like some noises). 

The SW and MW DX conditions have improved somewhat. I hope it holds for another year, before it all dives into a Solar minimum. This morning I heard 11 Meter sideband stations from all over the Eastern US, as well as Arizona and California. A few days ago I heard Brazilians on 27425 USB and 27435 USB, which was cool. At night the conditions on the lower bands aren't all that great, though. The 40M ham band is often very spare of signals, and it's the same way with the 80M ham band. 

Some of it may be ionospheric conditions -- and some of it might be that hams just don't get on the air so much anymore. It's hard to tell.

Until next time, my friends,

Peace.

C.C. February 4th, 2026.

FM Radio Stations in the US declined by roughly the same number as AM Radio Stations in the past year

Air1 is a Christian music format, broadcast nationwide on many FM stations across the US. Owned by the EMF organization, Air1 and other services like it are one of the few growing aspects of the radio industry in the US.

According to the online radio periodical Radio World, both AM and FM stations numbers in the US are dropping, and the FM/AM drop numbers are closer than one would normally think.

Radio World looked at the FCC data going back 10 years, and also over the past year, and the numbers are interesting.

First off, over the past year, AM stations and FM stations declined in numbers at roughly the same rate -- 41 AM stations went off the air since 2024, and 36 FM's went off the air during the same time period.

There are more FM's in the US than AM's, so the actual 'rate' isn't close, but the raw numbers are closer than one would expect, being that a lot of people think FM radio is impervious to decline. And 36 FM's having their plugs pulled isn't something one would expect in just one year in the US.

If one looks back over the past 10 years, to 2015, AM dropped in the US by 7%, and FM stations dropped in number by 2%. 

It's estimated there are 10,000 FM stations in the US, 6600 of them commercial FM's. According to RadioWorld, 112 commercial FM's have gone off the air since 2015. By the same token, being that there are around 4367 AM stations in the US, a loss of 7% is 342 since 2015.

Here is a link to the Radio World article that has the info.:

Here’s How FCC Station Totals Have Changed in 10 Years - Radio World

While it's not great news that Radio stations are going off the air, the numbers show that FM is also in trouble in the US. 

The only bright spot, numbers wise, is in the Non-Commercial part of the US FM band, where Non-Comm station numbers increased, but it's not clear if it's college radio, or religious institutions like EMF building FM relay stations between 88 and 92 MHz. There also is an increase in translators and LPFM's. LPFM numbers are slightly up, but down from their peak at over 2200 LPFM's in 2017-2018.

In the US, you have religious broadcasters who expand their coverages regionally, and even nationwide, by using translators, and being religious, they are non-commercial enterprises.

K-Love is arguably the most popular of EMF's religious music formats. They have stations in nearly every large radio market in the US.

EMF (Educational Media Foundation) -- the company that has K-Love and Air1 stations all over the US -- is one of these organizations. EMF is a radio company that runs two Christian music formats, and they have stations in nearly every major radio market.

Because of their growth, EMF gets a lot of negative commentary in Radio forums. Some Radio hobbyists insist that EMF has 'ruined' FM by putting up so many translators, and even buying commercial FM stations.

While it's true the many religious organizations have put up a lot of translators, there are also a lot more translators in general than there were 35 years ago. Also, EMF was able to purchase big city FM stations (with long histories) like WLUP-FM in Chicago, WPLJ-FM in New York City, and WAAF-FM in Boston because there were no other buyers. 

The logo of famous Boston Rock station WAAF-FM, which was sold in 2020 to the religious music broadcaster organization EMF. WAAF now has different call letters (as well as a different logo, obviously) and plays K-Love.

Such is the state of radio today. WLUP was an influential Rock station, that singlehandedly 'killed Disco'. WPLJ was an influential pop station and AC station during the 80's and 90's. WAAF in Boston was one of the stations that broke major acts, especially rock acts from New England like Godsmack, Staind, Aerosmith, Theory of a Deadman, and Shinedown. Now each of those stations play K-Love or Air1.

Here's a short article on WAAF's format flip, and a look at their 50 year Rock music history.:

https://www.insideradio.com/free/waaf-signs-off-after-half-a-century-of-rocking-boston/article_37fad950-54f4-11ea-832d-438b5d55563b.html#:~:text=The%20final%20day%20of%20WAAF%20Boston%20(107.3),close%20in%20the%20second%20quarter%20of%202020.

