The end of AM radio in your car?
boston.comI haven't seen much discussion about how AM gets used for local road condition or emergency communication. When you're driving and see a sign that says "TUNE TO 1610 AM" and the car has no AM receiver, what do you do?
This may be a shrinking niche, but it's potentially a last bastion of AM radio usefulness.
Those low power highway information stations are actually required to be low quality audio [1]. My understanding is that back in the day, broadcasters insisted that these stations were low quality so they would not compete with commercial broadcasters.
In my opinion, those stations actually make AM seem much worse than it really is. That scheme backfired in the long run.
[1] 47 CFR 90.242(b)(8) <https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...>
TIS stations have low-pass filters from 3-20kHz, but it looks like most AM stations have low-pass filters from 5-20kHz anyways to avoid interference with neighboring channels: https://casetext.com/federal-register/audio-filtering-requir...
There was (is?) a commercial station in the bay area that broadcasts simultaneously on AM and FM. I could tune the car radio to the correct frequency on each and then compare the sound quality by flipping the AM/FM switch.
FM is WAY better sound quality. It's not even close.
You're talking apples and oranges.
FM is absolutely better sound quality than AM. That's why music is mostly on FM. (On the other hand, AM uses less bandwidth and travels farther, since it's in the MF band and can bounce off the ionosphere. That's the tradeoff.)
At the same time, the highway information stations the parent poster is talking about are low power AM stations designed to play a road condition message within a distance of 3-5 miles from the antenna. The audio is often very poor quality, even for AM, because of the transmit power restrictions placed on them.
That said, it's worth noting the places you need these highway information stations most are also often places with some of the worst cellular coverage. If you drive in the mountains, they can be essential.
Although FM has a higher bandwidth, from a listeners perspective its more likely that you were experiencing a narrowband monaural AM - hence the massive difference to your ear.
Stereo or wideband AM is much clearer:
Could have just been the stereo tricking your brain into thinking it sounded better. For example, in the late 1980's my family had a car that had an AM-only radio. One day while channel hopping one station just sounded so much better than anything we'd ever heard on this radio. Someone finally noticed a little STEREO light had lit up, because that station had recently started stereo broadcasts. Eventually we moved and later got a different car and I've never again seen a little light like that on an AM station.
But, if you ever hear AM Stereo you'd be amazed.
I don’t live in the bay anymore but know for a fact sports radio knbr 680 also has an fm station, think it’s 104.5
I’ve actually taken a bit to AM lately to listen to different sporting events when outside of fm range
Not vouching for it and I wouldn’t care if am was deprecated as a vehicle radio feature (my vehicles are ‘88 and ‘02) but it still serves a purpose for sure
What about sports broadcasts? I often listen to games in my car on AM.
As do many people. AM stations that run play-by-play sports programming do very well in the ratings, and do very well with the station's sales team.
The skill of the broadcast announcers is remarkable. They paint the scene with audio-only in an amazing way.
My father (and my grandfather before him) takes a little battery-powered AM radio with him to games (football, baseball, etc) and listen to it while watching the game live. They've even muted the TV and used TV picture with radio sound to get a better experience. That makes it easy to take naps and close your eyes without missing key parts of the game.
Hank Azaria (played the title character on Brockman) joked a few times that baseball announcers could say whatever they wanted as long as it ended in a pitch count.
I think that adds to the effect of "being at the game" with the announcer; go to a ballgame with a friend you haven't seen in a few weeks and you'll end up talking about random stuff too.
Love it! Had he not been so wildly talented at voice-work, he could have been a damn good announcer himself (as evidenced by his work as announcers in the Simpson's), so that's extra great
If you haven't seen this, a great recent interview with him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5TaYFi4UVA
Recently the Vikings posted this clip of their PxP announcer Paul Allen doing his thing. Even though I don’t care one lick about American football, I still found this clip to be great fun to watch. The skill, passion, and joy he has is infectious.
https://twitter.com/PatMcAfeeShow/status/1592980588608487424
One thing that makes a radio-TV combination work less well nowadays is latency in the TV feed. Running 15 to 20 seconds or even more behind the radio is not uncommon with all the processing and distribution layers that go on with a modern video feed. I've heard of setups where someone plugs a radio receiver into a computer with software to buffer and apply the same delay.
