‘It’s what listeners like’: AM radio purveyors on the Palouse hope automakers heed call to keep their medium alive
The rolling, green-turning-golden hills just outside Steve Shannon’s studio window at the offices of Inland Northwest Broadcasting north of downtown Moscow aren’t just pretty to look at.
They’re also the reason the AM radio dial remains important in this expansive, rural stretch of the country.
FM broadcasting is based on line-of-sight, but the pesky thing about AM waves is that they pass through anything, Shannon explained. And they reach a monthly audience that’s still more than 82 million strong across the country, most of them in areas just like the Palouse, according to a fall 2022 survey by broadcast tracking company Nielsen.
“People are tuning in to AM because they are listening to content they can’t get anywhere else,” said Shannon, operations manager for the group that is behind six stations on both the AM and FM dial broadcasting in Moscow and Colfax.
The future of the format seemed in jeopardy just a few short weeks ago, when broadcasters convened in Washington D.C. and pushed federal lawmakers to pressure carmakers who were pondering an end to AM receivers in new cars. Electric vehicles, growing in popularity and headed for a likely continued boom, especially with Washington outlawing the sale of new gas-powered cars beginning in 2035, create interference with a signal that can make AM transmissions difficult to hear, according to automakers.
That pressure, which included the introduction of legislation that would have required manufacturers to install AM receivers in new cars, appears to have made the point. In late May, Ford’s chief executive officer announced on social media it had reversed course and would provide the service in all 2024 Ford and Lincoln models after planning to remove it from some models because of higher costs and lack of listeners.
While AM radio, particularly in rural areas, has felt the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and been branded an anachronism by car companies, those who fill the airwaves – particularly on the Palouse, where the AM band buzzes to life as you roll down U.S. Route 195 – say they’re offering an essential service that an unusually captive audience continues to demand.
“Have the automakers considered what consumers want?” said Tery Garras, vice president of radio at Morgan Murphy Media, the company that owns and operates licenses for KXLY 920 News Now and 700 AM ESPN in the Spokane market. “This is what consumers want, and they value it, for their safety.”
‘It’s what listeners like’
Bill Weed’s office in the hills above the Palouse shows the changing times for radio broadcasters. Or, perhaps more accurately, how much time he doesn’t have to spend there.
“I installed our app on the phone of a 65-year-old woman today,” said Weed, the longtime general manager of three stations under the Radio Palouse Inc. brand, including Pullman’s KQQQ 1150 AM. He also cohosted the station’s flagship morning talk news show from his home office, a holdover from stay-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s even hosted from Southern California, watching golfers pass by his window while delivering weather reports of temperatures bottoming out at 13 below back home.
Weed said he’s glad it appears automakers have listened to both lawmakers and the public about their continued desire for AM service.
“It would have hurt some people that don’t have other good options,” Weed said.
On that day, Weed and his morning news cohost, Evan Ellis, had led a three-hour program that focused on the latest in the Bryan Kohberger murder trial, a small brushfire on the edge of town and an interview with David Johnson, a retired reporter for the Lewiston Tribune, focused on his new book about mountain lions.
That hyperlocal program was followed by the national syndicated show hosted by conservative pundits Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, who spent the first hour of their slot beginning at 9 a.m. questioning whether anyone cared about newly released audio of former President Donald Trump discussing a classified document in his possession. During the afternoon show, host Michael Knowles insisted conservative Supreme Court justices were being targeted unfairly by “the media” and suggested Christine Blasey Ford had never met Brett Kavanaugh, whom she testified under oath had sexually assaulted her in the 1980s.
This mix-and-match of hyperlocal content with the type of nationally syndicated conservative news talk that has dominated the AM dial for more than three decades is a necessity, Weed said.
“It’s what listeners like. They listen to it,” he said of the conservative national programming. “I’d like, ideally, to be able to do more local programming.”
