About AM 1710 Antioch. Jay Lichtenauer is the owner and founder of AM 1710 Antioch, a radio station located in Antioch, Illinois. It transmits its old time radio fare in two different ways: as a micro power AM station that serves hundreds of households within about ½ mile of the station, and as an Internet-based streaming radio service. Both offerings are free but supported solely by listener donations. Nearly 17,000 old time radio shows are available for broadcast from 1710’s library. The shows span categories of Comedy, Family, Detective, Frontier Stories, Matinee Theater, Mystery/Thriller, Police Stories, Science Fiction, Spy Stories, The Whistler, The Shadow, and more. In addition, 1,600 music clips from the 20s through the 50s fill in at the end of each hour of broadcasting.
AM 1710 Antioch typically can accommodate up to 700 listeners at a time. Other online stations are not as robust as 1710 and may allow as few as 10 online at a time.
Their website (referenced below) displays their daily schedule so if you’re especially looking for “The Shadow” or hoping to hear Jimmy Stewart in “The Sixshooter” you will know when to tune in. If you’re interested in the technical aspects of all that Jay has done, he shares inside information about his standards and the processes he goes through to prepare a show for broadcasting, along with technical information concerning his transmitter.
Access to AM 1710 Antioch and other old time radio stations is all free! However, it costs a lot to run any radio station and all of 1710’s costs are offset by listener donations. Information is available on the website to guide you in sending donations.
What we especially like about AM 1710 Antioch. 1710 is our default old time radio station for a number of reasons. First, you can always get on because their bandwidth is high and there’s always room for one more. Second, the sound quality is excellent. Jay does some audio magic to clean up the old sound recordings and to equalize the volume levels. It is the most listenable (is that a word?) station out there. Third, whereas others tend to drop out, 1710 seems to be very stable. We can fall asleep listening and it is still on if we wake up a couple of hours later. Fourth, because of Jay’s introductions to the episodes, we have come to feel as if we know him (a little bit) and that 1710 is a comfortable radio home.
I know you could hop on the Internet and purchase CDs of old time radio shows. But there is something more real about listening to the shows over 1710. It feels more like having been sent back through time, like you’re back in 1952 listening to “Dragnet” or “The Great Gildersleeve.” There is something especially soothing about hearing these old voices and sounds from the past. I often imagine what my parents were doing when a particular episode was first aired. This is easy to do since Jay informs his listeners the exact date that each episode first hit the airways. Some of the episodes were first on before I was born and during the time my parents would have been dating.
Listening to old time radio is also very educational, especially listening to the commercials and advertisements for war bonds during World War II. You get an immediate sense of the sacrifice our parents made and the degree of solidarity that was there in support of the war effort.
What we do. We play 1710 by using the Shoutcast feed played through Winamp. We pull up the Shoutcast site on an old computer and search for “old time.” 1710 is usually the first choice on the menu. When we click on “Tune In,” the audio feed is sent to Winamp that then pops up and begins playing. By the way, we chose the “full treble” preset in Winamp because that seems to work the best with voice. We then have the speaker output of the computer going into a C. Crane FM transmitter. This transmitter costs a little more ($69.00) than the battery powered ones you can pick up for $29.00 but it runs on household current, can be set for any FM frequency (not just the limited choice of frequencies on the less expensive kind), and has a strong stereo signal. Now we’re in business. The nostalgic sounds of “Lights Out” or “Sam Spade” from 1710 Antioch are now being broadcast throughout the entire house and even onto the front porch. Wherever we might be we can turn on an FM radio and pick up our own local broadcast of 1710. We’ve gotten used to listening in the bathroom as we get ready for bed and we always listen as we drift off to sleep and have it on if we have trouble sleeping later in the night. More now than ever, we find we are turning off the TV earlier in the evening and turning on the FM radio in the living room and listening to old time radio instead of new time garbage on the TV.
There are other ways to listen to 1710. If you visit their home page (listed below), you can simply click on the active link and listen to what is currently streaming. Or, you can download iTunes, install, and choose radio and Talk/Spoken Word in the library to begin the AM 1710 Antioch stream. Happy nostalging!
Reference:
- AM 1710 Antioch Home Page (radio.macinmind.com/)