Also, the mandated delays in USA for TV and radio to allow censoring (and thereby reduce the risk that Something Untoward is enacted on a live broadcast) . IIRC, radio has a 10 second delay, while TV has a 30 second delay. This allowed a Lt. Col. I knew to hear the conclusion of any play before the television image was even close to definitive. Even with "pure broadcast" TV and radio (no digitising, no cable, no satellite…). Processing delays, such as for DVR or streaming, only add to the overall delay.
I grew up listening to baseball on AM radio. Can't stand to watch the game on TV. Too boring. But on radio? I can go into the garage or the shop and work on something and listen to the game.
I listen to football games in a pinch. Sometimes I have errands to run while a game is on and so I listen in on radio. It's amazing how they call a game. That's a talent that's going to be sad to see die.
Tunnels near me just say "Turn on your radio" and blast the whole FM spectrum at least (might try it with AM too!). Guess you can do this in a tunnel!
Fun fact! In the US, a Tunnel Radio System may operate in any mode on any frequency provided the signal does not leak from the tunnel[1].
[1] 47 CFR 15.211 <https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A...>
In a sample size of maybe 10, every time I’ve seen one of those highway signs and tuned to the station, the quality was so bad I couldn’t make out any words and so got no useful information. If that’s the last bastion of AM usefulness, scrap it and give that spectrum to the wireless carriers. Frankly, for stuff like road closure information I’m a lot more likely to get that from Waze (delivered over a 5G connection) now anyway.
The wireless carriers wouldn't be able to do anything with the AM broadcast band. It's in the MF range - not useful for cellular at all due to limited bandwidth, giant antenna requirements, and ionospheric bounce.
Low speed informational text message would be good use tho
Since the antenna would not be able to fit in anyone's pocket, the best placement for a medium wave text receiver would be in the car or a fixed location, like a home. And that brings you right back to the interference problem.
I don't think wireless carriers would want 1.2 MHz at that low of a frequency. They'd have the same issues with interference that broadcast stations have. The transmit antennas would take up acres of land (each element hundreds of feet long). Receiver antennas would also need to be large.
Also, very little data would fit in such a tiny spectrum window.
This is the most interestingly line from his letter:
> nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older — totaling hundreds of millions of people — listened to AM or FM radio each week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56 percent) or own a computer (77 percent)
Admittedly it seems dubious but if true I'm surprised by basically every one of these numbers
All this requires to be true is that basically all Americans who are in a car weekly turn on the radio when driving, which is very believable. Some people also still have a radio in the kitchen of course.
Is it? It's been years since I, most of my family, or my coworkers have turned on the radio (for non-Bluetooth audio)...my aging FIL insisted on it during a trip back in August (to much good-natured ribbing from his kids) but that's the last time I remember.
I do. There is local news on the radio that's hard to get anywhere else (OK, it's probably also broadcast via internet somewhere, but I'd rather not go through the hassle). It's also a inoffensive way to lessen the monotony when working in jobs dealing with the public (ie, minding a shop).
Really? You go through the trouble of hooking up your phone and starting your favorite app on a 5 minute run to the grocery store rather than just letting the radio be background noise? I totally get doing that for longer trips but so many of my trips are short enough they could be done on foot or by bike if my area was more friendly to that sort of thing.
Radio does the job for the few minutes I'll be in the car.
The phone automatically connects to the car and all I have to do is press play on the car touchscreen. Don't even have to take the phone out of my pocket.
I have to go more out of my way to turn on the radio in my car than I do to connect to Spotify. When I get in my car I plug my phone into the USB cable reflexively and Spotify starts up automatically. I’d have to fumble around with the settings on my infotainment system to even find the radio option (Mazda 3 2020).
Does it count those instances where my Ford randomly plays FM radio (sometimes even randomly AM) before I managed to connect BT/Carplay or if that either of those happen to disconnect?
Because that's about the limit of my usage of any terrestrial radio.
You may listen more than you think. Also counted is in-store (and in-restaurant) listening. That's the main reason why so many stations go with all-Christmas music formats.
