DESCRIPTION
Amazon book author and L.A. radio personality Nancy Plum is featured on this cleaned up skimmer tape from the overnight of April 4 and 5, 1978. Once again, we all get to hear a glimpse of what KTNQ sounded like in the last few weeks before the format moved to FM. In fact, this features promos running that describe Ten-Q as sounding more and more like FM, and a big announcement coming in the next week. And wouldn’t we LOVE to hear the changeover!
TECHNICAL
Once again, we are treated to a very high-fidelity recording of what appears to be parts of two shows recorded onto this tape at KTNQ 1020 radio. First-generation tapes can be nice! There’s very little tape hiss, but the station’s on-air processing is caught on tape, as this likely was recorded from the station’s air monitor.
One of the reasons why I comment on quality has to do with teaching those who are used to how AM radio sounds today, with it’s overall muddy sound, prone to all sorts of electronic interference a bit of history. 40 years ago, AM stations not only didn’t have to contend with computer noise, they also had two other things going for them. First, AM stations back then were allotted a 13 khz wide bandwidth. Today, the FCC limits them to just 9 kHz. Also, back in the days this was recorded, AM receivers captured nearly 20 khz of a station’s signal when tuned properly. With the extra bandwidth, better receivers, far less electronic noise, AM radio really DID sound THIS good! Kinda makes you wonder what happened?… And, yes… AM Stereo DID sound fantastic (No, KTNQ wasn’t in Stereo). But that’s a different story for a different time.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Nancy Plum is the author of a book about her experiences in radio called, “Do Not Air – Radio Stories and other Wierd Stuff”. It’s available on Amazon.com.
Nancy Plum has over 4 decades in radio and is available as a voiceover talent. She has donated over a dozen airchecks of her personal work and her collegues to this website.
You can hear more of Nancy’s work by clicking THIS LINK.
LISTENING OPTIONS
Click the above player to hear this AUDIO ONLY aircheck.
Watch this video version from our official Airchexx YouTube Channel!
AM is not as bad sounding as people are led to believe.
I have our AM and FM running through the internal monitoring speaker system and I challenge anyone to tell the difference.
We use an old Dymek AM receiver in wide band mode.
Analogue AM could sound just as good for anybody, albeit, in mono.
10-Q was patterned off of B-100 in San Diego and taken a few steps further. It was as exciting a format as “was allowed by law”
This is phenomenal… Imagine the overnight DJ today being that good. Can computers be that good?