(Yeah, the link is a long one, but it is genuine).

The most disturbing part of the Radio World news article is that 41 AM's and 36's FM's went off the air across the US in just one year. If that trend continues, both the AM and FM bands will start to sound very different by the end of this decade -- a drop of 41 AM stations a year could be 164 less stations by 2030. If FM continues to drop by 36 stations a year, that would 144 less FM stations nationwide. There are maybe 200 major radio 'markets' in the US, ranging from the big ones like New York City, L.A. and Chicago, to smaller markets like Spokane (Market #88), Boise (Market #83), Eugene (Market #145, (medium sized cities in the Pacific Northwest, where I live), which rank in the market 50-150 range.

If 144 FM's go off the air by 2030 or 2035 or so, that would be the equivalent of one FM in each major market (probably a lot of suburban rimshotters) going off the air.

I suppose we'll have to see how the numbers play out over the next 4-5 years. I hate to see Radio stations go off the air. But it's a reality. The Radio industry is in decline. Everyone working in the industry knows it, and nearly ever Radio hobbyist knows it. 

HD2's -- A RADIO DISAPPEARING ACT

One glaring example: Remember HD Radio? Nearly every AM DXer does, as many of them loathed hearing IBOC hash surrounding strong radio stations with HD, that hash blocking off nearby DX frequencies. But FM was using HD also. And on FM, HD tech allowed for additional channels -- an FM station could have an HD2, HD3, etc.

The HD1, of course, was the main station's broadcast. If you have an HD radio (like the Sangean HDR-16, which I have), tuning to an FM with HD will switch from analog to digital, HD reception. Then, if the station has an HD2 or HD3, you tune upwards to hear those channels. In the 2010's, most FM's with HD had HD2's at least -- sometimes it was an AM station in the cluster, other times it was a music channel. 

I think one of the local FM'ers might have had an HD4, but don't quote me on that.

However, today HD Radio is dying. My city, Seattle, is 'Market #11' in the US, and it used to have HD2's on nearly every FM commercial station in the metro, and a bunch of them had HD3's. When I got my first HD Radio, a Sony XDR, in 2017, I think there were two FM stations that had no HD2. The local NPR station, KUOW-FM 94.9, even had the BBC World Service on their HD2.

Today? Most of the FM's in Seattle have no HD2. The rocker, KISW, shut down their HD2 4 years ago or so. Another station which had a Blues HD-2 yanked the plug on it  around the same time. There are also listings for HD2's online that do not exist anymore. For example, Jim Rome's famous Sports show is listed as being on an HD2 in Seattle that does not exist. The NPR station, KUOW-FM, has no HD2 at all anymore. They play the BBC World Service overnights, but it's not on their HD2 -- because there isn't one.

Radio stations are pulling the plug on HD2's, partly because it's just another bother for the engineers to deal with, and partly because most HD2 channels don't make money.

It's just one more factor showing that Radio is in decline. The 'new' HD tech is great. But it's not being utilized to its greatest extent -- because, generally, there is no money in it.

Radio is contracting, as well as losing influence and importance -- and listeners. And, like I said, there are many diverse explanations for this, but different explanations aside, the decline is a fact.

I go into my own take on Radio's decline with this article I wrote a couple years ago, called "Who Killed Radio?". You can read that here.:

https://interrocknation.blogspot.com/2024/02/who-killed-radio-processes-people-and.html

I just hope that the decline of Radio doesn't speed up.

Peace.

C.C. January 17th, 2026.

Silent Radio Station KRLC 1350 LEWISTON burned down in Fire Training exercise

KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho's "Hometown Radio" station, a station whose plug was pulled about a year ago and recently had its license deleted, has been burned to the ground in a Fire Training exercise. The Fire training exercise took place in late November.

Over the past several years since the Pandemic ended I have written about several AM (and FM) stations in my region of the US going off the airwaves, and in those articles I have included the fact that many of those stations had FM translators, FM sister stations, and several had radio streams on the internet -- a factor that is supposedly necessary to 'save AM'.

KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho was one of those stations. KRLC 1350 was usually heard nightly here in the Seattle area up until it went off the air about midway through last year. Even though we have a strong local (KKMO 1360) here in the metro, KRLC could still be heard right next to it, playing Classic Country music.

