Congress Moves To Preserve AM Radio in Cars (axios.com) 260
A bipartisan group of lawmakers wants to make it illegal for carmakers to eliminate AM radio from their cars, arguing public safety is at risk. From the report: AM radio is one key way that government officials communicate with the public during natural disasters and other emergencies. Officials worry that if drivers don't have access, they might miss important safety alerts. Some manufacturers are eliminating AM radio from their electric vehicles (EVs) because of interference from the electric motors that creates annoying buzzing noises and faded signals.
They argue that car owners can still access AM radio content through digital streaming packages or smartphone apps (though such services sometimes require a subscription). While AM might seem like a relic of the past, nearly 50 million people still listen to it, according to Nielsen figures provided by the National Association of Broadcasters. The proposed legislation, to be introduced today by Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and others, would require all new vehicles to include AM radio at no additional charge. In the case of EV models that have already eliminated AM radio (from BMW, Ford, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen and Volvo), carmakers would be required to disclose the lack of AM access to consumers. The law would also direct the Government Accountability Office to study whether alternative communication systems are as effective in reaching the public during emergencies. Further reading: Saving AM Radio - the Case For and Against.
They argue that car owners can still access AM radio content through digital streaming packages or smartphone apps (though such services sometimes require a subscription). While AM might seem like a relic of the past, nearly 50 million people still listen to it, according to Nielsen figures provided by the National Association of Broadcasters. The proposed legislation, to be introduced today by Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and others, would require all new vehicles to include AM radio at no additional charge. In the case of EV models that have already eliminated AM radio (from BMW, Ford, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen and Volvo), carmakers would be required to disclose the lack of AM access to consumers. The law would also direct the Government Accountability Office to study whether alternative communication systems are as effective in reaching the public during emergencies. Further reading: Saving AM Radio - the Case For and Against.
Brilliant Logic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, of course, will be the first things to fail in an emergency.
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Not just an emergency. This is the one thing I absolutely hate about my Tesla. As soon as you get up into any mountainous area, FM and XM are problematic because of multipath interference and bleed from adjacent channels on opposite sides of the mountains, and cell service is nonexistent for ten minutes at a time. But AM radio works fine.
Can Congress please make this retroactive and force Tesla to recall all of these radios?
Re:Brilliant Logic! (Score:4, Informative)
This is absurd. You want the US Federal government mandating convenience features in products?
If a product doesn't meet your needs, DON'T BUY IT.
If enough people agree, the product will either add features to meet the need or a competing product will eat their lunch.
Government mandates increase costs for everyone and are typically about the least effective way to manage a market. If you really want a government that manages every aspect of every product you buy, try China. Of course, like other authoritarian governments, China's is rife with corruption, so I'd stay away from the baby formula.
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This is absurd. You want the US Federal government mandating convenience features in products?
I don't want government mandating ANYTHING for cars, but as long as they're going to do it, this is a pretty good one to do, especially when the reasons for cutting them that Ford, BMW, et al are stating is utter horseshit.
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Could you not just keep an AM radio in the car somewhere? Plug it into the AUX socket or use a Bluetooth adapter.
I know it's a bit jank but the alternative is every car has to have an AM antenna, which adds cost and forces certain design choices that are less than optimal.
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Access to reliable public information during times of emergency is frequently a matter of life and death, not just a convenience.
Re:Brilliant Logic! (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is, over the past 20 years, automakers have MASSIVELY raised the bar for installing an aftermarket audio system.
20 years ago, it was easy. Your car had a DIN or Double-DIN opening in the dash. It probably came from the factory with a shit head unit, but you could yank it out & replace it with a better one with minimal ceremony. Worst-case, it was an American car with larger opening and holes in weird places, so you had to buy a mounting bracket & bezel filler. Yeah, adding things like more/better speakers, an amp, and a subwoofer complicated things a bit, but the car itself didn't actually *depend* upon anything being in that hole to work.
