Comparing notes with classmate Tony Viveiros (AHS 1966) the other night, we waxed nostalgic about the "good old days" of AM radio.

That was now. This was then: "Will you just shut the hell up, Big Ange, and spin some tunes."

There was a long downside to the AM radio of the 1960s. The disc jockeys - Andy "Big Ange" Jackson, Joe Thomas and Joel A. Spivak, all of PRO-AM, come to mind - talked waaay too much and too many commercials were squeezed between songs.

Then there were moments when you wished you could hear an ad for Moody's Beach or New England Dragway or any sort of inanity come out of Thomas's mouth. These were the moments when someone was crouched close to the dial, trying to tune to 63 with medical precision or do something... anything... to get rid of the static that was driving everyone nuts. You want to be singing along - in your best falsetto - to "Sherry Baby;" instead, your head is filled with a buzzing hiss.

Of course, this is not what we were missing. We had just finished chatting with Russ Marchand for a forthcoming edition of his "Along the Way" cable show about Park Commissioner Viveiros's proposal to name the bandstand at Capron Park in memory of Ray Conniff. And back in the day when AM ruled the radio airwaves, it wasn't rare to hear the Conniff singers doing "Somewhere My Love" in the same broadcast that featured tunes by Elvis or Roy Orbison. Regarding musical diversity, AM was A grade. Just to make sure we hadn't drifted into "the good old days that never were," I googled up Billboard's Top 100 list of songs from 1961, when most cars were equipped with AM-only radios.

Take a look at five songs pulled out of the top 25. Patsy Cline's future country standard "I Fall to Pieces" came in at No. 1. "Michael," a folk song not unlike Kumbaya, was No. 3. Del Shannon's rock masterpiece "Runaway" ranked No. 5. "Wooden Heart," an adaptation of a German folk song, was No. 10 for the year. At No. 11 was the theme song from "Exodus," a piano duet by Ferrante and Teicher.

The other 20 reflect the same kind of mix - hard-driving rock, slow dance tunes, country crossovers, even an instrumental by the Lawrence Welk Orchestra ("Calcutta," at No. 17).

On the hour or so drive from Attleboro to Newport in Bobby Givens' Fiat that summer, you'd hear a mix of maybe a dozen songs of all sorts: Troy Shondell's plaintive "This Time," the broad humor of Ernie K-Doe's "Mother In Law," the pedal-to-the-metal "Quarter to Three" by Gary U.S. Bonds, and so on. (These songs tended to run less than 3 minutes. Do the math to figure out how much of the air time was filled with patter, commercials, station IDs and the odd news or weather announcement.)

Fast forward to today. Billboard's Top 100 has grown into 200. More tellingly, the magazine posts several sublistings. R&B/Hip Hop, Country, Latin, Adult Contemporary... Where AM of the '60s featured the Top 40, popular music of today is divided into that many genres.

Diverse radio programming has all but disappeared.

If you want all Bruce Springsteen all the time, you can have it on a satellite radio station. All blues. All rhythm and blues. All country. All alternative country. And on, and that's just the radio music made available through cable TV service. Use your I-Pod smartly and you can hear exactly what you want, when you want.

But how, I wonder, do today's listeners find out what they want. If I had had my way in 1961, I'd no doubt have been listening exclusively to the Four Seasons, Ray Charles, the Shirelles and company. I'd have missed the Ferrante & Teicher, Lawrence Welk and Ray Conniff pieces, not to mention Walter Brennan's spoken word "hits." And that would have been my loss.

MARK FLANAGAN (mflanagan@thesunchronicle.com) is Opinion Page editor of The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0335.