Nielsen’s report found that most AM listeners are tuning in to that content. Of the AM radio audience, 57% listen to news/talk stations, the survey found. Those are news/talk stations that are predominantly dominated by conservative hosts, most of them syndicated nationally and broadcasting in a vein made popular for decades by the controversial host Rush Limbaugh, who died in 2021.
Yet the support for retaining AM radio has been bipartisan, particularly because of its utility in relaying information during disasters. AM radio works when cellphone towers are down and the power is out, supporters say.
Nielsen’s numbers also suggest that AM radio listening isn’t just a rural phenomenon. Seattle is the 14th-largest market in America based on its share of AM radio to total radio listeners, according to Nielsen. Spokane is 25th, but the Nielsen ratings still indicate FM stations attract more listeners than AM broadcasts in the city. Of the top 10 stations reported in May 2023, the most recent month for which ratings are available, KQNT is the only AM destination listed.
Both U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, gave support for retaining AM radio service at the height of Congressional discussion a month ago.
“AM radio is a vital source of lifesaving information that we can’t afford to lose. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what will happen if car manufacturers don’t reverse course,” McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House’s Committee Energy & Commerce, said in a statement.
“AM radio is an essential source of local news, weather, and emergency alerts for Washingtonians,” said Cantwell, chair of the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “Whether it is local journalism or AM radio I will continue to fight to ensure the public has access to these critical sources of information.”
Garras, with Morgan Murphy, said their stations have the ability to cut in with live programming from their TV station, KXLY, if major news is breaking, such as the 2015 windstorm and the 2017 shooting at Freeman High School.
“It is a tool that we can use to make sure that during times of emergencies people are informed,” she said.
While the loss of that pipeline of information would affect communities, the loss of the AM radio dial in cars would also be a detriment to the communities themselves, said Rob Prasil, owner of the Inland Northwest Broadcasting company in Moscow.
“You lose a space for everything that isn’t music,” he said.
Looking for news, entertainment – and community
Steve Grubbs has sat across the conference table from several cohosts during his time broadcasting hyperlocal sports talk for Inland Northwest Broadcasting.
The group’s part-time staff has drawn heavily in the past from both Washington State University and the University of Idaho, both just a short drive from the station’s offices northwest of downtown Moscow.
“The only frustrating part for us was that by the time they decided to want to go through that route, they were probably a junior or a senior, and after a year or two they’re starting to get really good,” said Grubbs, who’s worked in radio since 1999. “Then they were graduating and going somewhere else.”
Before the pandemic, Grubbs hosted two hours of live sports talk radio on 1400 AM every weekday morning. The program has been shortened to one hour, but still broadcasts daily, and includes regular features not just on the Mariners, Cougars and Vandals, but American Legion baseball and local high school sports.
Listeners of 1400 AM have been doing so for years, even generations, Grubbs said. His first job was doing play-by-play for Colfax High School, and he remembers growing up listening to his brother play basketball on the radio. Efforts to put content online and on smartphones – one of the arguments carmakers used to support the decision to pull receivers from their vehicles – haven’t resulted in people shifting their habits, Grubbs said.
“I think, with that older demographic, they’re reluctant,” he said. “Even when you can maybe get it on the internet, they don’t want it. They want it where they’ve always gotten it – on AM radio.”
Like every other media outlet, though, the Inland Northwest has been asked to do more with less since the pandemic. Ad revenue plummeted about 45% in three weeks in March 2020 and hasn’t fully recovered, said Jon Carlson, the company’s sales manager.
Grubbs is the morning host for 1450 KCLX, a licensed classic country station in Colfax, before putting on his local sports show and hosting afternoons on the group’s 99.5 FM station, playing contemporary country.
“Nobody has just one function in this building,” said Shannon, the operations manager.
Weed, in Pullman, agreed. Though he said content is king in the broadcasting business, his listeners are more likely to seek it out in the place it’s easiest to find. For years, that’s been spinning a dial in the car or at home.
“Every medium has its day,” he said. “The key is to have programming people want, and make it available to them.”