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Car Makes & Models with No AM Band.

DavidEduardo said:
Not "a number". In some countries, all AM is gone. In others, it is nearly gone and remaining AM facilities are being progressively eliminated.
Click to expand...
To be more precise, AM (longwave and mediumwave) is entirely gone from France. The 162 kHz station at Allouis has been retained for time signals but the carrier has no audio programming. I believe AM is gone from Belgium. The AM operations in Luxembourg are going away. Full-power AM stations are gone from the Netherlands, but the band was opened up for loosely-licensed low-power operations of 100 watts or less. I would not say this is a success. When visiting family there last year, I noticed no local AM activity in Amsterdam (Zuidas) or Leiden*; there was one LPAM station in Eindhoven, broadcasting in English on 747 kHz. I was in an Eindhoven suburb about 10 km away from the station's location. The signal was steady but weak.

Interesting that Spain appears to have made few moves to deactivate AM stations (there was never longwave there) even though it has a well-developed complement of FM stations. I can't speak to Portugal, Italy, Germany, or other European countries.
* Footnote: thanks to the North Sea, a substantial number of English mediumwave stations do make it to the cities of the Randstad and sometimes you can even hear groundwave-skywave phase cancellation at night.
 
When I was in France a year ago, I had a 2022 model year rental car (Renault Captur), which had an AM radio. I tried it a few times as we travelled the country over a period of weeks and couldn't ever pull in any signal. I thought maybe there'd be something from another country (since distances are fairly small), but no.
 
Oh, the Hexagon is bigger than one might think! The AM shutdown has left a few gaps. For example, France-Info was on a high-power transmitter on 630 kHz in Lyon, covering much of southeastern France. That's gone; as a consequence, there are parts of the region south of Lyon (e.g. the Drôme, Vaucluse) that don't have access to France-Info because FM stations for it weren't built in those areas. There is some overlap between France-Info and France-Inter (more of a news/talk network), and France-Bleu is available for regionally-oriented news and information, so it's not a total loss, but it was a bit weird not to have it available in that part of the country. When in France, I usually use France-Info as my wake-up alarm station, but that didn't work in Pierrelatte, to name one example.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Interesting that Spain appears to have made few moves to deactivate AM stations (there was never longwave there) even though it has a well-developed complement of FM stations.
Click to expand...
Nearly all the stations on AM in Spain are owned by networks such as RNE (Gornment) SER and COPE. The private ones have closed lots all of their AMs. The government station net has closed some and reduced power of others. Same in Portugal where 2 remaining networks have about 14 stations, all low power.

Mark Roberts said:
I can't speak to Portugal, Italy, Germany, or other European countries.
Click to expand...
Per WRTH 2023: Hungary has 10 AMs left, Italy has about 22 vs. over 8,000 FM stations. Germany seems to have nothing while Latvia has two very low power ones. Luxembourg closed both the LW and MW stations. Poland has none except for two low power ones. Poland has none, and Romania has one national AM network on about 45 frequencies. Slovakia has none, Slovenia has 4 low power (25 kw or less) left.

All of Africa, the Middle East and Europe has about 800 total stations left.

(Note: WRTH is notorious for leaving off low power stations, so this must be taken with caution)
 
DavidEduardo said:
Nearly all the stations on AM in Spain are owned by networks such as RNE (Gornment) SER and COPE. The private ones have closed lots all of their AMs. The government station net has closed some and reduced power of others. Same in Portugal where 2 remaining networks have about 14 stations, all low power.
Click to expand...
I had thought there were few, if any, mediumwave stations in Spain not associated with one of the national networks, but then I consulted a curious little book that I have called La radiodifusión española, published in 1972 during the final days of the Franco era, which included a detailed list of Spanish stations, both FM and AM. The national networks of the time were RNE (programa nacional y radio peninsular on mediumwave, 2° and 3° programa on FM), Cadena SER, Radio Popular (COPE), Cadena Azul (various Radio Juventud outlets), La Red de Emisoras del Movimiento (REM), Emisoras Sindicales (CES), Música Funcional-Ambiental (not really a network but more a category, entirely FM), plus various "Emisoras Privadas", one per city. So there was a lot of networking going on, some of it government-associated or Falangist-associated (which, practically, amounted to the same thing). All news came from RNE which, at the time, was censored. This book also has some history, which tended to tip-toe around you-know-what.
DavidEduardo said:
Per WRTH 2023: Hungary has 10 AMs left, Italy has about 22 vs. over 8,000 FM stations. Germany seems to have nothing while Latvia has two very low power ones. Luxembourg closed both the LW and MW stations. Poland has none except for two low power ones. Poland has none, and Romania has one national AM network on about 45 frequencies. Slovakia has none, Slovenia has 4 low power (25 kw or less) left.
Click to expand...

The Luxembourg closure must be recent. 234 from Junglinster was on the air last summer, one of the stronger signals where I was outside Eindhoven.

I once filled up a rental car with gas north of the Junglinster installation. It is (was?) a very impressive installation.

Domestic Luxembourg broadcasting in Luxembourgish has been on FM for some time now.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Nearly all the stations on AM in Spain are owned by networks such as RNE (Gornment) SER and COPE. The private ones have closed lots all of their AMs. The government station net has closed some and reduced power of others. Same in Portugal where 2 remaining networks have about 14 stations, all low power.