In the 1960's and 70's, KRLC was a Top 40 station, but they switched to Country some time in the late 1970's, and then Classic Country about a decade or more later.

Lewiston is in Northern Idaho, and it's right across the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington -- the two are 'twin cities', and they both serve an area of dry wheatfield farmland, as well as some orchard farming. Lewiston is known as Idaho's 'seaport', being that it is on a section of the Snake River that is navigable all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Even though the Lewiston-Clarkston metro region is around 50,000 or more, there just wasn't enough revenue to keep KRLC on the air. And the Pandemic economy finished the station off, just as it finished off KNPT Newport OR, KBCH Lincoln City OR, KUTI Yakima WA, KMED Medford OR, KKPZ Portland OR, KDUN Reedsport OR, and even big city KDWN Las Vegas, NV -- all stations which I've written about here when they were taken off the air.

In KRLC's case, one night I tuned in to 1350 to hear nothing, and then I looked KRLC up and found out they went off the air. They recently had their license deleted at the FCC.

I used to listen to Sunny 1550 at night while writing fiction. Their mix of Standards and easy listening Oldies was well presented and fun to listen to. Then they went Vietnamese, and then they went silent during the Pandemic.

A couple other stations, like KKOV 1550 Vancouver WA, the former "Sunny 1550", are silent and their futures are uncertain. Even an Asian language format couldn't save KKOV. It's been silent since the Pandemic. KZIZ 1560, a small station in Sumner, WA, just 20 miles south of me has been off the air for more than a year. A Punjabi / South Asian format apparently couldn't save it. They went off the air around the time the Pandemic happened.

It's tough for Radio all over -- and especially AM Radio, although FM is not exempt.

You can also add a bunch of Canadian AM'ers whose plugs have been pulled -- also done in by the Pandemic economy, as well as the changing economics of Radio -- CKMX 1060 Calgary, CFTE Vancouver, CKGO Vancouver, CKST Vancouver, CFRN Edmonton, and several others.

Of the American stations I mention here, all of them, except possibly KKPZ in Portland, had streams. The streams did not save the stations. Most of them also had FM translators, and KNPT Newport was part of a group of stations on the Oregon Coast. All had their plugs pulled.

An inglorious end to an 80 year-old Radio station. KRLC gets burned down in a Fire Dept. training exercise. The station was burned in November, 2025.

Photo courtesy RadioWorld dot com & Big Country News

Now KRLC is gone -- and even more, the station's building was burned down in a Fire Department training exercise, in November (I didn't find out about the building being burned down until recently). It was an inglorious fate for a station that served the city and region of Lewiston for 80 years. The once proud server of Classic Country to the wheatland region of the Palouse is now nothing more than ashes.

It all went up in flames. One wonders if that is the ultimate future of the industry I worked in for 20 years -- for it all to end up going up in flames.

Here is a news article on the burning down of KRLC.:

Longtime Idaho Radio Studio Burned Down in Training Exercise - Radio World

It's sad, in a way, but it's also indicative of the ultimate fate of probably every on-air Radio station in the United States. Eventually, when everything goes online, there won't be any Radio stations left, and the majority of remaining, online-only stations will disappear as well, because the internet is one vast content resource with endless competition for eyes and ears.

A pic of Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington, from the old US Highway 95 switchbacks just north of the small metro. These switchbacks inspired the song "Hot Rod Lincoln". In this pic, Lewiston is to the left side, and Clarkston is to the right. These two cities are located in the sunnier and drier part of Washington state, and a dry region in Northern Idaho.

Online Radio is promising, but the promise just won't hold out for most who believe that going online-only will save Radio stations. Online radio stations have to find advertising or funding, just like On-Air stations do. And then you have the issue of Digital Royalties for the music played.

An example of this hit the radio press recently. There is an online station in San Francisco -- one of the most concentrated populations in the United States -- called HydeFM that is struggling to stay alive, even though it reportedly has a 'loyal local following'.

Here is an article on HydeFM's challenges.:

Independent S.F. radio station seeks donations to remain on-air

Even online, it's tough for a content operation like a streaming radio station to make enough money to survive.

We live in interesting times.

