My clock radio antenna.

GE 7-4966A Clock Radio

Uniberp reports:

I still use a clock radio. This may not seem odd, but in case the technological world of hip trends has left me in the dust of obsolete behavioral control devices, it seems safer to announce it up front.

In fact, I just got another one. This one has nice obvious controls, and the off button is right near the top right corner; cannot miss it.

However, what prompts me to write this is not the functionality but the performance. I previously had a new Philips CD clock radio which I really liked, but it hit the floor too many times, as did the replacement Timex brand. This one far surpasses either one, in that it actually picks up radio stations, and not just strong local ones. When I moved here I was very disappointed in the poor radio reception. This one picks up and plays both AM and FM signals throughout the dial with no static or fade-in-and-out like my previous ones did. This is nice. I can listen to the radio better on this one than on even my pricy desktop Boston Acoustic system (although that one requires an external antenna which I haven't got around to, plus it's a lousy clock radio). I plugged it in and crawled into bed to read and listened to BBC America clear as day. I rowed around the dial, heard classic rock and classical, nutso political and religious talk.

I thought it was my new location that caused such poor radio reception, or that radio had disappeared from the dial altogether or that due to de-regulation broadcasters were pounding the spectrum with noise in order to destroy each others signals, or something. Turns out it was the instrument, or in fact all three instruments that I had previously tried.

The very odd thing about all this is that this new one is a thrift shop radio, a GE 7-4966A, that is so old it actually has a cassette tape player (there's one on ebay), and a "select" button that let's you choose time, alarm1 or alarm2. Yes it is dual alarm. And it has a replaceable backlight bulb. It's nice and clean.

So what's going on? Why does this have the best reception. It was a cheap device even back then, surely not more than $35. Surely antenna technology has not reversed course? No rare earth materials are used, I don't think. It's just a piece of copper and some circuitry. Is solid state circuitry really becoming less performance oriented, toward cost savings?

Could this be the manufacturers way of weaning us off free broadcast and onto something expensive? I'm telling you, it's suspicious.

BTW my audio cassettes are so old some of them have lost magnetism. Pre-recorded ones seem to hold up better.

In case you are wondering, no, Mike does not live on the upper peninsula, a thousand miles from the nearest radio station, and no, he is not stuck in the bottom on some canyon. He lives in large city that is on relatively flat ground.

Update June 2019 added picture.