15 years ago, automakers like Ford started deliberately putting radios in cars that had non-DIN openings, where you couldn't replace the factory head unit without MAJOR (read: expensive) surgery. Then, other American automakers quickly jumped on the bandwagon, and started moving basic functionality INTO the head unit (or at least, using the head unit as the primary UI for interacting with the ECM, and providing no good alternative way to interact with it). Bluetooth and Android gave a tiny bit of breathing room insofar as content went (by ~2012, my phone became my de-facto content source in the car), but the days of things like relatively straightforward audio system upgrades were effectively over.
From what I've read, in theory there's now a semi-de-facto non-standard for allowing Android-based aftermarket head units to (sort of) act as the front end UI for the car's ECU... but it's pretty much a nightmare to configure, and almost never actually works properly in real life. Maybe, if you're lucky, sometime around year 3 or 4 and multiple firmware updates, it might "sort of" work. Assuming the Android Auto head unit's manufacturer didn't just abandon it 3 months after it hit the market, which is far more likely.
In an ideal universe, you'd be able to get a new car with a good touchscreen and some well-appointed rotary sensors & buttons, with a HDMI cable leading to a spot in the trunk where you could mount any thirdparty system you liked & have it just take over the screen & buttons (as HID). In reality, automakers will never, ever allow that. I mean, fuck, they even got Google to pull out all the stops and do everything they possibly can to prevent "unblessed" apps from even being able to USE the display in a car running Android Auto. The same automakers who are borderline-neurotic about preventing anything "naughty" from ending up on the LCD (at least, while the car is in motion) nevertheless see nothing ironic about making you control the goddamn windshield wipers and seat temperature using that same fucking touchscreen, because they couldn't bear to spend $3 on a $70,000 SUV giving things like that a proper tactile switch-based control UI. Yeah... they'll make you pull over to use Waze, but see nothing wrong with requiring navigating 3 levels deep into a menu to change the goddamn wiper speed.
Re:Brilliant Logic! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure Tesla will issue an over-the-air software update to resolve the issue of no AM reception in their cars.
(Just in case anyone is taking that seriously, I mean that as a joke.)
What people mean by "AM radio" is perhaps better described as "MW radio". The term "MW radio" is not often used in the USA but appears to be a term used in other English speaking nations to describe broadcast radio in the 530 to 1700 kHz band, with perhaps some variation around that in other nations. Transmissions in this MW, or "medium wave", radio band travel well but didn't have a lot of room for anything but amplitude modulation with limited fidelity. Since then we developed digital modulation that can improve fidelity and/or noise rejection without need for added bandwidth. We still have to live within the laws of physics so there's going to be a compromise on power, fidelity, and noise regardless but we can easily reject the kind of annoying buzz that comes over AM receivers from nearby electric motors.
Is is AM radio we want to save? Or is is MW radio? It seems to me that the complaint is more about preserving the long range of MW broadcasting than preserve the amplitude modulation that tends to give this frequency band a bad reputation.
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It's mixed. There's pretty much no chance the frequency band would be swapped away from AM because it can travel so far and be audible, there are still a whole lot of receivers that are designed for it and can pick it up so changing it to something digital would require all new hardware.
Politically it's also a tough move since AM is pretty much entirely religious talk shows and right-wing nutjob talk shows, so obviously the Republicans won't want to anger their base
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In the US we have HDRadio on medium wave (what we call AM Radio here).
It's fallen out of favor because after sunset the signal drifts so much the HDRadio doesn't work well.
Also, the 20-second delay makes HDRadio useless when listening to live sporting events so they TURN IT OFF.
HDRadio on AM is a cluster f***.
Re:Brilliant Logic! (Score:5, Informative)
XM doesn't suffer from multipath interference. It's built into the COFDM modulation of their terrestrial repeaters.
If you're having trouble with XM is because a mountain is blocking the signal, not from multipath.
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Given the size and growth of our defense budget - there hasn't been a small-government party since Reagan's time, at least.
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Try Eisenhower. He was the last president to even try to reign in defense spending in any significant way. And *HIS* plan to do so was to draw down the conventional army and navy in favor of the pre-MAD nuclear policy of massive retaliation [wikipedia.org], which basically amounted to: "If you fuck with us in any, even the smallest, way; we'll nuke you down to the bedrock."