IN OTHER LIFE...

In other life, everything is plodding along. My internet went wonky last Saturday. Then it went good for 5 days. My cat Bear is getting used to me. She likes the bagpipes -- only if I play them downstairs, though. But she knows that when I play the bagpipes, soon enough I'll be feeding her. She is a very skittish cat, so I wanted to ensure that she associated bagpipes with a good thing. That way she wouldn't be so scared of the noise.

THE SHORTWAVE BANDS ARE 'DEAD, JIM'

DXing has been spotty lately. The SW bands are mostly dead, compared to where they should be -- being that we are still technically in a Solar peak period. I heard T88SM, a ham station out of Palau, on CW (Morse Code) two afternoons ago on 21025 kHz in the 15 Meter ham band. The rest of the band was basically dead, though. I heard 8P5AA out of Barbados on 10 Meters the same afternoon (28470 kHz, around 2058 UTC -- about 1 p.m. here), and a few faint whispers of East Coast US hams trying to talk to him. 

Earlier that day I heard Brazil, PV8AL (?) on 28350, but I couldn't hear the US guys trying to reach him. The rest of the 10 Meter band was dead.

It seems that sometimes there is ionospheric propagation to various regions of the world, but no one is on. Then again, last night the SW and HF ham bands were basically nothing but static with a few faint carriers and just whispers of audio on WRMI and WWCR.

Even the Desert Whooper, a low-power, unlicensed, 'whooping' beacon on 4096 kHz, hasn't been heard here in weeks. Last year I was hearing them now and then, and in 2024 I was hearing them nightly, unless there was a whopper of a solar storm. The Desert Whooper is located probably somewhere in the deserts of California, and if you tune into it you'll hear 'whoop whoop whoop' and then a CW identifier ('DW'). If you tune in with LSB, the 'whoops' sound sad, if you tune into the Whooper with USB, it's upbeat whoops.

But it's been MIA for weeks.

Propagation lately could be summed up thusly.:

"It's dead, Jim." (a take on a famous Star Trek quote).

SEEMS LIKE THE SOLAR MINIMUM IS STARTING ALREADY

This Solar Cycle is playing out the way I sort of thought it would. It's depressing, in a way, but it's reality, and with reality, one must adapt and survive. One way I've attempted to 'adapt' is get a DSP SSB radio, and of the three of those I've got this year (Tecsun PL-330, Raddy RF760, and XHDATA D808), the D808 is the best for raw SSB and CW signal performance, and the Tecsun is the best for SSB readability.

I'm going to put up an outdoor wire to try to hear more when the REAL solar minimum hits -- and I think it's going to hit next year. In fact, I think it's starting to hit us already. I have the space for an outdoor wire. I just have to figure out a way to put one up again. I used to have a 100 foot wire, but it went down in a windstorm in 2005 or so. My next outdoor one will be shorter.

Here's hoping all of you are doing well and having an OK start to 2026.

Peace.

C.C., January 14th, 2026.

Jan. 15th, 2026: I forgot to add the bit about the Desert Whooper, so I added it today. The Desert Whooper is one of those fun things about Shortwave, but it's not the same when you can't hear it because propagation is so poor.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

 My Christmas Star, my paper star lantern, from 2016, which I think I got in 2012 or 2013. I saw it at Bartell's, a local drug store that had a really nice, holiday gifty section. Bartell's was sold to a national chain about 6 years ago and now they're all closed down. It's just the way of the world. But the paper star lantern still brightens up my window every Christmas season.

As I write this, it is Christmas Eve. Just around midnight.

I am listening to the Vatican Christmas Day mass, ritual and celebration, which is being broadcast on local Catholic radio station KBLE 1050 AM. Last year I was able to hear it broadcast on shortwave station Radio Marti, in the 41 Meter Band -- which was really cool to hear -- but Marti either isn't on the air at these hours anymore, or the Shortwave ionospheric conditions are horrible -- probably both.

That dud we SWL's know as Solar Cycle #25 is slipping into the morass of static and weak signals, accented here and there by some RFI.... I predicted long ago that this Solar Cycle would be an overall dud, and it turned out to be a dud compared to previous cycles, and the fact that Christmas Eve presented an nearly blank SW band is in indicator of it. Cycle #25 had a few bright spots -- Summer 2024 being one of them. Then, a never ending series of mediocre to fair SW conditions and solar storms, including SW blackouts.

