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Saving AM Radio

yeoldeschool said:
Are you saying the bill's wording requires AM in every car tuner, not AM in every car?
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The way I read the bill, it requires an AM tuner to be "standard equipment" on all passenger vehicles, but the rule would not take effect for 5 years after the President signs it. It would exempt low volume manufacturers, so your next Ferrari still might not come with an AM tuner.

www.govtrack.us

Text of H.R. 979: AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025 (Reported by House Committee version) - GovTrack.us

Text of H.R. 979: AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act … as of Nov. 12, 2025 (Reported by House Committee version). H.R. 979: AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2025
www.govtrack.us www.govtrack.us

Given that this bill has not been enacted, and has made minimal progress in Congress this year, I remain doubtful that the above language gets enacted exactly as written.

Even if it does, I don't think AM has 5 years left.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
The way I read the bill, it requires an AM tuner to be "standard equipment" on all passenger vehicles, but the rule would not take effect for 5 years after the President signs it.
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Not including FM and postponing enforcement for 5 years? This thing is a turkey. :(

Even if it does, I don't think AM has 5 years left.
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At the rate I'm seeing posts lately about more and more AMs going dark, I'm beginning to wonder.

Has anyone started an official list of U.S. AM stations that have been reported off-air long-term without explanation, that have gone officially STA, or that have outright turned in their licenses? Something in a simple HTML table format, with columns for callsign, frequency, owner name, last-known air date, shutdown nature (e.g. license surrender), and reason stated by owner (if any)? It would be a good addition to a site like worldradiohistory.com. Wherever it is hosted, there could be an official companion thread here at RD for community reports and updates. The recent hastening of AM stations going dark is historic and strikes me as something that should start getting documented before those that have already fallen get buried under the eventual avalanche to come.
 
cc333 said:
It's not new, but I like my 2006 Pontiac Vibe ... radio ... doesn't do ... hands free calls, and it has neither Bluetooth nor an aux input of any kind, but a simple Bluetooth-enabled FM modulator solves those problems easily, and as a bonus, it won't track you as most modern cars do.
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I forgot to add that it also doesn't, and never will, require a subscription of any kind to operate!

I also forgot to mention that it doesn't receive HD radio, but that's not really a deal breaker, since HD isn't really all that widespread, and 99% of all stations have an analog fallback anyway (about the only thing that one could conceivably miss are the HD subchannels, but one can stream that stuff, and anything else, from their phone via the Bluetooth enabled FM modulator).

c
 
yeoldeschool said:
Has anyone started an official list of U.S. AM stations that have been reported off-air long-term without explanation, that have gone officially STA, or that have outright turned in their licenses? Something in a simple HTML table format, with columns for callsign, frequency, owner name, last-known air date, shutdown nature (e.g. license surrender), and reason stated by owner (if any)?
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My first thought regards the logistics. While a silence STA request has to give a reason, that is usually filed as a PDF in LMS, and you would have to open every such document to get the date the station ceased operation.

And, while a cancellation of license request is reported in the FCC Daily Digest and could therefore be tracked in LMS, the supporting documentation is also usually a PDF. And STAs are not listed in the DD.

I am not sure how you would find stations that went silent without following the proper notification protocols with the FCC. Realistically, even the Media Bureau doesn't go looking for them, because if they issued a Notice of Violation it would likely be met with a hardship request, or not even be served in the first place if the licensee simply vanished.

The HTML would actually be the easiest part of it. The rest of it is manual and intensive research. I can't see anyone undertaking it unless they literally had nothing else to do with their day (... week, month, year ...).
 
K.M. Richards said:
At the moment, I would think not. They're still on the air, even if without meaningful content.

Unless they went silent and I missed it ...
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"Unless they went silent and I missed it". Another reason AM is irrelevant. Cars made horses irrelevant for day to day transportation and if a horse were as sick as AM radio, you would do the humane thing and shoot it. No AM in cars legislation. No forcing extra cost on consumers for something no one wants*
* not including dinosaurs and people who were alive when they roamed the earth.
 


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