Americans wake up on Saturday morning to discover that Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and other radio stars of the day no longer occupy their familiar spots on the dial. In a massive shuffle beginning at 3:00 a.m. eastern time, radio stations have engineered a game of musical chairs, and 80 percent of North America’s AM frequencies are reassigned to new channels.
This so-called Moving Day resulted from the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement, negotiated by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The pact extended the AM broadcast band from 1500 kHz to 1600 kHz (mostly called kilocycles rather than kilohertz in those days). Designed to implement radio standardization throughout the Western Hemisphere, the agreement followed a futile 1939 attempt to squash Mexican “border blaster” stations, which for three decades would continue to overpower U.S. stations with extremely strong signals.
The agreement established clear-channel frequencies—which afford more protection from electromagnetic sky-wave interference at night—across the radio dial, and the reordering shifted most existing AM stations’ frequencies to create bandwidth for those new clear-channel station allocations. The new broadcast order also reserved 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490 kHz mainly for local stations. Nations including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba later signed on to iterations of the NARBA plan.
The ponderously named Regional Agreement for the Medium Frequency Broadcasting Service in Region 2 superseded NARBA rules in 1981.
But the big shuffle was unequaled in consumer experience until TV’s final shift from analog to digital, in 2009.—HH