But there's no need to dwell on that -- it is what it is. :-)

Back to Christmas, hey?

I slept in greatly this Christmas Eve, as is often my custom, being a night-owl, and I switched on my radio and had my coffee, and -- to my chagrin -- found that the Shortwave band was mostly dead. The utility stations that are always present were missing, and the HF ham bands were dead, except for one group of Northern California hams on 3900 kHz, and one weak CW QSO in the 40 Meter ham band. The Shortwave bands were MIA, except for three weak, barely readable signals from US domestic stations WRMI, WWCR, and WTWW. 

None of them had any Christmas like programming. I then tuned to the AM band, listened to the end of the California-Hawaii college football game, and tuned to 1480 kHz, and heard Christmas music coming out of California's KEJB, Eureka.

Then I got up.

I tuned the kitchen radio to one of the two local Catholic stations, because usually one or both of them will broadcast the major masses out of the Vatican -- Easter and Christmas. This year it was just KBLE that was broadcasting the Christmas Day mass. So I left it on as I made another cup of coffee and as the Christmas Mass music filled the room I fired up my bagpipes. 

My outdoor Christmas lights, 2016 or so.

I finally got my third Surefire-brand, synthetic chanter reed set up to where it works really well, and I worked up a pipe version of Silent Night a couple weeks ago, and it sounds really good on the pipes. I also practiced The First Noel, a version I worked up in 2016 or so. I was going to play them out on the street around 10 p.m., when it's quiet, and maybe some of the neighbors would hear them, maybe they wouldn't. Didn't matter. It was something I wanted to do. I played on Christmas Eve about 6 years ago, and no one complained.

So I warmed up the reed by about 5 minutes of playing, and went outside. The pipes worked excellently. This 'third' reed I've got is louder than my #1 reed, and much quieter than my harder reed (#2) -- I can play it without needing earplugs. As soon as I finished the Christmas Carols on my pipes, I went inside. I made a cup of tea. I was going to call my Aunt, and play the Carols for her. I then warmed up the pipes again, and suddenly the reed sputtered and a bunch of liquid spilled out of the bottom of my chanter.

It was bagpipe bag seasoning. Seasoning is a mixture of Murphy's Oil Soap, Glycerine, and a tiny bit of Pine Sol (which kills bacteria and mold) that I add to the bag in small amounts about once every month or so. It keeps the leather conditioned, and kills any mildew or bacteria. Sometimes after putting it in, the remainder of it decides to leave the bag -- through my reed and chanter. Oh well. It never damages anything, it's just a little messy when it happens. So I cleaned it all up.

Then I called my Aunt and played the two Christmas Carols for her on the phone. The pipes worked well. It was fun to play them on Christmas, being that I got them Christmas morning, 1981. 

When I got off the phone with my aunt, I then came upstairs. And here I am, listening to the end of the Vatican Christmas Mass.

Me, Christmas Eve, 2016. I look about the same. I don't have any new pics because my camera's SD card is full, and I need to get a new SD card. I still have the Elf Hat, which I got at the Dollar store that year.

Now they are about to start playing the Mass all over again. I'm not Catholic, but I enjoy hearing the music of the rituals, especially the Christmas ones.

I'm not much of a Christmas celebrant anymore. It brings back too many memories. But I try to take the holiday for what it is, because that's all you can do.

Going through my old pics, I found this pic of my little Squeakers, two weeks after I got her in 2010. How time flies. See you on the other side, my little pal.

With that, I am going to feed Bear the Cat, who is getting really friendly now. Then I'll go out on a bike ride around the neighborhood, to ensure that the streets are safe for Santa Claus. Who knows? Perhaps I'll see good ol' St. Nick land on someone's roof with his sleigh and reindeer!

I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas, and a safe holiday season.

Peace,

C.C. December 24th, 2025.

INFINITY SPORTS NETWORK ends; replaced by Westwood One / BetMGM sports network

 

Infinity Sports Network is going through some major changes, starting on December 29th, 2025, when they will merge with a Sports Betting talk network, and become the Westwood One Sports network. It will be the second major change and second name change since the network started as CBS Sports Radio in 2013. In fact, in most respects, the entire CBS Sports Network / Infinity Sports Network is coming to an end. 

