WKMI Radio Signal Picked Up in Norway

Radio always finds a way. No matter how technology progresses, no matter how the public's ingestion of media changes, radio finds a way.

How the radio industry has evolved over the years can somewhat be in spite of itself. What with all the layoffs and the focus shift to digital marketing, radio persists onward still hoping to freely entertain and inform the public as it long has.

Still, the evolutions haven't always been kind. I'm the brand manager of WKMI - but you've probably never heard my voice on the legacy AM station, even if you happen to be an avid listener. The talk station is nearly entirely automated these days as there isn't much room for innovation in the current climate of radio - particularly on the AM dial.

However, after nearly 80 years on the air, WKMI recently did something quite special in 2024. Conditions were just right for the station to be heard all the way out in the Norden reaches of the world.

Torgeir Nyen, an AM radio enthusiast on the south coast of Oslo, Norway, listens out for long-distance AM signals as a hobby. He has a Software Defined Radio connected to a PC equipped with a software called Jaguar and an antenna. That collection of technology allows him to tune to the AM signal band and listen out for AM radio signals.

He sent me this clip he picked up in January 2024. A WKMI sweep encouraging listeners to download the station app can be heard at the 4-second mark.

It would appear that Nyen found the workaround to listening to our station anywhere in the world without the need for our app.

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"Very glad to "catch" WKMI over here, around 4000 miles away," Nyen emailed me. "WKMI is very difficult to hear in Norway even for AM enthusiasts as WDRC in Hartford usually block[s] other US signals. However, in January AM reception conditions were superb, and WKMI got through for a while."

Most people dismiss AM signals these days. Admittedly, so do I. I'm not sure in my 30 years of life I've ever personally listened to an AM station with any intent beyond fixing something on WKMI over the past year and a half. But, there's a certain respect anyone who works with or in radio should have with the signal.

AM radio is one of the most fascinating pieces of technology the world has ever seen. The fact that it worked in the first place was a phenomenon and the fact that it can traverse the air space in today's environment rife with digital waves and the persistent - and dominant- radio waves of today is all the more shocking.

People who love AM radio love it for good reason. Nyen explained to me how he got into the hobby of fishing for these perseverant signals.

"When I discovered AM radio years ago, it was a time when there were no internet, no apps, no anything," Nyen wrote. "So to listen to stations around the word was really fascinating. My interest to radio even stretched to starting a community FM radio station in the town I grew up."

WKMI has a long, long history in the Kalamazoo area. It was once a top-40 station and one of the most successful and innovative stations in the state. It's not like that anymore. But it's still capable of something special, at least through the power of radio and its unparalleled persistence in the media landscape.