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Car Makes & Models with No AM Band.

I'm not aware that stations turned off HD out of concern of causing interference.
A famous case was KDKA and WBZ. The two adjacent channel clear channel stations had significant hashing of each other and it was reported (although not with a formal statement) that they were cutting night HD.
 
Good to see Congress wasting yet more taxpayer money, but dinosaurs protecting dinosaurs seems somehow not surprising.
I am sure folks like the PersIan and different Asian communities in just LA will not share your sentiments…. More than a million just in this area.
 
A famous case was KDKA and WBZ. The two adjacent channel clear channel stations had significant hashing of each other and it was reported (although not with a formal statement) that they were cutting night HD.
WYSL submitted a complaint of interference from WBZ's HD signal:
 
A famous case was KDKA and WBZ. The two adjacent channel clear channel stations had significant hashing of each other and it was reported (although not with a formal statement) that they were cutting night HD.
WYSL submitted a complaint of interference from WBZ's HD signal:

That article about WBZ was from 2007. There were numerous threads here on the subject for at least five years. Then this in 2012:


But it wasn't anything consistent. The HD at WBZ would be on and off for years. Even recently I've seen threads about HD coming back to WBZ on the Boston board. Of course now WBZ and KDKA are no longer co--owned.
 
How about mandatory 8-track players?
Forget that. Nobody's mentioned CB yet. It's interactive, it doesn't require a license anymore, its demographics are younger than AM's, and it's full of interesting personalities fluent in every accent imaginable, providing they're Southern. Maybe one of them could tell you a tornado's heading your way as you drive around the backroads of eastern Tennessee some summer night and save your life. So I say ...
"A CB in Every Dash -- Make America 1975 Again!"

And that's a big 10-4. Got yer ears on, Congress?
 
I am sure folks like the PersIan and different Asian communities in just LA will not share your sentiments…. More than a million just in this area.
At what point does the government need to tell businesses how to build their products and to be clear, I’m not talking about rules around products not knowingly be dangerous to users or the public, although some of the same voices who squeal at any infringement on the right to pollute or be subject to workplace safety rules suddenly become interventionist when it comes to…radio. Seriously?


We can go back to decades old product requirements, but this is the 21st century. The world has changed dramatically. If the cost isn’t a concern to a manufacturer and they want to keep it in the vehicles for whatever reason they desire, great. But because we need to artificially prop up a gradually dying technology? It’s almost comically absurd. Not to mention all this fuss is more molehill than mountain.
 
Everyone needs to remember that, for a chunk of the time when AM was the primary source for emergency information, a lot of cars didn't have it. We entered World War II with only 20 percent of new cars having radios. That number went up fast post-war, but cars could be bought without radios (the "radio delete" option) for a long time after.

As late as 1984 (possibly later, but I bought an '84 new), Honda shipped its cars to the USA without radios. They "recommended" their own branded units, sold as dealer-installed options (I went for a new Alpine unit instead), but you could simply have chosen not to put one in at all, and perhaps some folks did.
 
At what point does the government need to tell businesses how to build their products

Depends on the business. I don't need the government telling the person making my burrito what to do. But most of the products we use today aren't built here. For example: Radios. They're not built by American companies, and truthfully, they're not built for Americans. So it's fine to be libertarian about things we can control. But there are a LOT of things we don't, and we need the government to speak for us because we don't have meetings with the president of China.

Add to that the fact that business only cares about making a profit. We see that every day in radio. Stations don't program their stations for what the people want. They program for the people the advertisers want. It's a very different system. So to assume that companies actually care about customers and make products based on what the public wants is clearly not true when we look at the radio industry.
 
Everyone needs to remember that, for a chunk of the time when AM was the primary source for emergency information, a lot of cars didn't have it. We entered World War II with only 20 percent of new cars having radios. That number went up fast post-war, but cars could be bought without radios (the "radio delete" option) for a long time after.

As late as 1984 (possibly later, but I bought an '84 new), Honda shipped its cars to the USA without radios. They "recommended" their own branded units, sold as dealer-installed options (I went for a new Alpine unit instead), but you could simply have chosen not to put one in at all, and perhaps some folks did.
Until recently I didn't know cars ever came with no radio, because I had never seen one. After a thread (not here) with someone lamenting that people spent money on things they didn't need )"why aren't you using a flip phone? Why do you have a computer? You can stop by employers and fill out paper applications!" and "why are you driving cars with radios, power brakes, power windows and power steering?" The radio part was interesting.
 
Depends on the business. I don't need the government telling the person making my burrito what to do. But most of the products we use today aren't built here. For example: Radios. They're not built by American companies, and truthfully, they're not built for Americans. So it's fine to be libertarian about things we can control. But there are a LOT of things we don't, and we need the government to speak for us because we don't have meetings with the president of China.

Add to that the fact that business only cares about making a profit. We see that every day in radio. Stations don't program their stations for what the people want. They program for the people the advertisers want. It's a very different system. So to assume that companies actually care about customers and make products based on what the public wants is clearly not true when we look at the radio industry.
If radios were the only way advertisers could reach consumers (other than billboards) in the car, radios wouldn't be going away.

Most places I know, there are still standards imposed by the government on how your burrito is cooked, cleanliness, temperature, storage, etc. (Despite the relentless mocking of the woman who sued McDonald's over hot coffee, it wasn't just hot, it was scalding to the point of causing major burns).
 
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After reading through the entire bill. I don't see anywhere that it says the AM signal must be received without any interference. So even if it's required, electric cars and people driving by them will still have problems hearing AM stations.
 
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation speaks up.

It's kind of insulting statement because there are some manufacturing regulations that iPhones have to follow.

And there are technologies that exist in modern cars that pre-date AM radio. The gas combustion engine being one.
 
Compare the size and the extent of networks (of people) of the automakers' governmental affairs operations with those of major broadcasters' governmental affairs operations and you're likely to get a good idea of who's going to win on this dispute. My own suspicion is that broadcasters are bringing a butter knife to a sword fight. They have less to offer than the automakers do.
 
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