Our AM One-On-One With Sen. Ted Cruz

Love or hate his usual politics, Texas Senator Ted Cruz is hellbent on protecting AM radio. His AM For Every Vehicle Act, co-sponsored with Sen. Ed Markey, would forever preserve AM’s place in the dashboard. Radio Ink discussed the historic legislation, AM’s power, and how broadcasters can continue the fight with Sen. Cruz one-on-one.

Radio Ink: With the AM For Every Radio Act, you’re stepping up for the industry in a major way. What is your personal background with radio?

Sen. Ted Cruz: Look, when I first ran for Senate, nobody gave me a prayer. My opponent was an incumbent lieutenant governor with $200 million and every lobbyist in the state behind him, and I’d never been elected to anything. And I’ll tell you, it was over the radio that I first began being able to communicate with the people of Texas. And it was an avenue to go straight to the people. It is potent and it remains, I think, the most connected medium to people across a diverse array of backgrounds.

Radio Ink: What role does AM radio play to you in the freedom of expression?

Sen. Ted Cruz: I think AM radio is critical to freedom of expression. And when we saw multiple car companies, eight different car companies announce that they were pulling AM radio out of their cars, it troubled me greatly and for a lot of reasons.

One, from a perspective of public safety, I think AM radio plays a critical role in a time of emergency, whether a hurricane or tornado or flood or another natural disaster. Often other means of communications go down and AM radio has proven to be the most resilient, and in a crisis, it can prove a lifeline for millions.

Two, it’s also true that there are all sorts of communities across Texas and across the country that rely in particular on AM radio, whether it’s farmers and ranchers in rural West Texas who rely on radio to get crop reports, or whether it is the Hispanic community or the African American community, both of which have multiple stations focused on music or talk or sports or issues of concern to each of those communities.

Three, one of the great blessings of AM radio is that the barriers to entry are relatively low. That if someone wants to get up on air and communicate a point of view, they can do it It’s far easier to do so on AM radio than most other media. And I think that’s critical for free speech. And that’s one of the reasons why I became so involved in fighting to save AM radio, is because I wanna see free speech flourish.

I wanna see Texans be able to choose to listen to AM radio. And I’ll tell you, just in the last few weeks, I’ve had over 8,000 phone calls. and outreach from constituents in Texas, calling out to step forward and save AM radio. And I’m proud to be leading the fight to do that.

Radio Ink: Let’s talk about the AM for Every Vehicle Act. Both broadcasters and political pundits were amazed that you teamed up with Senator Ed Markey to co-sponsor this legislation together. Very different ends of the political spectrum. How did you discover this movement behind AM and form this improbable alliance?

Sen. Ted Cruz: It is a remarkable pairing, and it may, in fact, be a sign of the apocalypse. But when it came to AM radio, Ed agreed with me that consumers want to have that choice, that they deserve to have that choice. There are only a handful of major car manufacturers. And if they decide, particularly if they decide collectively, we’re going to take that choice away from consumers, there’s very little option consumers have to do anything about that.

Ed and I were both dismayed by the dramatic reduction in consumer choice that pulling AM radio from cars was going to produce. And so, he and I agreed to team up together. I am the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, the senior Republican. Ed is also on the committee. And so we’ve teamed up together and we’ve brought several other senators, both Democrats and Republicans, together.

Look, Ed Markey and I are from diametrically different spots on the political spectrum. Ed Markey may be the most liberal Democrat in the US Senate. He represents the state of Massachusetts. I’m the most conservative Republican and represent the state of Texas. There are a lot of issues that Ed and I disagree on.

And I will say this, as an indication of perhaps how unusual it is to have senators this far apart, ideologically, coming together and finding common ground on an issue like this, within days of Ed and me filing our legislation, Ford Motor Company publicly announced it was reversing course and it was going to offer AM radio on every car it sells. That was a big shift from what they’d previously announced.

I’m grateful to Ford for doing the right thing, but I think a significant impetus for that was Ford seeing that if there is agreement as broad as from Markey to Cruz, this is going to move in Congress and their effort to remove consumer choices is not going to succeed.

Radio Ink: Talking about Ford, it just came to light this past week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on AM, that before reversing that decision, Ford had been removing AM from the dashboard programming on its EVs while the antennas and reception technology remained.

