Last night I had the chance to listen to a tribute to Antonio Carlos Jobim’s music sung by Sasha Masakowski, accompanied by five extraordinary musicians. The concert at Opelika’s The Sound Wall was a wonderful flashback to the music of my youth.
In high school I worked for an FM station, call letters KSRN. Our tag line was “Stereo 104.”
FM radio was a relatively new consumer product, offering much higher fidelity than the decades-old AM radio that was often plagued with static and interference. In 1961, the FCC authorized FM stereo broadcasts, complementing the stereo high-fi systems many people were adding to their homes. To attract listeners and advertisers, the early FM stations played to their strength and broadcast music.
KSRN adopted a format called “easy listening” or “middle-of-the-road.” Antonio Carlos Jobim was one of the staples of the playlist. One of the musicians introducing bossa nova to America, he became popular in the 1960s.
I rarely listen to FM radio these days. When I do, it’s an NPR station. The music I played at KSRN and grew to love is readily available on Spotify, accessible whenever I want to listen to my KSRN playlist.
Asides
To avoid interference at night, when AM radio transmissions would bounce off the atmosphere and propagate farther, local market stations had to reduce their transmitter power, which often limited their local coverage.
A key decision that accelerated consumer adoption of FM was FM/AM radios in cars, not just AM. After 60 years, the debate is now whether to remove AM radios from cars. Their susceptibility to interference is particularly troublesome for electric vehicle manufacturers.
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