A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.
What if, instead, we eventually phase out AM radio broadcasts and reclaim the frequency for other purposes?
AM Radio has an extremely important role in emergency broadcasting, because you can cover a whole continent using just 3-4 broadcasting stations, and it is so easy to demodulate, that you can build completely analog recievers that need no power source (they use the carrier wave as a power source). This also means that AM receivers are very cheap, so in a lot of developing countries the only broadcasts most people can afford, and will reach them are AM.
I think we should keep AM radio around, at least for emergencies.
Also, unfortunately, when HF bandwidth gets freed up, it mostly ends up going to companies that use it for high frequency trading, and not to things where it would benefit the public, like ham radio, or digital broadcasts.
Til am radio is still a thing? I know lots of fm radio stations but always wondered why every radio has an am setting, while there is no am stations available.
Glad they have their fucking priorities straight. Cars are growing at an insane rate and becoming more dangerous to operate but at least they will have garbage AM radio.
Fuck congress
AM radios are incredibly cheap and simple, and they’re the primary means of communicating traffic and weather information.
Should note that they also don’t cost anything to receive information, unlike digital data services. So as long as your car has power, it’ll have a radio receiver. This, unlike mobile internet, which can cost in the neighborhood of $50-150/mo for the same access. And which don’t work in rural areas with poor wifi coverage.