That's the take on it from many who were involved in the network from the beginning.

CBS Sports Radio started not too long after I got back into the MW DXing and listening hobby in early Winter of 2011. At the time, I rediscovered the fun of listening to long distance AM radio at night, and the night time airwaves were alive with Radio Disney, ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Fox Sports Radio, SB Nation sports, and other lively programming. 

Soon enough, ESPN, Fox, and SB Nation were joined by NBC Sports Radio, and then CBS Sports Radio, which, when it was launched, took over 1090 kHz here in Seattle, flipping the station from KPTK Progressive Talk to KFNQ 'The Fan'.

Now, although I enjoy listening to NFL football on the radio, I have never been a sports nut. That said, when I started listening to the Sports Talk networks, I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike conservative talk shows, the Sports Talkers usually had callers, and the callers were almost as entertaining as the hosts. And CBS Sports Radio had a great lineup of hosts.

During this time period -- 2011-2015 or so -- Sports Talk Radio in general seemed to be a growing trend on the AM band, being that many who were tired of political talk would now have an alternative, and here in the US, most people follow at least one sport. Some radio companies, seeing the success that ESPN Sports Radio already had nationwide, decided that Sports talk, national networks could be a money maker. CBS and NBC decided to join the fray. For a few years, Yahoo also had a sports network, too, as did SB Nation.

ESPN had ESPN Deportes, which had rapidfire, interesting sounding, Spanish language talk hosts, who'd talk a lot about soccer as well as basketball and NFL. The ESPN Deportes jingle had a wild guitar line, too. I remember hearing it one night on my GE Superadio 3, when I heard KSVE El Paso on 1650 kHz -- the only time I heard that station, in 2013 or 2014.

The period from 2011 to the Pandemic was a lively time for talk radio in general, as there were also new conservative talkers like Andy Dean and Steve Deace trying to build audiences in the early 2010's -- all trying to invigorate the talk radio airwaves.

I actually enjoyed CBS Sports Radio. I was listening when it first launched in Seattle, on January 2nd, 2013. Their theme music was rousing and lively, and really fit the Sports Radio image, and the first CBS Sports Radio talk host I heard was Scott Ferrall, a gritty sounding guy who reminded the listener of a the guy in the back of some New York City pub with the scrunchy hat, reading the sports pages religiously. Ferrall had a gruff voice, and a quick wit. He left CBS Sports late in the 2010's for an online Sports Bet website or podcast.

Others on CBS Sports Radio were DA (Damon Amendolara), who always was willing to beam you up on the 'mothership' while his hip-hop music theme played; and Jim Rome, who was already a big name in sports talk. I didn't listen to Jim Rome much, but like the rest of the CBS Sports Radio hosts, he was knowledgeable, and fun to listen to.

And Amy Lawrence was the overnight host, who always had a friendly attitude and extensive knowledge of football, basketball, and baseball. 

Mike & Mike were a popular duo on ESPN Radio, and I sometimes heard their early morning show after 3 a.m. on some ESPN stations in the 2010's. They were sort of an 'odd couple', a theme which is somewhat popular on Sports Talk networks.

Several years ago, after CBS sold its radio properties, the name of the CBS Sports Radio network changed to Infinity Sports Radio -- by this time, Infinity was already producing the shows, so the change was really in name only. By the time of the name change, many of the hosts I enjoyed hearing in 2013 were gone. Scott Ferrall was gone. I think Jim Rome moved to another network. 

Amy Lawrence left CBS Sports Radio not too long after it became the Infinity Sports Network, and although she didn't say a ton about it, there were behind the scenes issues -- related to cost cutting -- that apparently prompted her to leave.

DA, who left Infinity Sports Radio in 2023, also talks about the decline on this video clip here. He refers to the end of CBS Sports Radio / Infinity Sports Radio as the end of an era.:

Part of the 'decline' in CBS Sports Radio may have been the loss of affiliates. If one looks at the number of Infinity Sports Radio affiliates today, and compares it with Fox Sports Radio, Fox Sports has twice the affiliates nationwide.