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I'm of mixed feelings about this. On one hand we expect the government to mandate certain standards for safety on public roads, and on the other people should be free to spend their money however they like. Should we allow people to go without turn signals because that is some kind of "big government" imposition? Where does that end? Should seat belts be required? Headlamps? Brakes? Having an AM radio could be considered a basic means of communicating safety information from entities in the governmen
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So, for your examples, laws regarding turn signals, headlamps, brakes, no cell phone usage, no eating food, and others like them are justified because they ensure the safety of others. But seat belt laws don't fall under this category. Yes, I wear my seat belt, and not because it's the law. I wear it becaus
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So, for your examples, laws regarding turn signals, headlamps, brakes, no cell phone usage, no eating food, and others like them are justified because they ensure the safety of others. But seat belt laws don't fall under this category. Yes, I wear my seat belt, and not because it's the law. I wear it because I believe it affords me more protection in case I'm involved in an accident. But my wearing or not wearing seat belt doesn't affect the safety of others.
But it does. If you have ever driven a car at the limits of adhesion you will find it far easier to maintain control if you are securely strapped in. If you can't steer or manipulate the pedals properly because of G-forces then you are a potential hazard to others, and sadly most people have no comprehension of the G-forces that even a regular car is capable of. Take whatever you drive out for a hot lap on a track and see how well you can (not) control it without being belted in. It should be a mandator
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There really is no such thing as a small-government party anymore, if a "bipartisan" groups wants the government to mandate to carmakers what kind of radio to put in your car.
I'd be open to a compromise: mandate instead that automakers must give buyers the option of purchasing vehicles sans-radio if the AM-less stock doesn't fit their needs. They can put a spacer over the hole, and then the buyer can use the savings to buy an aftermarket radio with whatever features he desires.
Since factory "entertainment systems" cost significantly more than many aftermarket radios, I'd bet that Ford and others would go "nevermind", and just leave AM in.
Re:Small government party wants government orders (Score:4, Insightful)
Where have you been? There hasn't been a small-government party since at least the early 70's. The mid-70's marked the start of a steep increase in federal spending. Spending increases really took off in 2002-2009, slowed down again in 2010, and then exploded again in 2019 and 2020. Both parties have spent like drunken sailors, with Republican administrations being responsible for most of the increases.
The funny thing is you probably are thinking the Republicans should be the one's advocating for small government, but that has been the role of Democrats for the past 40 years at least. Even looking just from 1981-2019 (to leave out Trump's massive Covid spending in 2020 & 2021), Republicans have been responsible for over 75% of the federal budget increases when adjusted to 2023 dollars. One big problem is we should be enjoying a relaxing of spending under a Democratic president, but that hasn't been the case with Biden.
Adjusted to April 2023 dollars, the increases under each administration were: [ucsb.edu]
Reagan: $146 billion per year
Bush Sr: $141 billion per year
Clinton: $98 billion per year
Bush Jr: $298 billion per year
Obama: $72 billion per year
Trump: $947 billion per year ($70 billion per year before Covid)
Bucking the trend, however, Biden is nearly as bad as Bush Jr when it comes to budget increases. Assuming Trump's budget would have continued to increase $70 billion per year in 2020 & 2021 without Covid, and adjusting for inflation, current projections show a $177 billion per year increase when not including the Covid binge in 2020 & 2021. While not the worst offender, that is still pretty bad.
There is no one to save us when even Democrats are spending as much as Republicans.
Re:Brilliant Logic! (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is fine, because cars are not an emergency response tool. Government agencies recommend you store food, water, flashlights, and an battery powered portable AM radio. They don't recommend you shout to your family "road trip" and go run to your car for shits and giggles.
Information and communication is virtually free. You don't need to reach every person. You just need to reach people in groups, and across communications media you will reach groups one way or another and even that poor Tesla driver won't remain oblivious to the impeding doom.
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Well....emergencies can happen while you are out on the road.
I don't think you are in the US, but do remember, that the average trip length here in the US is generally MUCH further than one in EU.
We're a big country and a quick trip t
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You could even bring that portable AM radio along with you in the car.
