Many car audio systems are at that point now with Android Auto and Apple Car Play.
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In a future filled with electric cars, AM radio may be left behind (off-topic)
- Thread starter DMK
- Start date
That's not true. Look around your local Seattle area. Count the number of Tesla Model 3's. Those aren't rich people behind the wheel, but rather could be considered middle-class.
As I mentioned to another EV nay-sayer, now that competition has increased with other auto makers, one can purchase an EV for the same as a gas powered car. Nissan Leaf and Kia Nero are prime examples. All the manufacturers are coming out with affordable EV's.
My wife wants to trade her car in for an EV, but will probably lease rather than buy. To me, leasing an EV makes more sense than buying one. But leasing a vehicle is just part of the transportation evolution.
If consumers don't want the clutter, there's no reason to expect manufacturers will force it on them.
It's called Apple CarPlay.
This is national thread now (not a Seattle thread), but I’m going to use Seattle as an example. It seems to me that many of the major AM players in the Seattle market have already seen the proverbial writing on the wall, and have taken steps to prepare. KIRO 710 refers to itself as “Seattle Sports” now. Similarly, 1000 calls itself “Northwest News.” It seems to me that these stations are already positioning themselves for a market where the listener will have to stream to listen.
Back to the conversation of terrestrial radio, I wonder if a company like Bonneville would ever try to get another FM signal in the market. As we know, there isn’t a ton of space on the FM dial, but that doesn’t preclude other stations from being traded or sold. 104.5 comes to mind as a possible example of a station that could be sold (simply because it’s a non-profit that isn’t trying to fend off any competition).
As for EV. It’s interesting technology, but I don’t have any interest in owning until somebody tells me that I have to.
Back to the conversation of terrestrial radio, I wonder if a company like Bonneville would ever try to get another FM signal in the market. As we know, there isn’t a ton of space on the FM dial, but that doesn’t preclude other stations from being traded or sold. 104.5 comes to mind as a possible example of a station that could be sold (simply because it’s a non-profit that isn’t trying to fend off any competition).
As for EV. It’s interesting technology, but I don’t have any interest in owning until somebody tells me that I have to.
Look around, the last stations sold were the former Sinclair stations. One could argue, those went at fire sale prices.
Other than EMF, nobody is doing swaps or mergers specifically for radio. In Seattle-Tacoma, those who own stations are either running steady and level, while the rest are looking toward the horizon sweating bullets. Seattle in particular; is one of those markets over-saturated with radio, all duking it out for a shrinking piece of revenue pie. It's survival mode just hanging on trying to figure out what's ahead.
I've posted this in every previous discussion of this topic. Basic facts:
Here are the electric vehicles without AM radio:
All Tesla models, the Ford F-150 Lightning (2023 model year---'22s had AM), three Mercedes-Benz EVs, two BMW EVs, the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-Tron, VW ID.4, all new Volvos.
That's it. And every one of those (save Tesla) is a decidedly low-volume car.
Tesla is the only American manufacturer to suggest that interference makes AM untenable in an electric car. Every other American maker of an EV (and every Asian maker) makes it work just fine.
Ford did not give a reason for its decision on the Lightning, and it continues to include AM in its other EV, the Mustang Mach-E.
The European brands are backing out because the AM band is nearing extinction in their home countries. On higher-volume vehicles, they can budget for AM-capable receivers in North America and another receiver for Europe, but again, these are small-volume vehicles.
In the third quarter of 2022 (latest numbers we have), EVs made up 6.1% of new car sales in the U.S. That's up from 2.5% in calendar year 2021.
Here are the electric vehicles without AM radio:
All Tesla models, the Ford F-150 Lightning (2023 model year---'22s had AM), three Mercedes-Benz EVs, two BMW EVs, the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-Tron, VW ID.4, all new Volvos.
That's it. And every one of those (save Tesla) is a decidedly low-volume car.
Tesla is the only American manufacturer to suggest that interference makes AM untenable in an electric car. Every other American maker of an EV (and every Asian maker) makes it work just fine.
Ford did not give a reason for its decision on the Lightning, and it continues to include AM in its other EV, the Mustang Mach-E.
The European brands are backing out because the AM band is nearing extinction in their home countries. On higher-volume vehicles, they can budget for AM-capable receivers in North America and another receiver for Europe, but again, these are small-volume vehicles.
In the third quarter of 2022 (latest numbers we have), EVs made up 6.1% of new car sales in the U.S. That's up from 2.5% in calendar year 2021.
J
JoeLouis
Guest
First they took the CD players, now they want to take the AM frequencies, soon we'll all have to subscribe to a satellite service or just sing to ourselves in the car.
