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Washington AM for every car

B

bossbill

Maybe I'm missing something, but why are so many so hellbent on saving AM radio?
AM is inferior to FM. Skywave at night offers the opportunity to hear signals 1,000 miles away, while making it difficult to hear locally. Numerous stations power down at night. AM stations are signing off in droves. Mainstream listening is on FM stations. EV radios have problems with AM. Would someone please enlighten me as to WHY NAB and State organizations are so involved in saving a dying medium when FM is superior in every way?
 
Meanwhile, on-air broadcast is still the most-listened-to medium in automobiles, because it's free and easy. Most of the listening is to FM, not AM. One thing I have noticed, however, is that so many FM stations DON'T EVEN HAVE A NEWSCAST! Six of our eight stations offer top of the hour national news 24/7, plus local news in the morning.
 
bossbill said:
Maybe I'm missing something, but why are so many so hellbent on saving AM radio?
AM is inferior to FM. Skywave at night offers the opportunity to hear signals 1,000 miles away, while making it difficult to hear locally. Numerous stations power down at night. AM stations are signing off in droves. Mainstream listening is on FM stations. EV radios have problems with AM. Would someone please enlighten me as to WHY NAB and State organizations are so involved in saving a dying medium when FM is superior in every way?
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As someone who grew up with AM radio (I'm 63 years old now), I find that the medium wave frequencies do have certain advantages over FM, especially in terms of distance listening, both day and night. There are still areas in my home state of Arizona (the bottom of the Salt River Canyon comes immediately to mind) where AM reception still remains better than FM reception due to terrain issues. FM may have a clearer sound but only if you're in range of the FM antenna without any terrain issues (hills, mountains, buildings) blocking your way.

While there are real issues with AM reception around computer screens, fluorescent lights, etc., I think that the manufacturers of AM radios have brought a lot of this on themselves. In the past, you *could* purchase AM receivers that, due to their wideband settings, could give you great sound, even if the signals were in mono. However, nowadays those manufacturers still putting out AM receivers have a lot less concerns about the quality of sound output as they did in the past.

As to the forces behind the requirement to have all car radios include the AM bands, there are folks, particularly farmers in some of the western states and Alaska, who live far enough away from towns with an FM station that AM is the only real option they have. In addition, many fans of conservative talk radio are not certain that their favorite format would survive the move to FM. While there have been some successes (Bonnville'sKTAR-FM in the Phoenix market comes to mind), there have also been quite a few failures as well in this department.
 


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