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Re:Brilliant Logic! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Brilliant Logic! (Score:2)
A lot of smartphone chips have had FM support for years, but they don't usually enable it because they don't care, and because you'll normally need to plug normal wired headphones in for an antenna.
I think AM can't be put into normal cell phones because there isn't enough room for the shielding and antennas that would be needed.
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How many natural disasters did you suffer through and AM radio provided vital information?
Red Herring argument (Score:4, Insightful)
"If it is missing, people will miss important safety alerts"
This argument makes no sense whatsoever. There are exactly three things people can be doing in the car
- Listening to FM Radio
- Listening to AM Radio
- Listening to either nothing, or something that is neither option
If AM radio goes away, then people *HAVE TO* move into one of the other two camps. They are either going to listen to FM, or listen to something else that has no emergency broadcasts anyway, or listen to nothing at all.
If AM radio is gone, and the emergency broadcast happens on FM radio, you are reaching the exact same people.
Re:Red Herring argument (Score:5, Informative)
The thing about AM radio is it's range and availability. You can be in the middle of the country and pick up nothing on the FM, but the AM radio will still have signal.
Which is the EXACT thing you want for an emergency system.
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None of that matters when no one is listening to it in order to hear said emergency alert.
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None of that matters when no one is listening to it in order to hear said emergency alert.
Which is why all states have occasional signs on their highways and Interstates giving you the AM channel for "Travel and Emergency Information". I drive past one on I65 five days a week.
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This is not an emergency radio in your 48 hour backpack.
It is your car.
The argument the congress critters are making is that people will miss emergency alerts during their daily commute. My point is that argument is nonsense.
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Indeed you want a battery powered portable AM radio for your emergency system, which is precisely what every government agency recommends people have in their emergency kit. Precisely no one says, "in an emergency run to your car". They do say if you're stuck in a blizzard don't get out of the car, but that's precisely where car related emergency response starts and finishes.
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The only reason to keep AM radio is that it has insane range. When I am driving at night in Canada and there are no FM stations available, I can still get AM radio -- from America. It is all insane, right-wing, talk radio but at least I have something to keep me awake.
So I can see AM radio being useful for connecting to people living off-grid and in the middle of nowhere. But I see no need to ensure AM radio works with modern electric vehicles. All the required extra shielding will just add to the pr
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The reason you get AM radio from the US is because most of our AM stations shut down a long time ago. The ones that are left are generally in cities where a radio station that does nothing but talk about hockey is commercially viable, and/or are low power.
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If AM radio is gone, and the emergency broadcast happens on FM radio, you are reaching the exact same people.
You're assuming that this is about commercial radio. It isn't. Remember all of those signs that light up and say "Tune radio to AM 640 for traffic information" or whatever? If AM radio is gone, the various government departments of transportation have to spend money to replace all of their AM transmitters with FM transmitters, and in all likelihood have to add more of them to achieve the necessary coverage. They also have to find an empty spot in the already heavily cluttered FM band for doing so, and b
Re: Red Herring argument (Score:2)
I thought traffic news was only interesting in built-up areas, which have FM and DAB (at least around here) anyway. We donâ(TM)t need to tune to a special frequency anyway: e we just push the RDS button on the radio to enable traffic news to interrupt the current broadcast and then switch back when itâ(TM)s done.
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If AM radio is gone, and the emergency broadcast happens on FM radio, you are reaching the exact same people.
You're assuming that this is about commercial radio. It isn't. Remember all of those signs that light up and say "Tune radio to AM 640 for traffic information" or whatever?
Does anybody ever actually do that? Every time I try tuning in to one of those, the information I get is useless.
and, for emergency alerts, how many people who have cars don't have cell phones?
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I can tell you from experience, that in a large, widespread emergency, cell phone towers are often the first casualty.
Hell, after Hurricane Katrina...If you had a 504 number, you could not receive a call from anywhere in the US you had evacuated to...you could after awhile, however, receive texts.
That was when I learned how to text.
But even recently...hurricane IDA...lots of towers down and even those not damaged, out of pow
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In a disaster area...ALL NEWS is important.
It isn't just the govt on am radio either....there's regular news updates, etc.....which can all be broadcast from far enough away from the damage that can get to those in the zone.