Agree that the AM band in Europe is pretty much extinct, but there's no need for separate receivers for North America. Modern caar radios are software defined, and features can easily be enabled/disabled by the manufacturers.
So, they're building receivers in Europe with AM capability, but simply not enabling it?
Who wants to take the AM frequencies? What are you talking about?
AM frequencies are useless for anything else.
It won't be the manufacturers. It will be the app developers.
Where there are screens, the app makers and OS makers see dollar signs. Microsoft was going to include rolling advertisements on the task bar with Win11. It looks like they changed their mind, but it shows you the mentality of the app and OS makers. They are trying to max the revenue just like everybody else is. They will push it as far as they can take it.
Give it time. Ads are the way you pay for free apps.
And as the media pie gets larger, and the revenue slices get smaller, they're going to try to splatter you with ads wherever you look -- even inside your car, unless State or Federal law prohibits it. It will be just like the movie Minority Report, except it won't be a movie anymore. And when cars become self driving, all bets are off.
"This next mile of 405 has been brought to you by__________ (fill in the appropriate corporate advertiser)!"
Nearly all modern radios run off of DSP chips (instead of the 70s-10s superheterodyne IF chips), and most DSPs are capable of AM as well as FM, and in many of them the FM band itself is capable of tuning down to 64 Mhz, the OIRT / former Russian & Eastern European FM band.
The radio's brain, its microprocessor, isn't generally set up to use all of the capabilities that are built into the DSP chips. In a lot of radios, there's no way whatsoever to access those DSP chip capabilities without intensive (and probably physical) hacking.
So it's conceivable that in the EU the car radios could be FM only, even if the actual chip inside it also has AM, SW, and LW capabilities.
You may joke, but sports stadiums and programming are filled with this kind of advertisement already. In our hockey arena, they dim the lights over the ice betwen periods while the Zamboni is running and then bring them up to full intensity again when the players take the ice. Those "moments" are sponsored and brought to us fans by the power utility in that city. Watch an NBA game on TV. Each time there's a slam dunk, those are supposedly brought to us by Dunkin' Donuts. They shift the live broadcast of the game into a small thumbnail image on one side of the screen, while a brief blurb about Dunkin runs in a larger pane on the other side. Each time there's a foul shot, it's the same, but with a different sponsor. Football games have timeouts sponsored by XYZ company. Turnovers are "brought to us" by another. Two minute warnings yet another.
Even in high schools in my area some of them have touchdowns on the football games that are supposedly sponsored by some local business.
So, if the average age of the "American Fleet" is about 12 years, that means the annual turnover is just under 5%. If 6.1% of that 5% this year is EVs, then that is about 0.7% of total American cars. That is a rate the would make ALL cars in America to be electric in about 125 years.
Of course, the percentages are increasing, but my point is that only a tiny percentage of cars sold are electric, and a tiny percentage of those don't have AM.
And soccer, ever since the first sponsored play by play over 80 years ago only has tags during the play. From goals to penalty kicks, ever kind of game event is sponsored because play does not stop except at half-time. No time-outs where ads can run, no stoppages.
All of us who have run soccer on the radio know how effective repeated sponsor IDs of game events are. By comparison, the ever lengthening MLB and pro football games consist of more long pauses and non-events every year, it seems.
I think he means that manufacturers are going to "take away" AM radio capability in cars.
That is a mistaken concept, as what the car makers are not doing is wiring an AM antenna into the build. Even if the radio could have AM "activated" there is no signal source in Volvos and other AM-less cars.
Not to go off topic, but that's one of the reasons there aren't larger amounts of younger, dedicated fans of Major League Baseball compared to some other sports. This past season, the average 9 inning game took 3 hours and 3 minutes to get through. Consider the regular season consists of 162 games and that's a lot, especially when it seems people have more and more obligations for their time these days, and attention spans have grown smaller.
Which is too slow to affect climate change, hence the move by Europe and California to speed adoption by ending the sale of internal combustion passenger vehicles by 2035.
But—-even if that were to happen today, it would take 16 consecutive years of the best new car sales numbers thus far to replace the entire “American Fleet” with EVs. And we’ve never had two consecutive years at that level. A better guess is 25-35 years, with a small percentage (5 percent or less) of ICE vehicles still in use then .
This also assumes that widespread adoption can be influenced by mandates. California may have mandated an end to gas powered cars, but I see it being very difficult to impose that on the entire country. And as of right now, there are always serious doubts about how successful the future of EV will be in a state like California when the power grid is already not robust enough to handle it. If I were in California, I would probably just buy a gas powered car outside of the state to get around all of the problems that come with the technology.
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