Most independently owned retail and eating establishments also qualify for a copyright infringement exemption if they play music originated by a radio or television broadcast station licensed by the FCC [1].
[1] 17 US Code §110(5) <https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/110>
No way that's true. Wonder if they're getting selection bias, ex. the 90% of the people who are willing to take an unsolicited survey on their land line phone.
I can't back up the 90%-of-people claim, but as per the industry-accepted audio listening diary survey, a giant 74% share of audio consumption comes from AM/FM broadcasters [1]. So 90 percent is very possible.
[1] <https://www.westwoodone.com/blog/2022/11/21/edisons-share-of...>
I got a diary from Nielson for radio stations I listened to. I never listen to radio so I entered the stations and programs I wanted to be successful, rather than the ones I was listening to (since I wasn't listening to any of them). (so NPR and the local public radio station got a little boost).
Yeah, there was a lot of "vote for your favorite station" activity when the Arbitron/Nielson diary was used as the main system.
I was working at a station when they switched from diary to the electronic PPM system. The station's cumulative numbers jumped 3-fold that month-- we had no idea that many people were listening.
I wonder what "watch television" means these days. I don't know many people who have broadcast or cable TV.
Trending down slowly, but still 40% of US households:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/612660/paid-services-bro...
Basically "old people"
https://www.statista.com/statistics/659779/cable-tv-penetrat...
What is historically the highest % of US households with TV?
(Paywall. And that is the most aggressive form I've ever battled.)
Hmm, I guess my mass of adblocking extensions in FF must work pretty well, I had to dismiss a single modal. But it looks like Peak TV was reached by about 1980[1], 98% of households!
I am still surprised how relatively few people have a set of rabbit ears wired to their "streaming" TVs for basic news or whatever in the current year considering how cheap they are.
Those ears need to be HD-capable or whatever the term is. And I need to get those HD rabbit ears so I can watch sports on broadcast tele instead of choppy rando streams.
False. The broadcast waveform remains analogue. The receiving electronics (not the antenna) need to be DTV-capable to correctly interpret digital content of the received waveform.
My streaming box and smart tv have local channels on them, gratis.
It seems reasonable to include things like FUBO, which offer both broadcast and TV channels.
Note the "listened to AM OR FM radio each week", emphasis on the "or".
I can't say how long it has been since I checked the AM dial while driving (basically hit it by accident), but years it he most appropriate unit. What I heard (northeastern US) seemed to support some data I read that it is mostly taken over by religious and Limbaugh-type right-wing talk radio. So, that strongly left- Sen. Markey is supporting it so strongly says something. But, if there are actually high listener ship, then for sure, it could be a critical emergency communications channel, and worthwhile just for that
Makes me wonder if 60% of people listen to FM radio every week, 30% to AM radio, and they incorrectly aggregated them.
Just an example: In Seattle, the #2 rated station last month was KIRO-AM 710. Sports play-by-play and local sports talk performs really well on AM [1].
In the same ratings book, the religious and right-wing talk radio on AM continued with a poor performance. I think that generally content is more important than the technology delivering the audio (although probably anything would perform better to at least some extent on FM).
Here in NY I regularly tune into AM for news/traffic reports and sports events.
1010 still gets the job done ages later, shame they changed all the sounds to more generic ones though.
San Francisco used to have a station with left wing talk show hosts.
Then some big corpo (cumulus?) snapped up the station and the cast changed significantly, with the station swinging to the right very noticeably.
I switched it off permanently soon after. This was around the time I discovered I get more useful traffic information from my phone anyway.
AM radio broadcasts can reach somewhat farther than FM (and way farther at night on clear channels); that might matter in an emergency.
As a middle-schooler living in the Washington DC area, I would regularly pick up WLS in Chicago, some 700 miles away, on my little crystal set at night.
A crystal set needs no battery power, the signal is enough to power the audio. I had fun making one with those 20 in 1 electronics toys as a kid. I think that one didn't tune so you heard multiple stations at once.
There are various kinds of crystal sets.
I don't know the theory, though I did make one as a child.
It was the non-tuning type, and would pull in only the strongest-broadcasting local AM channel.
