Over the years one of the biggest challenges to BCB DX’ers has been the frequencies classified in the United States as Class IV Local channels known to DX’ers as “the Graveyard Channels”.  When created they were designated with low power.

Here is the link to our club’s Graveyard DX Achievement Pages.

Local Broadcast Frequencies
A brief history courtesy of Antique Radio Classified

Six frequencies on the AM band were assigned by the FCC for this service. They were originally 1200, 1210, 1310, 1370, 1420 and 1500. Maximum operating power was 100 watts, day and night. Primarily, stations on these channels were designed to service their local city of license, and many of them were in smaller towns. However, more than a few big city stations were “locals” which posed a big restriction, even back then. Today, two examples of local channel stations in large cities are KYPA (formerly KGFJ), Los Angeles and WIFN, Atlanta. The latter has operated under a variety of call letters over the years including WATL, WAKE, and WIGO and WALR.
Maximum power for the “locals” was later raised to 250 watts. In the late 1950s, another raise gave these stations 1000 watts by day. Finally, in the 1980s, the FCC allowed the Class IV locals to operate at a maximum 1000 watts day and night. In most instances these stations were, and still are, non-directional.
Even with 1000 watts, these stations, for the most part, are only effective to about 25 or 30 miles by day and as little as 10 to 15 miles at night. The six local channels today are 1230, 1240,1340, 1400, 1450 and 1490.