Thirty years ago, that used to be the case. It isn't today. Terrestrial noise from consumer products and aging utilities have reduced the useful coverage of AM stations. That, and even people in rural communities get most of their entertainment and communications from smartphones, not AM radio.
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Fewer cars with AM radios...
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
Long-haul truckers and traveling vacationers passing through virtually empty areas of this country might have a gripe, but as you say, the in-car (or in-truck) audio entertainment options are many. As for the permanent residents of those places, AM radio isn't going to halt its decline into obsolescence just because map-dot people living in Kansas or Wyoming who don't have high-speed internet are bored.
If a community in Kansas or Nebraska or Montana still values its live-and-local low-dial-position AM country-and-farm radio station, it'll survive. If the community no longer feels that it needs that station, it'll disappear (probably after a few years of satellite sports or religion).
In an emergency cell phones don't always work.
Emergencies generally evidence themselves in ways that make those affected by them fully aware of that fact. You look out the window, see a tornado atomizing the house down the street and moving away from you, you're not affected. The people affected see and hear a tornado heading their way and act appropriately. Very few are turning on Country 1380 for instructions.
And do what? 99% of stations are automated most hours. Sure, someone can drop in a file, let their EAS box go live, or go live remotely, but the thought of a rural station coming to life with wall to wall information and news ended years ago. There are exceptions, but being in that sort of role within a community costs money.
"Wildfire? In the garden? I'm not moving an inch until I hear Kickin' Ken Wood mention it on 1460 The Weasel."
There is one exception in the continental US..The Navajo Nation Indian Reservation. It is enormous, with a large portion of it's over 300,000 inhabitants living isolated without electricity and running water. The extreme level of poverty is sad, but that's another story. Cell phone reception is spotty, non existent in many areas. 50kw KTNN is the main source for info, news, entertainment, etc. It's literally a lifeline for many on the reservation. Once again, this is the exception, but places like this do exist.
Most likely nothing. The Ancient Modulation/Medium Wave broadcast band is an ITU worldwide allocation.
The truckers migrated to satellite radio two decades ago.
But it can be changed... just as the FM band in Japan uses what in the Western Hemisphere were the low-band VHF channels.
My thought: Higher power TISs
But Japan is in ITU Region 3. The Western Hemisphere is Region 2. There are lots of region-specific allocation.
Beyond that, I have no idea what non-broadcast services could use the AM band. Other than hams, of course, but we'll take any frequencies we can get. 😁
Ham's don't use the spectrum they're assigned. And they'd better be careful; the wireless providers are eyeing the 440 and 1.2Mhz ham bands.
The Feds are the primary users of those bands, so the NTIA would have to approve. Unfortunately, that's already happening with the 3300 MHz band, so it's not out of the question.
Trust me, when there's auction money involved, there won't be any approval issues. One only has to look as far as the TV repack.
And they can be changed, particularly if a band is abandoned or is needed for a new technology.
Good point. The band is way to narrow for any kind of data service and the night interference makes it useless as a 24 hour a day service.
The days of lonely, over-caffeinated truckers driving cross country at night with Coast to Coast blasting from a clear channel are gone. Hell, some modern day truckers are now live streaming their drives and making money off of their "trucking" vlogs.
What a time to be alive!
Considering this is a thread about vehicles, there's not many major highways with massive coverage holes left. Sure, there are gaps here and there. But reliability and availability is at an all time high. In an emergency, the chances of being able to dial 911 are pretty good since the FCC forces carriers to provide bandwidth for such calls to every capable device (even phones without SIM cards).
20 years ago, who could have predicted that you would be able to FaceTime your family in Texas, watch the news on YouTube, and invest in the stock market from a rest stop near Drayton, North Dakota? As reliable as AM is, it is not stopping people from dumping the technology. People are ok with losing reliability for more features.
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