My first memory of broadcast radio is a late-1950's commercial for a New York City-area moving company. In the days of "words-for-telephone-exchanges" this company's exchange was "Lincoln", and their ad contained a booming--almost threatening--voice intoning, "Don't make a move! …before you call Lincoln…" The numbers that followed are lost to memory, but the authority behind the voice made the line a favorite of mine and my siblings. Broadcast radio for me also early on became associated with sports, which in my house at that time meant baseball with the New York Yankees and college football, especially games involving Purdue.
One Christmas in the mid-1960's my parents gave to each kids' bedroom (two boys in one, two girls in another) a Sears Silvertone AM Clock Radio. My brother and I quickly became fans of "77-WABC" with music hosts including Cousin Brucie and Chuck Leonard (Chuck was still there on WABC, using the same identifier jingle, when I drove a rental truck through New York City in the late summer of 1979) and, on Sunday nights, a talk show hosted by Howard Cosell. I'm sure Howard regulary had sports guests on, but the show I remember was an interview with a Navy frogman.
By Christmas of 1967 I was in (for a former New York boy about to be a teenager) a radical new environment, specifically Birmingham, Alabama. Among the blessings of our new home was a separate bedroom for each child, and under the tree that Christmas were two more Sears Silvertone AM Clock Radios, the same model, for the additional two bedrooms. (My Silvertone continued as my alarm clock and morning radio to the early 1980's. Today, 31 years after I unwrapped it, it sits in my shop. The radio no longer recieves, but the clock and alarm work just fine.) The station of choice immediately became Birmingham's WSGN, at 610 kHz, with announcers that included the now-legendary-DJ Rick Dees.
Over the next few years I continued to listen to Top 40 music on WSGN, (AM being my only in-room choice) but also began to hear talk among my peers of this strange (to me) thing called FM radio, with some "underground" broadcasting, and "Album Rock." Having moved in primary musical tastes from Top 40 to the likes of the Allman Brothers and Led Zepplin (great concert, Tuscaloosa, spring of '73) by the early 70's I managed to acquire an FM reciever and made the migration in my listening habits.
FM broadcast became—and remains--my broadcast radio anchor, and AM broadcast became a specialized-programming (sports and talk) listening sideline. By the late '70's I was using FM broadcast to hear (and participate in, but that's on another page) Public Radio and a wider range of music—by then I was no longer afraid to admit my tastes also included classical and country. As the 21st century approaches FM broadcast is my non-commercial and commercial radio source for information and music (many types, including those songs I used to hear in the 60's on AM) while AM broadcast brings me more sports, news and talk radio.