It's also possible to create a tuner which can pull in a specific station (or more accurately: frequency). These can also operate without a battery, though battery-powered radio is of course more versatile.
From the Portland area, I could pick up KGO from San Fransisco at night. Never cared for the content as a kid, but it was still fascinating!
If you're not familiar with the term, look up "clear-channel station". (Not to be confused with the advertising company of the same name.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Station-Albums/WSM/Cle...
Stations like KGO receive special status to protect against interference, and in return are required to transmit 10,000 Watts minimum. Most transmit at 50,000 Watts. The idea was to make sure even the most remote parts of the country with no local stations would be able to receive one of the clear-channel stations at night.
This creates a problem, and even risk, where clear-channel (in the generic sense, not of the firm that appropriated the name, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station>) stations whose signals may reach 1,000 miles or further at night will often report on local traffic and weather conditions using entirely generic terminology: "in the local area", "around town", "in the suburbs", "metro area", "twin cities", "tri-city area", "quad cities" (there are numerous of each), etc.
That might work if your station's reach is the typical 10--50 miles of an American FM broadcast (notable exception: San Francisco's KQED which can be picked up by direct line-of-sight at least 120 miles away as one approaches Yosemite on CA-120 near and east of Groveland, CA.
There's a similar issue I find with online news items from local broadcast (usually television) stations, which similarly utterly fail to note the city and state in which a story occurs, though at least in this case it's usually possible to punch the call signs into Wikipedia to find out where the station is located, something that's not always possible traveling remote regions by car at night. (Though to be fair, far more possible now than it was several decades ago.)
yeah, Europe's AM bands were fun at night
I can still get music radio from Algeria on AM, or rock, sport and news from the UK (I believe from stations emitting from Swansea and London) I used to listen to Deutschlandfunk, France Inter, BBC4 LW on the LW band (only the latter is still active today, others were switched off in the 2010s)
Also, I love that radio is a media that is so hard to regulate. There is always some novelty to what you can listen. There used to be rock-music pirate radios in the 60s, emitting from the international waters. Some small countries like Luxembourg and Monaco would also have commercial radios to break government monopolies from neighboring countries. Then there were the pirate FM radios in the 70s and 80s
Monaco is still broadcasting some stations that don't comply with French regulations on music (Riviera radio serves mainstream English pop songs). It allows you to listen to some different music in your car. (this one is in FM, tho, so it's very local)
Some authoritarian governments were challenged by the radio too. Nazi Germany couldn't stop the BBC during WWII, for example. And you can get a lot of American radios all over the world, even when the internet is controlled. At last, none of the radio you listen to on AM end up in the history that profiles you. You can listen to a radio a night without being served the same music over and over afterwards.
AM radio won't be mainstream. But I'm convinced it still has a role for media plurality, and as a line of Defense for the democracy (and yeah, I know you can get much more from internet radios, like Anime music and everything, but it doesn't feel the same)
AM radio is a pretty poor standard considering how much power and bandwidth it uses, due much to the very limited modulation technology available in the 1920s.
DRM (no not that DRM--Digital Radio Mondiale) is a modern digital standard that promises much better spectral efficiency, power efficiency and range. See https://www.drm.org/. It is similar in concept to DAB, using an OFDM carrier, but with more robust error correction and equalisation, and lower bit rate codec to handle larger broadcast areas.
There is a hope that this could upgrade existing AM broadcast infrastructure, allowing rapid coverage of large areas without the expense of building out new towers.
The MW/HF bands are great for coverage because of the longer wavelength, relative to the VHF bands used for FM and DAB.
Obviously you know this, but AM is absurdly easy to implement. A pencil, razor blade, some wire and an earphone is all it takes to make a crude receiver.
Indeed. No way that replacing trivial to implement, ubiquitous communications technology with complicated, processing intensive, proprietary solutions could go wrong.
This sometimes happens on accident. I had circuits turning into AM radios when i touched them at specific screws or pads, with some random frequency hard-tuned in. At night, when the reception was better, you'd hear voices!
One of the first electronics kits everybody gets is a build-your-own AM radio. It's awesome cause it's easy enough for a beginner but also does something cool.