Per WRTH 2023: Hungary has 10 AMs left, Italy has about 22 vs. over 8,000 FM stations. Germany seems to have nothing while Latvia has two very low power ones. Luxembourg closed both the LW and MW stations. Poland has none except for two low power ones. Poland has none, and Romania has one national AM network on about 45 frequencies. Slovakia has none, Slovenia has 4 low power (25 kw or less) left.

All of Africa, the Middle East and Europe has about 800 total stations left.

(Note: WRTH is notorious for leaving off low power stations, so this must be taken with caution)
Click to expand...
There are still 169 AM transmitters (not stations, as most transmitters are emitting one or another network) in the UK. Take away the 1-5 watt LPAMs which still exist in a small number of hospitals, university campuses and military bases and you are left with 131 transmitters. Out of these, 47 are operated by the BBC (including national networks, a few local stations still using AM and the specialist ethnic Asian Network in central England). This number is going down fast and is just going to keep on declining over the next few years.

Very few of the AM stations are available on AM only and not also on FM or DAB. My rough count was six, all small stations and mostly focused on a single ethnic or religious community, and as small-scale DAB rolls out this will quickly become zero. Source is the technical spreadsheet of all UK transmitters published by Ofcom. For contrast, there are 2,091 FM and 1,213 DAB transmitters listed.
 
India's regulator is calling for FM radios to be included in all mobile phones, again for disaster reasons:

www.theregister.com

India calls for all mobile phones to include FM radios

Where feature phones remain prevalent, Spotify is not an option and the 'net is little use in an emergency
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com

They cite public information which was carried on domestic FM stations during COVID-19 as a reason to keep fitting phones with radios. The article says a lot of people in India can't afford smartphones which would be able to stream audio and data from an internet source, and the radio function makes cheaper non-smartphones more useful for collecting public information.
 
Mark Roberts said:
The Luxembourg closure must be recent. 234 from Junglinster was on the air last summer, one of the stronger signals where I was outside Eindhoven.

I once filled up a rental car with gas north of the Junglinster installation. It is (was?) a very impressive installation.

Domestic Luxembourg broadcasting in Luxembourgish has been on FM for some time now.
Click to expand...
Luxembourg shut down on December 31, 2022 from what I recall. Not much left on Euro long wave now - BBC on 198, Poland on 225 and Algeria on 252 are some of the bigger signals in Western Europe.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
The hypocrisy is hearing “make the government save us” from the same outlets that air non-stop “keep the darn gubment outta our freedums” - I mean, maybe not when it comes to reproductive choice, sure. Or letting people who aren’t straight get married. So basically keep the gubment away except when it benefits us and not those other people.

Of course it’s legal; it’s still laughably hypocritical.
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To show just how dumb these people are, this morning my wife and I were driving on I95 when one of those PSAs came on. It included an emergency vehicle sound that was very real and we both froze for a moment.

I don't think it was ever mandatory, but the NAB used to strongly advise against using emergency sirens etc. in ads or PSAs.

So it's important to keep a legacy system alive, but not so important to contribute to highway safety.
 
wadio said:
I don't think it was ever mandatory, but the NAB used to strongly advise against using emergency sirens etc. in ads or PSAs.
Click to expand...

It wasn't the NAB. It was the FCC. And it IS mandatory:

www.allaccess.com

Radio Industry News, New Music, Music Promotion, Radio Station Song Charts

All Access offers the latest radio industry news and music news, music promotions for record companies new music, radio station song charts, and much more. AllAccess.com has been serving the radio and music industry since 1995, always bringing you the highest quality content with...
www.allaccess.com www.allaccess.com

No person within the jurisdiction of the United States shall knowingly utter or transmit, or cause to be uttered or transmitted, any false or fraudulent signals of distress, or communication relating thereto. . .
Click to expand...
 
wadio said:
To show just how dumb these people are, this morning my wife and I were driving on I95 when one of those PSAs came on. It included an emergency vehicle sound that was very real and we both froze for a moment.

I don't think it was ever mandatory, but the NAB used to strongly advise against using emergency sirens etc. in ads or PSAs.

So it's important to keep a legacy system alive, but not so important to contribute to highway safety.
Click to expand...
I don't think we have that rule, and it's a pet hate. Too many ads start with a siren only to go "don't get stopped by the police, get new tires from Mike's Tires" or whatever.

There's another one that really gets to me - the sound of a car breaking down and clunking, followed by a VO along the lines of "don't you hate that sound? When it happens to you, call XYZ Breakdown Service". It's a needless distraction while driving, because the driver is trying to figure out if the grinding and clunking is their vehicle or the damn radio.
 
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TheBigA said:
Earlier in this thread someone asked about weather radio and mandating that. There's a bill in congress about it:

radioink.com

Cruz Backs Weather Band For Safety As AM Fights - Radio Ink

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has passed two national weather bills that aim to modernize the nation's weather communication and radio service as the country faces increased weather disasters.
radioink.com radioink.com
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This, coming from a guy who got caught running to Cancun during a freak ice storm in his home state...
 
wadio said:
To show just how dumb these people are, this morning my wife and I were driving on I95 when one of those PSAs came on. It included an emergency vehicle sound that was very real and we both froze for a moment.
Click to expand...
I've heard one that starts with the sound of a motorcycle, and a voice says that's what it is, and then the voice says and this is the sound of a motorcycle that's going too fast. It's just hard rock music and a siren.
 
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