AM Mandate’s First Big Detractor Steps Up To Bat

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“Mandating AM radio in new cars would be like mandating CD or 8-track cassette players,” says the first major organization to speak out against the AM For Every Vehicle Act. This criticism of the Act, introduced to Congress last week by a bipartisan group of sponsors led by Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Ed Markey, is coming from a source near to many broadcasters – the Consumer Technology Association.

The CTA is best known for the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which many radio executives attend. In a blog post by CTA staff, the group argued that mandating AM radio in all new cars is an idea that should be critically examined as it contradicts the principles of a free-market economy. They said, “While the majority of cars will have AM radios for the foreseeable future, innovation and consumer choice – not the heavy hand of the government – should determine the makeup of car entertainment systems.”

CTA also said requiring AM radio installation in new cars would burden automakers with increased costs, leading to higher prices for consumers. They claimed focus on AM could somehow impede innovation in other areas of vehicle development, including safety features and fuel efficiency advancements.

The Association finally dismissed the public safety concerns around AM’s removal, because other technologies should step up to replace AM. “Some make the argument that AM radio is necessary for emergency broadcasts, but in such cases FM radio, internet streaming services, better rural broadband, and text alerts should be able to make up for any loss of AM radio access,” said the post.

28 COMMENTS

  1. Maybe we should let the automakers develop their apps and resell our AM content. Automakers will get a hard wake up call, when AM comes knocking for its retransmission fees. Maybe AM has one more “phoenix from the ashes” story after all. Get your checkbooks out Ford, BMW, et al. We’ll be calling soon.

  2. There’s another type of AM station that has been forgotten in this discussion: TIS (Travelers Information Service). Networks of these stations exist along the interstates and turnpikes and they serve to warn motorists of construction, accidents, and generally dangerous road conditions. How many times have you seen signs on these roads that say, “Urgent message when flashing. Tune to 1640 (or whatever frequency) AM.” TIS stations are noncommercial operations licensed to governmental entities and state departments of transportation. They typically run about 10 watts into short loaded whip antennas. In the absence of an emergency, many of them rebroadcast NOAA Weather Radio from the 162 MHz frequencies.
    No, you cannot get TIS over an internet stream!

  3. What about the many small markets where AM radio is the only way residents can get local information immediately?

  4. AM and FM radio should be required in automobiles. I would agree that there is a dearth of mediocre radio programming coming from todays corporate “one size fits all” programmers. Even so, AM and FM are still relevant. They should remain available for all to receive as they wish.

    Capitalism is mentioned many times in this thread. I am a capitalist but all forms of human endeavor require rules and reasonable requirements. Keeping free, government licensed audio services available to all should be one of those requirements. Keeping cars and other devices from polluting the RF spectrum is another reasonable place to enforce regulations.

    There is precedent for this. Televisions generally had only VHF tuners in them prior to 1964. That is when television manufacturers were required to add UHF to their sets which made UHF television stations considerably more viable as televisions without UHF tuners gradually aged out.

    I am concerned that what car manufacturers will gradually want to do is put preprogrammed APPS on their receivers. We already have had that for many years with Sirius/XM. We will have many more. “Free” commercial APPS such as iHeart may well pay manufacturers for choice positioning on their surface giving them more advantage than they already have. The truly free broadcast services should definitely be available within this mix. If I never get to discover your station, I will probably never add your APP to my surface.

    And, no, radio, not even AM, is not comparable to an 8 track or any other physical media.

  5. I can name plenty of AM stations in my market: WAKR, WHLO,WTAM,and I could go on. And I also listen to these stations. But because you don’t listen to AM in your market, you want to make it hard for others to listen to AM. Sorry, you don’t get to do.that

  6. Please spare me the decades upon decades comment that radio programming just needs to improve. We all know it does but whenever given the chance for that to happen, those in control take a heavy pass. It’s meaningless lip service to the solution without any action. Radio has been left to its own demise and has embraced it thoroughly.

  7. What if cell phone towers get taken out? is an argument from many on this issue. But AM towers are somehow not going to be affected the same way by weather or a disaster? There’s no guarantee they are going to be on either. And the vast majority of folks under 60 are not even thinking of tuning to AM for information anymore anyway.

