ls FM radio even listenable any more?

Friday night listening to some cool FM music on my MD 102 with headphones while the rest of the house is asleep. Great sound quality.

With the exception of a few local stations, college radio (if you have a college located nearby) and NPR, FM is essentially an animated corpse.

Most FM markets are dominated by a few large media companies which create stations around a specific and narrow niches.  Then they market their stations to advertisers as being able to target specific listeners, or reach a broad cross section with one ad purchase.   Implicit is programing that does not stray outside of a pre programed, bland and inoffensive content.    Yawn.

I grew up in the NY metro area, and moved beyond Top 40 in the late 1970's.  I was a WNEW listener.  I really enjoyed the wide and varied format of that station.  At any given moment, you could hear classic rock, the latest British Punk or New Wave, local NY area artists, and everything in between.  This level of variety was mirrored by the sheer number of stations available in the general NY Metro radio market.   From one end of the dial to the other, just about every frequency had a station and there was something from everyone.   I began my exploration of Jazz through WBGO.  I took a deep dive into Punk through WHBI.  And so.    To pre teen and teenager it was an audible cornucopia.   Given teen age perspectives, you don't appreciate what you have in front of you until it  is no longer available.

I am a fan of Streaming Radio, for many of the reasons listed above.  The sheer variety available online makes me giddy.  I can listen to anything I want, when I want, there is something for everyone.

Since this is a quality oriented forum, it is important to note that most internet streams are about the same quality as commercial FM.   One does have to seek out higher bit rate streams to compare to NPR and other local left of the dial stations.  In general though anything above 256kbs sounds excellent except when compared to a live or HD simulcast on an NPR or similar station.

Streaming is the new FM !  

Lou here, and in Philly, FM is alive and well, at least for me. The 2 college stations, Temple (WRTI 90.1) & UPenn (WXPN 88.5) are what I listen to most. 90.1 does classical all day & jazz at night. 88.5 does an eclectic mix of new music & deep cuts. On occasion, they will play music commercial free for a month or so at a time doing every almost every song in their library from A to Z. We also have very good sports radio stations too.

Absolutely...
There is still great quality analog audio being broadcast.

I've had Yamaha, Mcintosh & Magnum Dynalab tuners.
I have an FT-101A & it sounds really good. I had been using a set of OK Audioquest IC's & when I switched to another brand reference quality cables, it sounded much better. When a good station playing a good quality song came on, it was shocking how good that tuner can sound.

My MD-102 arrived last night. It's got the upgraded audio section with big caps in it. It is a significant upgrade in sound quality. It's like putting on a MFSL LP.

I found myself listening to songs I have heard before, but it's a whole new listening experience. I listened to an entire Prince song since the sound quality was so good, and I can't usually make it through one of his songs...

I just heard a live song played on it & the sound quality is outstanding.
If you've given up on FM, you are missing out...

durkn
... There is still great quality analog audio being broadcast ...
I just heard a live song played on it & the sound quality is outstanding. If you’ve given up on FM, you are missing out...

I am still into FM. But the fact is that almost all FM is digital, even though the signal itself is still analog. Radio stations play from HD drives, signal processing is sometimes digital and STLs - which many stations use - are frequently digital.

But you mention a special thing: live broadcasts. Although these are often also run through digital processing, there can be some real sonic gems in live broadcasts.

Not all FM is played from disks or digital files. The station I mentioned spins records if the DJ's have them.

Cleeds- 
Yeah, this one station says they ‘are loading up some vinyl’ but they may not be playing any...

I believe it depends on how much compression the fm station uses. The stations that use a lot of compression sound bad on a good system and the stations that use very little sound much better.

You mean to tell me there are other sources besides FM, to listen to?

Just got a Yamaha CT-800 tuner ....no ariel from the prior owner ..its been in their loft for a good few decades ...i've grabbed a couple of the wire in plastic Y ariels from amazon ...reception is rather fuzzy a cleanest Viking FM (Yorkshire) and ok Radio 4 (BBC) a poor Classic FM ...I'm in the UK ...i'm not sure if its the tuner or the ariels (inside) more but going from AFM mode to Mono FM does clean all of them up more ....plus of course i guess giving it some hours running after at least 20 years of loft time might well resolve a few issues ...but for a 1973/4 piece of kit its looks alone are almost worth it plus those illuminated meters and tuning scale ...

I cannot remember a time when the national radio in the UK was so bad (local radio was always dodgy - hardly good for traffic and little else).

Recently there was a bit of an outcry when it was revealed that Zoe Ball (a BBC morning show disc jockey) was getting paid a £1.36 million annual salary.

This outcry was 2 pronged as not only is she getting paid far too much for a job many would do for free, but her manic presentation style is one guaranteed way of inducing further headaches in most listeners, many of whom will be stuck in traffic.

Unfortunately it would seem as if the UK audience is simply too small to support niche stations specialising in various genres as they do elsewhere.

The vast amount of recorded popular music from the past 80 years nowadays never makes it to the airwaves. Slowly, gradually the event horizon seems to have increasingly crept forwards to the year 1980.

Of course it must be an incredibly difficult job to be a presenter that can carry their appeal across all ages, races, and social groups, but right now no one is succeeding.

So for me, it's Classic FM if I fancy hearing a human being playing some popular singalong classical stuff - or, after a usual few minutes of FM channel skipping in vain - nothing.