> and lower bit rate codec to handle larger broadcast areas
That's why DAB is crap. Because people are greedy and don't care about quality.
Agreed, but the alternative here is AM which has never been good quality. DAB was a big step down from FM quality because the choice of codec / bandwidth assigned to stations was pretty bad (and bandwidth == $$!)
Are you referring to the original DAB (using MP2) or the upgraded DAB+ standard (using HE-AACv2)? I think most, if not all, stations have switched to DAB+. I'm told the quality is better than FM and based on my experience it's certainly not worse as far as I can hear. Of course, since FM is analog it degrades linearly whereas DAB+ is digital: it either works or it doesn't. This might skew the perception of quality.
You're probably right. I was put off by early DAB deployments, and haven't tried with DAB+. I would be interested to try again with the new standard.
I am an huge fan of DRM, but the lack of receivers it's a good limitation for that.
That is true, although I know of one company close to production of a <10$ module for OEMs to integrate.
This will be fantastic. I am looking forward to it!
Haha me too
RE " ....That crackle apparently just doesn't fly with luxury auto brands. BMW spokesperson Rebecca Kiehne told me, "Electric motors cause interference on AM which is why BMW decided to remove this option. While it could be offered, BMW's performance standards are very high and we don't offer a product that meets less than those high standards."...." Apparently BMW *high standards do not extend to removing EMI* that interferes with AM. It could be done if they really wanted too.
I've toggled the software switch to re enable AM radio in my 2014 i3 electric. Seems to work fine.
What exactly does he technically want to preserve? Does he really care about amplitude modulation? Or does he care about the frequency band (medium wave, HF) and its propagation properties? Or does he care bout the geographic reach of these stations?
Amplitude modulation is a historically important technology, because it was technically very simple to receive in the early history of radio, and because it was more bandwidth-efficient than FM. But it remains utterly badly suited for mobile reception, because it is highly sensitive for multi-path interference (unlike FM).
We have now far better modern, digital modulation schemes, including DAB and DVB-T2 for VHF and DRM for long, medium, and short-wave transmission. They provide (thanks to OFDM) much better audio quality and interference resistance than the old analogue modulation schemes, and they are also far more power efficient, which substantially reduces the enormous electricity bills of the transmitter stations. They also are very bandwidth efficient, and can be used in single-frequency networks.
Agreed about digital modulation, but I recall hearing multipath a lot more on FM, or perhaps it was just more obnoxious there. Traveling around large buildings or under a metal bridge would bring that familiar rapid flutter as the car moved through places where the reflections would reinforce and cancel. (You can drive through a lot more wavelengths per unit time for FM than AM.)
What a shame. I've lived in a rural areas for most of my adult life. FM reception is notoriously poor due to the terrain. AM repeaters were always a nice touch. Also worth noting that AM radio content is absurdly easy to support and transmit.
I doubt AM is easy to transmit in practice. Complicated modulation schemes cost almost nothing, but high power is still expensive and needs real engineering.
It might be easier on a DIY level, but on a commercial level complexity is free, substance and power are expensive.
AM transmissions (10 kHz) are relatively narrow compared to other broadcast formats, so the power bill is less than FM (200 kHz) and TV (6000 kHz).
The real cost problem in 2022 is the size of the antenna. The entire tower, or array of towers, is the antenna. They can take up many acres of land. It is hard to justify not selling out and replacing those towers with more lucrative residential, retail or industrial development.
A single station's antenna could be 5 properly spaced towers, each hundreds of feet high.
It's a notable argument you bring up that AM stations are sometimes the only audio service available in remote areas.
The characteristics of AM (i.e., daytime groundwave and nighttime skywave) provide service that other services can not.
AM content absurdly easy to receive for; that's for sure.
> The AM band in the United States covers frequencies from 540 kHz up to 1700 kHz
I wonder if there's something useful to do with that range. It's a big chunk of lower frequencies right there, in the range that reliably does over-the-horizon propagation (although better at night perhaps according to wikipedia?)
The benefit of AM being super simple to build a receiver for is less relevant nowadays, FM is trivial to get radios for now, and ham radio uses SSB for voice for the most part in the lower frequency ranges.
