I am listening to WBZ radio 1030 AM here on the east end of Lake Ontario with pretty much the same signal strength I had most nights in PEI. WBZ is the oldest licenced station in North America operating now for 83 years. They claim they are heard throughout the continent east of the Rockies – which is probably true given they have a 50,000 watt licence and a clear channel without competition. Don’t judge the station by its terrible web site.
Paul Sullivan [who sounds exactly like Ray Romano except for a total lack of “duh, I dunno” schtick on Everybody Loves Raymond (they never asked me) that drives me nuts] hosts the 10 pm to midnight Eastern show following David Brudnoy – a Phd talking in the town where Harvard can be found – who starts at 7 pm. Both in their own way stake an interesting place in the talk-radio world as both are rightist libertarian without being republican right-wing a la Limbaugh. Brudnoy, for example, was merciless on the Clinton administration but not in the banal coarse way in which most US talk radio was – he was offended on principle. By way of contrast, one of the few real US liberal voices on any talk radio is Lovell Dyett evenings on the weekend. He also has the best voice on radio anywhere, making James Earle Jones sound watery and thin.
What is amazing to me is that the CRTC can’t block access to whatever radio waves on the AM band float over the border to be caught by a $9.99 Radio Shack transistor special. In Canada, we live in a veritable cultural police state when it comes to the control of access to television signals on the grounds of protecting Canadian values. If those nasty US values are conveyed by audio, somehow they don’t count.
Heck – on a good night you can hear Cuba on 600 Khz from most of eastern North America most nights on your car radio, especially in winter. Viva the old tech! Viva the low tech! Viva radio libre!