Knowing where supplies are coming in and when, where you can go for help, etc.
It can tell you wher
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By "Other" I mean they are likely listening to music on an SD card or their phone.
The point is this - if people are not listening to the AM radio *NOW, TODAY*, then claiming you need to keep it for emergency broadcasts is just stupid - because the people would not hear said broadcasts anyway.
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Makes no sense [Re:Red Herring argument] (Score:3)
"If it is missing, people will miss important safety alerts"
This argument makes no sense whatsoever.
Exactly!
Hardly anybody listens to AM radio now-- that's why they're considering leaving it out of new cars.
IPeople who aren't listening to AM radio will miss safety alerts regardless of whether their car does or does not have the capability that they're not using.
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If you are in an area with flat terrain like most of the midwest east of Denver the difference wouldn't be large, but west of Denver it could make a huge difference.
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Lol, did you even read what you wrote?
There are exactly three things.....proceeds to list 4, and the 4th has a large number of options hidden in it.
I haven't listened to the radio in decades. I've got a USB stick loaded with a constantly shifting stockpile of my favorite albums. Dozens and dozens of them.
There's zero way I'd know that there was a government broadcast going on. I wouldn't know where to look to find one. I probably wouldn't even think to change the mode of the car audio to look.
But I'm an odd
Re:Red Herring argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Obvious missing info is Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
What you do not get through a streaming app, what no one wants to budget for, what government services truly come from:
Low power local am stations.
There are automated emergency service stations all over the damned place. If you drive into a small town in Texas you're likely to see a sign that says "local info and emergency services tune to 1620 am".
These are NOT going to be streaming, and they're only going to matter in that little local bubble.
It's not uncommon for these station to broadcast the local high school football game, city counsel meetings, info on where celebrations, that sort of thing is happening then suddenly becoming the tornado location update channel when needed.
Saying "just stream it" is intentional ignorance to dodge another issue.
Re:Obvious missing info is Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying "just stream it" is intentional ignorance to dodge another issue.
Indeed. And the "issue" being dodged is designing EVs with the necessary EMI/RFI work and costs to not shit up the radio spectrum with a bunch of broadband hash. Instead, lets just sacrifice the entire LW, MW, HF and probably the lower end of VHF (stopping somewhere short of FM radio... maybe) to electric vehicles.
The FCC should be jumping up and down on EV manufacturer nuts, except that the FCC is mostly a bunch of lawyers that aren't even cognizant of their actual reason for existence, and EVs are the climate saving golden boy magically exempt from any government friction.
Include a portable (Score:2)
So just include a portable, wind up rechargeable, am radio in the glovebox of each new car and we're set. Might even be nice if it had an LED flashlight on it.
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So just include a portable, wind up rechargeable, am radio in the glovebox of each new car and we're set
Yes we want drivers removing their hands from the wheel to crank a radio periodically to listen to AM radio.
A Simple Solution (Score:4, Informative)
One of the great things about AM radios is that, compared to all of the alternatives, they are very simple circuits. You can build a quite decent AM radio using two transistors, an inductor, four or five resistors and capacitors, speaker and a potentiometer for tuning. Transmitters are not hugely more complex. While I'm not prepping for the zombie apocalypse, the fact that I could build one for myself and my neighbours if I needed to is somewhat reassuring.
Even if you go all fancy and digital, modern car FM radios are Software Defined Radios under the hood, so supporting this mandate is basically a software change and making sure that the analogue filters before the ADC will pass low enough frequencies. Car makers have nothing to moan about.
Radios? (Score:2)
Do all cars have radios at present? Mine has one but I've never turned it on.
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Must. Do. Something! (Score:2)
TL;DR - there are several other far superior methods for emergency alerts that reach vastly more people. This is a stupid waste of time by politicians who want to pretend they're "doing something".
A quick google finds nab.org listing 80m AM listeners per month but even Facebook has 264m (US + CA) *and* the ability to notify/alert people who aren't actively using the app (for most people at least). Never mind the 307m smartphone users in the US covering ~85% of the population all of which have multiple eme
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A quick google finds nab.org listing 80m AM listeners per month but even Facebook has 264m (US + CA)
Umm not everyone uses Facebook and the US government has for decades, plans for how emergency broadcasts are handled in AM radio.
