Promoting smart speakers is an alternative? Why would people wanna pay good money in a bad economy to Become The Product™ for some camouflaged data mining device when all they have to do is press the conveniently-already-there AM button on their dashes and select 1070 in a second flat?
And yes, I know -- younger listeners never explore the AM dial. But I don't see why they wouldn't
sample 1070 specifically, if prompted to by 97.1. And unlike, say, 101.1 trying to convince its whole audience to retreat back to 930 for a music format, most 97.1 listeners might find 1070 at 50,000 watts clean and intelligible enough for speech. Generations X and Y are the same "younger" listeners who grew up acclimating to the AMR-NB cellular codec, where everyone sounded like they were drowning in abandoned wells when they talked. 1070's extremely well-processed, unmangled audio sounds many times better than inferior stuff they accepted in their youths. And sure, while even KNX's 50,000 watts would get spoiled in fringe reception areas, the way
@henry pointed out, FM deteriorates at its fringes too, so what're you gonna do.