A couple of the other Sports networks also had major changes about 5-6 years ago, which -- to me, anyway -- took away from some of the fun listening. Mike and Mike were gone from the ESPN. Colin Cowherd is still on the radio (on Fox Sports since 2015), but his show was moved to a different time slot. There were two other hosts (an 'odd couple' of sports guys whose names I can't recall) who shared an early morning show that I often heard early mornings on Fox Sports that saw their show axed.

There are a few holdouts, however.

Ben Maller, who's been the overnight guy on Fox Sports Radio, is still very entertaining, and he has managed to stay on the air. Dan Patrick and Doug Gottlieb are still on Fox Sports Radio, too. They are long time, popular hosts. But a lot of the others are off the air, either doing satellite radio, or podcasts.

Before the Pandemic hit, Yahoo Sports, SB Nation, ESPN Deportes, and NBC Sports Radio all saw their plugs pulled, and new, Sports Betting Talk shows and networks began to grow on the radio airwaves. For example, there's a station in Southern Oregon, KDSO 1300, out of Ashland -- that is sports bet talk only. KGO San Francisco tried a version of Sports Bet talk that kept the station afloat before it was taken over by conservative talker KSFO. If KGO and KSFO's owners didn't think that KGO had a better signal, KGO would probably still be Sports Bet talk.

The radio scene at night on the AM band sounds very much different from how it sounded in 2013, and this latest change to what was CBS Sports Radio is yet another indicator that not only is Radio changing as it adapts to lower revenues and other changes in the industry, but even formats like Sports Talk are changing, as Westwood One Sports will have at least two shows brought over from BetMGM, one in the morning (morning drive, East Coast Time) and one in the early evening.

The tentative Westwood One Sports schedule is included in this Barrett Media article on the network change.:

https://barrettmedia.com/2025/12/17/executive-producer-michael-samtur-announces-exit-from-audacy-infinity-sports-network/

The two Sports Bet Talk shows are from BetMGM. Think about that for a moment. Even the name 'BetMGM' speaks loads. BetMGM is an online betting website. You can read about BetMGM's development here, on the Wiki.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Resorts_International#BetMGM

In the 1950s and 60s, MGM was known as a movie company, more or less family friendly. Then they opened up a resort hotel in Las Vegas -- which, naturally, has a casino. Now they have a Sports Bet talk network. And betting itself has become more accepted in Sports. One could say that Betting has become vital to Sports in the US. For years, Las Vegas wanted an NFL team, but the league balked, because of the potential association with gambling.

Obviously, that concern changed. Las Vegas now has an NFL team, the Raiders.

Now, I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on betting, or the sports bet industry.

But it's obviously a fact that Gambling, and Sports Betting in particular, are very big deals in both Sports and Radio. During the NFL downturn in the mid 2010's, at least one observer said the NFL's TV ratings were still as high as they were because of sports betting and fantasy football, which is sports betting related. Sports bettors would still tune into the games to double check on their bets, or make new bets.

Even now, a lot of commercials on the Sports networks are for sports betting websites like FanDuel and DraftKings. A couple months ago I heard a journalist interviewed on the Catholic radio network Relevant Radio talking about how pervasive Sports Betting actually is. It's a multimillion dollar industry. And its effect is being felt on Radio.

So, what does this all say for the state of Radio in general? I think it says a lot. Radio is hurting for revenues, as everything media shifts more and more online. DA and Amy Lawrence both stated they saw evidence of cost cutting at CBS Sports Radio -- and CBS Sports Radio was an excellent product, and -- as far as I know -- it got decent ratings for sports radio.

But the entire Radio industry is feeling the pinch. For those of us who love Radio and worked in Radio (as I did for 20 years, total), it really hurts to see some of these changes happening.

So, starting December 29th, Infinity Sports Network is disappearing, being replaced by Westwood One Sports. In some ways, the change may be in name only, as some shows will remain -- but even now the Infinity Sports Network just doesn't have the same kick and pizazz that CBS Sports Radio did during the glory days in the early 2010's when Scott Ferrall would decry boring, pitcher oriented baseball. 

"I don't want to see eight innings of boring pitching and strikeouts!" he'd say. "I want to see base hits! I want to see doubles! I want to see home runs!" 

And he was right.

Now I'm going to go back to listening to Sports Talk on my GE Superadio, and try to get back to writing some fiction. 

Peace,

C.C. December 21st, 2025.