Never mind the 307m smartphone users in the US covering ~85% of the population all of which have multiple emergency alert methods including the can't-be-silenced presidential alerts.
Cellular connections are not always available everywhere. Driving on any rural road away from a major highway and cell signals drop off dramatically.
Obvious, but obviously overlooked by congress, is the fact that AM Radio alerts only work if you're also actively listening to AM Radio.
Have you overlooked that AM radios are standard in cars and that all it takes to listen to an AM broadcast is to turn on the radio? For free. Have you overlooked using a smart phone requires much more? I was driving in central Oregon
Congress Moves to Preserve Buggy Whips (Score:3)
That makes about as much sense.
We interrupt your programming (Score:2)
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Curious (Score:2)
Finally! One thing DRM can solve! (Score:2)
(DIGITAL RADIO MONDIALE) is a standard for Digital Radio that covers both the AM and FM band, has multipathing in mind, better sound quality, and built in FEC. By virtue of being digital is less suceptible to the mnoice introduced by EV motors and Power inverters.
Its approval in the region 2 (most of the western hemisphere) is pending treaty ratifications. Honestly I do not know which country(es) is/are holding it (maybe it is my country holding it up, again, I do not know). It would be nice if it was fina
Bipartisan lawmakers are stupid (Score:2)
Disregard the emergency response plans published by virtually every state that say you should have a portable battery powered AM radio for use in emergencies. And that's before you mention that radios themselves aren't disappearing and governments literally already require every form of broadcast to be capable of transmitting emergency information, including satellite radio (which runs a free channel for this purpose).
Go solve some serious problems.
Easy thought experiment. (Score:2)
This seems like an onion article. (Score:2)
Why does it have to be _in_ the car radio? (Score:2)
A good battery + hand-crank-backup AM radio can be had for under $20 retail (S&H included). At wholesale, that's can't be more than $10.
So if everyone really needs it for emergency purposes, mandate that each automaker put one in the glovebox. For an extra couple bugs they can make some automaker branded pouch for it, throw in some emergency water purification tablets and add the ability to charge to USB from the crank. That has the added benefit of being able to operate the radio even the car is comple
Bouncy (Score:3, Insightful)
AM waves generally travel further than the alternatives because they can bounce off the atmosphere, curving around the Earth and mountaints. Although this effect is inconsistent, you'll usually be able to get at least one AM station during an emergency, as at least one will be in a strong "bounce path".
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>AM waves generally travel further than the alternatives because they can bounce off the atmosphere,
That's got nothing to do with AM vs any other type of modulation. That's just a property of lower frequency waves.
FM at AM frequencies would travel as far.
The rationale for AM is its narrower bandwidth. 30KHZ vs 180KHz for FM. At lower frequencies there are fewer Hz to go around. This is also why it sounds crappy. Good enough for religious blowhards and repeating political lies, but no good for music.
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When the nukes or even just EMP attack happens, it'd be nice to at least have a CHANCE of picking up an AM station during evacuation to get some info as the situation unfolds.
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When the nukes or even just EMP attack happens, it'd be nice to at least have a CHANCE of picking up an AM station during evacuation to get some info as the situation unfolds.
I'd prefer to prepare for the life I have, not the movie version.
Fortunately, we have solid state memories and I can store all the music I need for those rare occasions that I am out of cell phone coverage.
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FM and HD radio share an antenna. AM needs a different antenna and some consideration in the car's design for it to work properly.
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On cars it's still the same antenna for both Medium Wave (AM) and VHF (FM) frequencies, it's just that the antenna isn't very efficient at the lower frequencies but it's sufficient.
For a full 1/2 wave antenna on the medium wave it would need to be about 100 meters or longer.
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It depends. If your car is from the 1990's or newer then yes. And the audio quality suffers because of the terrible performance of your antenna. If you dig into an older radio you'll find they have two coax connectors. Usually a bar antenna hidden under the dash in a convenient spot away from the body.