This went against claims that the electrical interference was combating the AM signals and manufacturers couldn’t continue to make it work, technologically. Ford ended up doing the right thing, and we applaud them, but should broadcasters and radio listeners be concerned about kind of a lack of transparency from other automakers?

Sen. Ted Cruz: Well, sure. It’s certainly something to be concerned about. I think we’ve seen a pattern of large corporate players using their market power to restrict free speech and engage in censorship. We’ve seen it in the big tech area with Google and Facebook and Twitter. That’s a pattern that is unfortunately far too common, that when you have a massive amalgamation of corporate power, it’s easy for that power to be abused.

My perspective – I’m fighting vigorously against big tech censorship for the same reason, that I think you as an American citizen have a First Amendment right to speak and your views should be heard. If someone disagrees with your views, they can turn your station off. Nobody makes you listen, but I think our democracy works far better when free speech is flourishing than it does when it’s stifled and when consumers are denied the choice and ability to listen to the speakers that they want to hear.

Radio Ink: Earlier you mentioned AM’s ability to inform and protect in emergencies. Another automaker argument against the AM For Every Vehicle Act right now, is that mandating AM that would stymie innovation, particularly for EAS and emergency alerts. Do you see this as a valid concern on their part?

Sen. Ted Cruz: I think that’s really a red herring. They’re welcome to put any innovation they want into their cars. The only requirement is that they maintain AM radio because consumers want AM radio. The numbers are staggering just within the state of Texas. 88,000 jobs derive from radio. Nationally, there are 103 African-American-owned AM broadcasts.

And all this is requiring is that consumers have the option to be able to choose to listen to them if they want to. Nothing prevents the automakers if they want to invent a whole new means of communication. If they want to create a hologram of Princess Leia that dances on your dashboard and gives you disaster information, knock themselves out, there’s nothing in this bill that prevents this. It just says ‘Do not take away choice from consumers.’ That’s an outcome the people of Texas and Americans want.

Radio Ink: So Senator Cruz, right now, what is the AM for Every Vehicle Act timetable looking like? Can you comment on that?

Sen. Ted Cruz: Well, it is right now before the Senate Commerce Committee. As I mentioned, I’m the ranking member of that committee, the senior Republican. And so the next step is to schedule it for a markup. I’m hopeful that will happen soon in the next matter of weeks. It may be in a matter of months, depending on how quickly we can get it scheduled for a markup. I believe we will get it on a markup and I think we’ll have the votes to pass it.

I think we will see bipartisan support for the bill and after it passes out a committee, we’ll take it to the floor and I hope we’ll pass it into law, pass it through the House, and I hope and expect, at the end of the day, that President Biden will sign this into law.

This is common-sense, bipartisan legislation that ought to be able to bring us together and say, even if we might disagree about a whole bunch of other issues, ‘we stand together and we’re gonna maximize consumer choice and let consumers have the ability to choose to listen to AM radio if that’s what they decide.’

Radio Ink: What can station owners and broadcasters do to assist you all best in this process of getting the AM Act passed?

Sen. Ted Cruz: Well, I think it is very valuable for your senators to hear from you and for your senators to hear that they should support the Markey-Cruz legislation and they should come on board. Every senator that co-sponsors it builds momentum.

You look nationally, there are about 4,500 AM radio stations nationwide and about 82 million Americans listen to radio every month. That’s an enormous number of people that want to listen to AM radio. I can tell you that your elected representatives in the Senate and the House when they hear from the constituents, it makes a difference. So if folks pick up the phone and call their senator, call their House member, and say support Cruz’s bill and let’s save AM radio, the more that get on board, the faster this will happen.

Radio Ink: Ideally, the AM for Every Vehicle Act passes this year. Outside of that, what are your thoughts on the future of AM radio?

Sen. Ted Cruz: When you’ve got 4,500 stations, people are voting with their dollars and they’re voting with their ears. People want the content that’s on AM radio. Will there come a time when there’s a different means of communication? Sure. You know, that’s been the essence of technology. We don’t tend to use carrier pigeons anymore. So, yes, things will progress.

I don’t know where the future will go, but I do know that consumers will make that choice. And if consumers start using another means of getting their information, that’s great. That’s the way the marketplace works. And if there are other means that are more effective, you’ll see radio stations and broadcasters moving to those other forms of media. But I don’t think it should be decided by a handful of car makers saying, we’re going to eliminate your ability to listen to AM radio before consumers want to.