I'd bet that most would conclude that the best use for those frequencies is broadcast.
In Seattle, half a million people listened to KIRO-AM 710 last month [1]. In Boston, 454,600 people listened to WBZ-AM 1030 [2]. In Los Angeles, 625,500 people listened to KFI-AM 640 [3].
It's difficult to justify discontinuing an audio service that is performing as a top conduit for audio (more than Spotify or Pandora, for example) because of a perception that the service is no longer viable.
[1] <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/seattle-tacoma/> [2] <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/boston/> [3] <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/los-angeles/>
The only real use I'd see would be some new iteration of Loran-C, to have something harder to jamm and spoof then current GNSS systems. But the local noise from car and other electronics would likely make it less useful.
> I wonder if there's something useful to do with that range.
Non-directional beacons! In Nth America NDBs are 190–535 kHz, but elsewhere they are 190–1750 kHz, overlapping the AM radio band. Keep decommissioning the more expensive VOR stations in favour of satnav (and release the spectrum), but keep NDB transmitters as a low-tech/low-cost backup.
Surprised the FCC has not stepped on EV manufacturers for the RFI they create.
They won’t just interfere with medium wave broadcast.
My favourite radio ever is AM 740 in the Boston area— WJIB, a listener-supported station broadcasting hits from the late 30s to 70s easy listening. Where else in broadcast these days can one expect to listen to the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, or Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass in the original AM sound? Good music for the soul.
I find it funny... here people are afraid their clients (cars) will lose AM support, and in europe, we feer the very-soon coming date when our governments will shut down FM radio, leaving a bunch of cars (those without DAB radios) musicless or tied to some kind of mobile phone connected to AUX ports situation.
Or as they say: Welcome to Norway! [1]
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/13/norway-becomes...
Are you from norway?
I'm guessing you had a mandate that all new cars need to have DAB receivers.. when did that come in action? Because here in slovenia, you could still buy a new car without DAB just a few years ago. Basically, i'm just wandering if all your cars sold in the last 10+ years already have dab (by mandate) and the turn-off wasn't a real pain for most, or if like 80%+ of your cars on the street just lost radio reception?
After a recent hurricane decimated our area, a battery powered emergency AM radio was, for some time, the only source of information available. Communication resiliency shouldn't be decreased without good reason.
I still listen to AM radio (the CBC). (I mainly listen in the home, not in the car, because I do not have a car or a driving license; however, sometimes when going with someone else in the car, I can listen to radio.)
We need AM radio. AM radio is simple. It is better than having an overly complicated and badly made digital radio needing licensing and difficulty of implementation etc.
AM needs better content. Where are the podcast channels? I think it would be cheap to set up a station that just rebroadcasts podcasts.
> Markey cited statistics from the Pew Research Center News Platform Fact Sheet from September 2022 which said 47% of Americans receive their news from the radio.
I believe that explains quite a bit. Without being snarky, AM radio is home to political opinion that is largely sympathetic to a conservative viewpoint and I suspect that is one reason that Markey wants car manufacturers to keep it (and why perhaps other lawmakers would be indifferent or even eager to see it disappear)
Not an adherent to the views commonly espoused on AM talk radio, I nevertheless see the utility for some kind of low-tech broadcast format which is easy and inexpensive to tune in and broadcast over. AM fits the bill, and has much longer range than FM
One of the reasons why this story has gotten traction is because Ed Markey is considered a progressive and is a member of the Democratic Party. Generally, progressive Democrats don't have an interest in content that is sympathetic to a conservative viewpoint.
Also, to your second point, due to the size of the antennas required, AM is very expensive to broadcast over unless you're using an inefficient antenna. The shortest quarter wavelength antenna (at 1700 kHz) would be 137 feet high. An AM (medium wave) array would take up acres of land.
It would be so cool to release AM back to the public. Maybe a longer range, low bandwidth Wi-Fi like protocol.
It wouldn't be a WiFi-like protocol. Higher noise floor, major issues with interference with your neighbor (even beyond line of sight), a total of ~1/20th the bandwidth of a single narrow WiFi channel, and antenna size needing to be many orders of magnitude larger than for 2.4/5Ghz WiFi.