  8. Ira (see above) is one of the few here making any sense. Personally, I’d LOVE to see CD players come back! But to say that the “cost to manufacturers” will raise the price of the car, do those people know how full of crap they really are? “I don’t want it so you can’t have it…” is no way to live, and if it happens to cost a car company’s sale – read income of $30,000+, then so be it. I will listen to what I want to listen to, not what some idiot thinks is correct for me.

  9. If “Cancun” Cruz is for it, that’s a red flag. The law of supply and demand should play here just as elsewhere. It will be an option but it shouldn’t be forced on those who don’t need or want it. I understand EV motor noise will interfere with the band which could be filterable but at what cost.

  10. These arguements about who does and does not listen to AM radio on a regular basis are irrelevant. The fact is, that the AM radio service has been around for so very long that everyone knows what it is, and where it lives if they chose to listen, or need it. And when disaster strikes, and the internet is down (read no streaming access for any other provider of information) and cell phone towers get taken out (read no text alerts available) then what are we left with? What we are left with are the thousands of AM radio stations around the country that include Class 1A Clear Channel monster signals that blanket the country. And can and will disseminate important, and possibly life-saving information in times of peril. That have for decades had an arrangement with the government to provide this information. That have broadcast facilities that can exist for weeks in the case of a disaster. My facility has enough fuel in the standby tank to go on broadcasting for weeks. Let’s not forget people that we in broadcasting are not just a business model, but a licensed by the FCC entity. And that was for a reason. We bear a reponsibility.

  11. There is no way keeping the AM radio station in a car is an extra expense, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If an AM station can impede safety we have BIG problems….

  12. In my opinion, this is just a dirty move to get rid of the powerful conservative AM channels.
    Let’s just call a spade a spade, folks!

    • Many Spanish radio station are on the AM dial as are half of the very small number of Black owned stations so this is not just a move against conservative stations

  13. The broadcast signal of AM is what is called “Ground Wave” while FM is termed “Line of Sight.” this means that an AM signal, in effect, follows the contours of the earth and can therefore be received even in a deep valley. FM, on the other hand, requires the the receiving antenna to “see” the transmitting antenna thereby placing limitations on it’s effectiveness in say, a national emergency. This a simplification of course but is essentially how it works.

  14. So many of you miss the real issue here. 80 percent or more of all listening is on FM, not AM. For every WLW (and I am not disparaging them here), you have many more AM stations at the bottom of the ratings. “Fix the programming”, you say! Fine. To what? To something 80 and 90 year olds want to hear? The other day a listener to the AM station I work for called and wanted to know why we couldn’t play “what we played in the 1960’s”. No, that wasn’t top 40. It was Matt Monro, Glenn Miller, Andy Williams, and Ella Fitzgerald. Wonderful music, I agree. But try selling it to advertisers. The listener told me she was 90. AM needs to be saved. But, most all AM’s stream. Most radio stations stream. Agreed that cell phones and the internet can go down. And, in an emergency, that would be big problems. The answer to that is simple – go to Family Dollar and buy a battery powered AM/FM radio. They’re 10 bucks.

    • Yes, most radio stations stream. But that streaming puts programming that is available off-air for free behind a paywall. Also, many rural areas have poor or no cellular or wireless internet service.
      Some sports programming that is readily available off-air via AM or FM radio is blacked out by the streaming outfits. I can hear the New York Yankees for free over WFAN (660 kHz, 50 kW) or WFAN-FM (full Class B on 101.9 MHz). At night, WFAN’s AM signal covers half the country via nighttime skywave. But the Bronx Bombers may be blacked out by streaming outfits outside of the New York market.

  15. The CTA is wrong! First, apples and oranges. Radio is not the same as physical media. It should be judged for what it is, a ubiquitous on-air resource requiring no purchases for the right to use/hear it. Second, the costs associated with including the AM band in vehicles is an extremely tiny fraction of the cost of a vehicle, quite negligible. Third, for good engineering standards, any expense required to make a vehicle’s propulsion and power system electrically quiet should be mandatory with or without an AM receiver onboard. Vehicles should not be permitted to pollute any communications frequencies, period. The AM band has already been compromised by the FCC’s laziness in not enforcing its own RF interference rules. Fourth, if left only to marketplace economics, RF pollution would be much worse than it is now. Ask any RF engineer, many of whom are also amateur radio operators, about the noise problems they have been encountering in recent years and they’ll give you an earful!

