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For those keeping score at home, there were 4987 AMs on the air in the U.S. in December 1990, and that number was down to 4452 as of Sept 2023. I can't think of many new AMs that have come on the air during that time, except for WMIN 1010 in Minnesota and KGGS 1340 in Kansas. I'm not counting the stations on the X-band, of course.
That is a loss of 535 AM stations in the last 33 years. That is 11% or
so of the total number. That is quite a number. That doesn't even
include the Canadian stations. I am sure there will be many more as
time goes by.
The only surprise here, for me, is that anyone is still surprised at the attrition rate for AM stations.
As a broker, I can no longer sell a standalone AM station for anything more than the value of the land under its tower, if it even still owns the land. Any residual value comes from an FM translator.
Most AM sites haven't seen any significant reconstruction or even proper routine maintenance in decades. The vast majority of them are 60, 70 or even 80 years old. Any equipment failure thus becomes almost instantly catastrophic. If a station is worth $50,000, it's not going to spend $200,000 to rebuild a tower that comes down.
Bottom line: the pace of AM attrition is about to increase exponentially. The medium may not be dead, but it's very close now. As hobbyists, we have no control over that. All we can do is listen as the dials start to open up again and the growing number of permanent sign-offs or major downgrades creates new DX opportunities.