A post 2010's car truly sucks for AM reception. Just turning on the headlights is enough to completely drown the signal out with noise, you can confirm this as AGC can't even lock onto the het frequency.
Re:Time to retire AM... (Score:5, Informative)
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It has a lot to do with wavelengths and atmospheric layers. The propagation of medium wave frequencies (about 180 to 550 meters wave length) depends on the D layer during night which makes it propagate far. During daytime the D layer is weakened but the remains of the D layer and other layers above it like the E and F layers would still allow the radio waves to be received on other side of ridges.
In ham radio you could use a so called NVIS antenna, a horizontal wire just a few meters above the ground, to ge
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And satellite is even more far reaching. Why not mandate that if that's the goal. They already need to offer a free channel for emergency broadcast.
Anyway this entire discussion is stupid. A car is not an emergency response communication tool. Literally every government agency with any relation to emergency response recommends that people have a battery powered portable AM radio. Not go and sit in their F150 Lightning watching the tornado.
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And satellite is even more far reaching. Why not mandate that if that's the goal. They already need to offer a free channel for emergency broadcast.
Besides the fact that not every car comes with satellite radio but comes with an AM radio? Bear in mind this mandate is to keep what already exists. Adding satellite radio will cost more than AM/FM radio components which the automakers will like less. I have not used satellite radio but are they better in stormy weather than they used to be?
Anyway this entire discussion is stupid. A car is not an emergency response communication tool.
AM radio is one of the carriers the government has mandated for emergency broadcasts. I take it you have never had to evacuate from an area due to a hurricane or winter
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I wonder how much that's actually used these days. How many remote locations have an AM receiver (aside from a car) and know where to check for emergency broadcasts?
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anyone who needs the range for emergencies has a radio for that.
I keep my emergency radio in my trunk as with my other emergency equipment like flares. I could A) pull over to the side of the road, get it out of the trunk, then hand crank it to get 5 minutes of radio (every 5 mins because I had not checked the batteries in a while) or B) turn on my car AM radio. Which one is more conductive during an emergency?
And, well, as others have pointed out farmers tend to have Satellite radio
But how many people have cars with satellite radio? AM has the greatest use case at the moment.
Re: Time to retire AM... (Score:2)
I think it was used during Katrina. No cell phones no internet and it is affecting a massive area where people actually needed solid information to know if they should evacuate and how, where refugee stations are, and where to go for food.
Oklahoma City and 9/11, didn't directly affect 99.99% of the areas inhabitants.
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As I've posted before, almost every good AM has an equally powerful FM, LPFM, or FM-HD2 or HD3 connection these days. So, as long as HD Radio is included, there's nothing lost.
This. The overlap "gap" network would be FM, which has been included in cars for decades now, and is also included in the latest vehicles. Additional newer networks are obviously more prevalent in modern cars and all will be as standard as AM/FM going forward.
Main counter-argument would be the distance AM can broadcast (vs. FM) and ensuring that ALL emergency broadcast networks have an available and operating FM counterpart before AM is dismantled.
Regarding Congress voting on this, even the intertubes gan
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Main counter-argument would be the distance AM can broadcast (vs. FM) and ensuring that ALL emergency broadcast networks have an available and operating FM counterpart before AM is dismantled.
I've driven from NYC to Knoxville and listened to the same radio station (660, 770, or 880 in NYC) for most of the trip (around Bristol, VA/TN it was still understandable but annoying to listen to). How many FM stations to you figure it'll take to get the same coverage that one clear channel AM station can deliver?
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Re: Time to retire AM... (Score:2)
And am won't either unless they have generators.
Oh wait fm can run off generators too.
Now the only listening device is in your car while you are low on gas and need to reserve it.
Better yet the future tech being rolled out right now is cell to satellite operations. Which can give you coverage and be useful without a 2-4 foot antenna.
Got it makes tons of sense now thanks
Well played, sir, well played (Score:3, Insightful)
Very good with the dead-pan. If I didn't know that AM is superior to FM/LPFM/FM-HD2/FM-DH3 for certain use cases* such as long-distances, I would've modded you "informative."
*The reverse is also true - AM is inferior to the others for certain use cases.
