New England's first all-digital AM station goes live, right here in the Boston area

I don't fault the station for making the switch -- it's probably a good move considering most people listen to AM in cars where HD receivers are sightly more common.

For old radio guys the move it bittersweet. "HD radio" never really caught on in the US and it's not even common for car radios. (At least in the cheap cars I drive/rent.) It's obviously absent from 99% of home radios. HD radio desktop receivers are expensive and it's not found in the alarm-clock variety. (Not that anyone is still buying radio alarm clocks.)

Many people of a certain age remember a fun electronics project was building a primitive AM receiver. No batteries or power required! It was like magic.

At this point the only thing on AM I ever tune to is WJIB in Cambridge.

I guess they only changed to the Jazz format last Dec. I never really listened to AM since it's usually just talk, but was messing around with my bedside clock-radio earlier this year and came across this station, and for most of this year, I've been falling asleep to it while playing at low volume. Since they only have a daytime license (ie, low-power at night), it came-in half-static. But at low volume, it kind of worked well as white noise with background music for falling asleep to. But my clock-radio isn't HD, so the all-or-nothing aspect of digital means that it doesn't come-in at all now.

I do have a small portable HD radio, and it comes-in perfectly both day and night in my living room, but not at all next to my bed, which is really the only place I listen to the station. Oh well... The AM band has much more overlap and interference amongst stations, especially with AM covering larger distance by nature, and especially at night. Using a hybrid analog/digital signal uses more bandwidth and leads to conflicts with adjacent stations, which is why most AM stations don't bother with HD (or like WBZ, translates their AM signal to an FM HD subchannel). But doing digital-only uses less bandwidth and avoids conflicts (and thus lawsuits), so this isn't too surprising for a small station.

I used an internet streaming clock-radio for over a decade, but went back to terrestrial radio for the simplicity a few years ago. At least Boston does have several exceptional college stations on the FM band, like WMBR, WZBC, WHRB, WERS, which is largely what keeps me listening to terrestrial radio vs. streaming only.

WBZ is one of the few "clear channel" licenses issued way, way back. A clear channel license clears the frequency (by not granting the frequency to others) for WBZ through much of N America, or at least this side of the Mississippi. That's why Mexican radio stations were famous for being heard in much of the US, or at least west of the Mississippi.

The formerly-named Clear Channel company effectively emulated this, by buying many local stations, then forcing all the local stations to play the same centrally-maintained playlist.

Around 1970, I was on a family trip to DC during the Bruins playoffs with the Canadiens and was desperately trying to listen to the Boston station. It was staticy and would fade in and out - really tough to follow, but what a series