The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / The Terrible Fate Of Being Stuck With An AM "Graveyard" Frequency

**Posted by RadioActive** October 21, 2025 7:11 am

Radio World offers a great look at an often overlooked aspect of AM radio - the graveyard frequencies of 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450 and 1490 - one-lung stations that barely broadcast at 1,000 watts and often less at night. Stations that have been designated as "local" are designed to serve small towns and can often barely be heard after sundown.

Hundreds of them still exist, but is anybody listening? Apparently, they do and some of them have even achieved amazing success in the past. Like WECK in Buffalo.

Digging Up the AM Radio Graveyard

**Posted by The Foxer** October 22, 2025 3:01 pm

Hi RA,
At the ripe old age of 21 I started out at CFPA radio Thunder Bay. 1230 on the dial, 1000 watts day 250 watts night. I had to dial up and down the transmitter at sunset to protect some other rinckey-dinkey station somewhere in the northern US of A. Yes, it looked like a phone dial. Missed it a few times and old man Parker was kind enough not to chew me out about it. Seems even back then, the DOC checked every station's power output. 250 watts night, lucky we hit the city limits with that! Complete with a limiter and compressor on the board output.

**Posted by RadioActive** October 22, 2025 3:04 pm

I remember that phone dial! We had one at CHIN in my very early days as a teenage volunteer.

I think they had it set up so that when you dialed "9" (a rotary dial in those days) the power would go up. Can't recall which number sent it down, since I was only there in the mornings when the station came back to full strength. Then, like now, they were at 1540 AM and at 50K during the daytime.