    • Best reasoning, succinctly put, that I’ve heard to date. Thank you!

      So they’re disingenuously playing the free economy card, eh? In their dreams they’d also like to operate without the bank regulators or the securities and exchange commission that offer protection from runaway greedy money grabbers.

      This is pure BS. CTA, claiming to be a consumer advocate, feels sorry for passing off the cost of the filtering to the consumer? Whoever wrote that line somehow escaped their company’s PR management oversight not to mention legal, to try to make a statement like that in light of what’s happening today. I’d advised him/her to not buy anything on time as far as job security goes. In fact, don’t even buy green bananas. Here’s the truth: The cost to put the filter on a.m. in cars is less than the cost to consumers of one music download.

    • Best comment on here, and absolutely correct. Everyone knows from experience that any money “saved” by dropping AM will not be used towards safety features, but to pad corporate profits. New safety features will just add to the.price of the car.

  16. Nothing wrong with Terrestrial AM or FM Radio. Let’s look at what is being programmed today. Yes, that needs some work not everyone is in Jr High especially the people who have the money to patronize the sponsors. If it had not been for capitalism you probably would be speaking Russian today, just think, you could not even leave a comment.

  17. Despite opinions to the contrary, AM radio is a different type of technology than FM, cellular and 4/5G Internet operating on much lower frequencies with a better ability for signal reach than all of the newer technologies. A claim that keeping AM will somehow cause excess costs for radio and vehicle manufacturers is simply false. Everyone out there who are for government based consumer protections should also consider the protection of having AM availability in an automobile is little different than other safety requirements, where the receipt of emergency broadcast information is critical and that when you are in a bad or over capacity cell or have bad reception in the area you are when it comes to your favorite FM, AM is critical. Many folks want to toss AM because that is simply where most conservative talk media resides for the most part and they want to get rid of it in order to limit availability of such voices by as many means as possible.

    • You’re correct. They’re continuing to stir the pot of lies that a.m. is useless without doing their scientific homework first. That just doesn’t fly.
      They use the old well-known propaganda tool of a false parallel, comparing it to 8-track cartridges (which do not receive signals, by the way, the last time I checked), pandering to idiotic reasoning and faulty analysis. But again, if you repeat a lie often enough… You know the rest.
      To design an argument such as they are using, requires them to know the truth in the first place, and to then cleverly spin the argument like magicians do…. “Don’t look over there, look over here“.
      Ahem… follow the money folks!

  18. Capitalism has spoken, folks. I couldn’t name one AM station in my market and I sure don’t listen to AM…or FM for that matter. Asking Congress to deal with this when they have so many critical items to deal with is laughable. The CTA is correct.

    • Jim W, you must be in one of those rare areas that doesn’t have an AM radio station. But there are 41 million Americans that would disagree with you about listening to AM radio. That’s how many people listen to just AM radio every week (per Nielsen). And since 90% of Americans listen to broadcast radio (AM/FM) every week, I’d say you definitely fall into the minority.

      AM radio stations are still some of the biggest stations in the country, and serve as a vital link for many Americans to the world. As well as to emergency information in times of disasters. There’s been more than a few tornadoes, floods, etc. that have devastated this country over the past several years. AM radio still was able to provide invaluable local information during those crises. Pretty sure Sirius/XM or Spotify couldn’t do that.

      Just some food for thought.

    • Why are you even in this argument? Because of your personal preferences or lack thereof, it just isn’t enough for you to not listen to a particular mode… You have to go out of your way to prevent others as well? The death of logic is not only creepy, it’s creeping. Suspicious motivation operating here.

    • I can name plenty of AM stations in my market: WAKR, WHLO,WTAM,and I could go on. And I also listen to these stations. But because you don’t listen to AM in your market, you want to make it hard for others to listen to AM. Sorry, you don’t get to do.that

    • I can name many AM stations in my market and adjacent ones. And I listen to them also. No one makes you listen, but why should anyone have the right to make it difficult for others to.listen

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