Sirius XM Holdings Inc (SIRI)

[GEO928]

cottontail...a little AM/FM history from an "old guy"....you may find it interesting....

I grew up in the '50's and 60's....graduated HS in'64. While I was in HS, we listened to AM radio....and, the "power" of the radio station was the "big thing" at the time. I live in NJ....but, not only did we listen to "Murray the K" from NYC, we listened to CKW from Chicago, "WW something" from Wheeling, West Virginia and others.

AM is "amplitude modulation" (wave height)....so, you can blast the signal for miles and miles if you have the wattage. That was great, but the music was in MONO...played off vinyl records...."45's".

But, of course, we were "cool guys"....so, we purchased a gadget known as a "reverberator"....a little rectangular box that you mounted in the trunk of your car an ran your back speakers thru it. The "reverb" delayed the signal to the rear speakers for a fraction of a second.....thus making the interior of the car sound like an echo chamber or like you were singing in the shower. "COOOOOOL" !!!!

That was the best you could do with AM....

Then, a technician decided to split our rock and roll music onto 2 tracks and stereo was born....and, FM was a "natural" to broadcast it because it is "frequency modulation"...and, at that point stereo radio was born !!!

Soooooo, all the music went to FM.....and, AM was left with the junk....talk shows....ball games...weather.

Years later....I believe it was motorola....AM stereo was invented....but, it was too late.....and, you had to buy a special radio to receive it...and, they weren't readily available....there was no turning back....AM radio was second best.

That's vastly different than satellite radio. Satellite radio does not improve the sound quality....it's just broadcast from a different place. And, as a stockholder, that's what worries me. AS I said, I live in NJ and I would never "purchase radio"....all I have to do is turn on a radio and there are a gazillion stations.

But, that's another story...let me end this with the history dissertation....thank's for listening...hope it was of some value to you.

ps: now, that I gave away my age, please don't call me "gramps" hahaha !!!