Michael,
And sadly it doesn't make a whole lot of difference any more.  WSM 
does have company on 650 at least near Chicago - I've never heard a 
callsign though.  There is a 50kw station here on 1160.   But the 
things you would like to hear are no longer there; everything is 
satelite and you can hear the same s*** on a dozen places on the 
band.  And who the hell wants to hear it even once?  I don't sleep 
well and it used to be that a m radio was a friend.  Now it just pees me off!
Pat, K9JAUAt 12:59 PM 11/16/2011, you wrote:
>what's truly sad is there are no more clear channel stations on am   =
>unless you count the crap tat calls itself clear channel   the company =
>not the concept  I can't hear  ksl out here and the used to be an =
>absolute clear channel station  alon with a few others.  wsm nashvile =
>should cover the whole country, but even they have trouble alot of the =
>time with other crap ontheir frequency, and ksl 1160 doesn't have a =
>chance. they tel me that years ago you could hear ksl out here in =
>Raleigh, bu tno more  too many crap crap stations splattering all over =
>am  not to mentiont he iboc crap. the am band has been made almost =
>useless. when i was a kid am radio was awesome
>
>On Nov 14, 2011, at 12:32 PM, Martin McCormick wrote:
>
> >       I do remember the CONELRAD tests.
> >=20
> >       Radio and television stations would broadcast an
> > introductory message as to what was about to happen. The carrier
> > would go down for 15 seconds. Then, it would come back up for
> > another 15 seconds. It was down for yet another 15 seconds and
> > when it came back up, there was a 1 KHZ tone for maybe another
> > 15 seconds. CONELRAD receivers had to detect the two drops in
> > carrier plus the tone and that initiated the CONELRAD condition.
> >=20
> >       My father was a science teacher at a school in Tulsa,
> > Oklahoma at the time and had gone in to the teachers' lounge or
> > maybe the school office for something and turned on the radio.
> > He first thought the radio was broken because there were only
> > two signals on the air. Then, he was reminded of the test which
> > went for half an hour or so and then all other stations came
> > back on and things were normal.
> >=20
> >       I think the test was done every year for a while. I
> > don't remember the first test, but the one in 1957 or 1958
> > featured a talk by our state's governor at the time.=20
> >=20
> >       I bet the station engineers loved this test if their
> > station was one of the CONELRAD stations because they had to run
> > all this stuff that you couldn't test any other time and it had
> > to work perfectly this one day and, of course, be ready to
> > switch in on a moment's notice.
> >=20
> >       Tulsa had a 50,000-watt station KVOO at 1170 which was
> > one of the CONELRAD stations so they had to electrically chop
> > off part of their antenna to tune it up on 1240. I am sure this
> > was accomplished by large contactors which are just huge relays,
> > but still, when else could you make sure it worked?
> >=20
> >       The other 50,000-watt station in Tulsa was KRMG at 740.
> > I have no idea, for sure if they were the 640 CONELRAD station,
> > but they would have had to add some electronic length to their
> > masts to reach 640.
> >=20
> >       It did work, however, so it just shows you what people
> > do when they need to.
> >=20
> >       Something else you might find interesting during those
> > days was a plan to use AM broadcast transmitters as data links
> > for RTTY and Morse.
> >=20
> >       There was an article in "QST" several years ago about
> > WSM 650 in Nashville TN. They actually had a FSK encoder on
> > their 50-KW transmitter which shifted the carrier maybe 50 HZ
> > and would have let them send RTTY to suitable decoders. An
> > average citizen listening to WSM would have noticed nothing
> > unusual. The article described the test transmission as a loop
> > sending the call letters and the word "test."
> >=20
> > Lloyd Rasmussen writes:
> >> I don't remember hearing any of those celebrity PSA's, but they =
>aren't=20
> >> very
> >> different from what FEMA tells us today at ready.gov or other =
>websites.