Chuck

That did not exist before, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And, you know, FM, when that came around, it did create that echo chamber.

But it was mostly like a wealthy, educated crowd that could afford FM receivers.

They were more expensive, like you were talking about.

I think there were more than 2000 AM stations on the air in the 1950s.

Some of them would broadcast on both.

I definitely remember, you know, both AM FM stations.

Mm hmm.

But FM did have some and still do have some sort of things that weren't in their favor.

Like if if you were inside a building, sometimes the AM signal could get blocked and get a little more difficult to get.

Yeah.

A lot of AM stations, I think most of them, in fact, have to either reduce their power or just go off the air at night.

So, you know, back in the day and maybe still you hear those sign offs at the end of the night, which is kind of fun where they play like the Star Spangled Banner or something and it just goes dead.

Yeah, like in Poltergeist.

That's right.

But another cool thing about AM is if you've ever been like driving around out west or something and, you know, probably not these days, but back when I was taking my big out west trips when all I had was like a cassette player and the radio.

Once the sun went down, sometimes you could get an AM station on your radio that's like four states away because of those airwaves bouncing off the ionosphere and saying, we'll take it from here.

Yeah, during the day, the ionosphere is super ionized.

That's where it gets its name.