Re:Time to retire AM... (Score:4, Interesting)
"As I've posted before..."
Yeah. Still doesn't matter during an emergency. AM has better distance -- period. It can actually bounce off the atmosphere. During the Northridge Earthquake, there were several local radio stations that were knocked off the air. AM from surrounding towns made it through. I was able to, in Los Angeles, pick up stations normally unavailable from Orange County and Ventura County and get real-time updates via AM -- minutes after the first shock. The neighbor was also a ham radio operator. He was awesome in taking notes from other neighbors and reaching out to friends and family outside of our neighborhood and report status to them (he would contact a ham out of the area who would call the out-of-town contacts and let them know their loved ones were OK and their conditions).
You see a giant antenna in someone's back yard, bring them some cupcakes now and then and get on their "good neighbor" list.
Re: Time to retire AM... (Score:2)
And right now apple, and TMobile are rolling out cell to satellite text messaging systems/ and sometimes even limited data.
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Come on. Right now it is a rare car that doesn't have an AM radio. How many people actually have this cutting edge satellite access and at what price? Right now, it's for 911 stuff for the few people with $1k phones. When that rolls out to everyone (including folks on massive prepaid discount plans) then we can talk about retiring AM.
AM wins for wide area emergencies right now.
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You could broadcast FM from satellites too, or aircraft. Or emergency broadcasters could make a deal with the satellite radio providers. Both would be better solutions than using terrestrial AM radio.
It's a great political move though. AM talk radio's customers are primarily older people, and they both vote regularly and are more likely to be resistant to change. Heaven forbid they get their talk radio in stereo.
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"I am genuinely curious about what information what gleaned from those radio broadcasts and if it was really of any actual value to anyone."
1, it was felt in OC and Ventura County. Some power outages and minor damage. That tells me that it wasn't "the big one", though it was flipping big where I was (in Northridge). It literally punched straight up and I found myself flying towards my ceiling fan before the lights went out. I was listening to KLOS (Frank Sontag) at the time of the quake -- I just starte
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FM does not have the range of AM for the same power. The FM signal will drop off the fastest as you get further from the station, and the digital signals may just drop out altogether when there's too much noise. Let's say there's an earthquake and the major local radio stations are off the air, but you can still pick up AM from 4 counties away that can give you information on where they are handing out food, where there are shelters, and so forth.
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As I've posted before, almost every good AM has an equally powerful FM, LPFM, or FM-HD2 or HD3 connection these days. So, as long as HD Radio is included, there's nothing lost.
This is nonsense. There are damned good reasons to use AM, both as a listener, and as a broadcaster. There's no excuse whatsoever to force the retirement of an entire communications system that is very much in active use.
Re: Time to retire AM... (Score:2)
And who listens to those things when their car is out of gas?
If your only AM radio is in a car you are not listening to it enough during an emergency where you can't drive for hours.
Personally satellite assisted cell phones will be more reliable and useful than AM radio. Over the air tv antenna the same way yet those got obsoleted just fine.
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OTA TV along with the antennas are quite alive and well and working in the US, thank you.
Re: Time to retire AM... (Score:2)
Yep unless you live in the country 50 miles from Boston 90 from NYC and you get one station.
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Perhaps if emergency broadcast signals automatically switched to playing the broadcast, but thatâ(TM)s not going to be added to such old technology.
I have no idea what you mean. The point is that the government uses AM for broadcasts as one of the carriers. Removing the ability to listen to that carrier would limit the number of people that would receive the broadcast.
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The reason that most AM talk radio is Republican heavy is because their base tends to be more rural. Therefore AM is a good way to reach them. If Republicans went back to bein
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Part of it is the consolidation of all the media companies so just one owns most radio stations and they found that angry conspiracy theorists do well on AM so that's what they run on all of them. People start to learn that so only people interested in angry conspiracy theorists bother to even check AM stations, then iHeartMedia finds their audience has moved to more fans of angry conspiracy theorists and they just pack more of that content.
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That's probably true, although NPR also has some AM stations. I find myself listening to them when I drive across state lines.
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And when morse code won't cut it you'd go to JS8CALL, FT8, FT4 or JT65.