Is AM radio dead? | Hacker News Reader

Is AM radio dead?

jeffgeerling.com

The BBC World Service shortwave broadcast [0] is still one of the few (safe) ways people can get outside news while living in war-torn regions and totalitarian regimes across Africa, Middle east, and Asia.

People arguing about Audio quality are missing the point of AM: Robustness in adversity.

Receivers are easy to put together and repair, transmission travels long distances beyond enemies/oppressors and unlike online access nobody can intercept your traffic or estimate your location.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2x9tqt6mc05vB2S37j...

BBC Arabic was just discontinued last week. FTA: The move came as part of cost-cutting measures under which the news service is also ending its radio programming in 10 other languages, including Persian, Chinese and Hindi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/business/media/bbc-arabic...

Having discontinued most of the over the air broadcasts to Eastern Europe they turned them back on pretty quickly starting in February last year - I've no doubt that once Ukraine is finished the Foreign Office will be nagging to withdraw the funding again.

So stupid, it's a lot of soft power for peanuts. Probably the suits are saying "but what about the internet" but the people you want to reach are the people whose internet is likely to be turned off when you want to talk to them.

You might have missed that Broadcast onto Ukrain territory / Central and eastern Europe in general has been turned off again.

That's tragic and shortsighted... for whatever faults BBC coverage might have, those 39M listeners it was reaching will now no longer have these alternate perspectives easily available to them relative to the other media in their countries. Less information is always a loss. And even if we ignore any altruistic motivations, it's a loss of soft power for the British / Western operations.

> That's tragic and shortsighted

Tragic absolutely, shortsighted - no. You can't operate without money and news organizations can't survive in todays environment. The way we consume and gather around information simply isn't the same anymore.

it's the bbc, they are state funded.

They were funded by a separate tax that everyone had to pay which got discontinued recently.

The TV license is still in effect and not everyone has to pay it. [1]

How on earth have you obtained such obvious misinformation and why are you posting it so confidently?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/tv-licence

World service was funded separately from general taxation until a few years ago.

It's an absolute disgrace and I hope everyone who is represented by an MP is writing to them to protest. Its bad enough to Brexit but to willingly give up soft power to save a tiny sliver of budget is shocking.

Whoever figured "well its on the internet" appears to have forgotten that its purpose is to serve people under the sorts of governments that would aggressively block internet access to news sources unfriendly to the government.

On another note BBC Hausa service is facing mass resignation due to the newly opened TRT Hausa service (Turkey) promising the staff the BBC staff freedom to report positive News about Africa, unlike the BBC that only wants them to report negative and News about war and underdevelopment.

Not to be pedantic, receiving is actually traceable to a motivated enough agent with sufficiently expensive equipment, especially if your receiver is home made or poorly built, due to oscillator leak back, there are a few other effects that can be used such as shadow casting. This gives a light idea of what’s possible: https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/2160/is-there-a-way-... I simply mention this because in some regimes and some situations, it’s best to understand what’s possible.

I'm sure you're right that a "motivated enough agent" might trace a receiver but the two replies in the ham.stackexchange.com answer seem pretty clear that it's very difficult to do in the real world.

I appreciate technology may have changed but in the cold war many East Germans listened to the BBC East German service, in particular a programme called "Letters Without Signatures" [0] which relied on East Germans writing letters to the BBC . The programme ran for many years and clearly had a significant audience, I think if the Stasi had been able to detect reception they would have done so.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbchistoryresearch/entries/9a651...

Odds of being tracked down that way are near-nil given that your oscillator could for anything. Also you can build a crummy AM receiver without one: https://www.buildcircuit.com/how-to-make-a-batteryless-cryst...

I had a "bionic man" doll when I was a kid that had a crystal radio built into his back (although on reflection it might have been the 3 faced robot guy).

Seemed like magic at the time, got me into simple electronics.

> not to be pedantic

(proceeds to be extremely pedantic)

Same goes for Tor. If you're one of 3 using Tor in your entire city, it won't be difficult to target you. This kind of stuff only works well when its used en mass, making the government have too many targets to bother.

You don't need a local oscillator to receive AM.

However, a nonlinear junction detector will still find a receiver (among other things).

AFAIK only if you are using a het-design receiver, a DSP receiver should be immune to that tracing?

It would need to sample baseband. If you are using an LO to down-convert or up-convert that would be detectable.

"AM" in radio context generally means medium wave, not shortwave.

AM in radio context means amplitude modulation - it’s the modulation, has nothing to do with the band. In common everyday layperson context it means all of medium-wave terrestrial broadcast.

But even commercial pilots know their radios are AM for instance.

I meant specifically the phrase "AM radio" - a product advertised as such will usually not be capable of receiving shortwave, unless that is specifically mentioned. People who know what AM actually means tend to use words like "transceiver" anyway, not "radio".

Is this an US thing? Because over here in 80s radios had "long wave", "medium wave", "short wave" (1..6) and "ultra short wave", the later being called "FM" in export models. I do not recall bands being reffered to as "AM".

Does it include LW/MW only, or is shortwave also called "AM radio"?

A common radio will have an AM band 530 kHz to 1700 kHz and a FM band 88 to 108 MHz. You'd have to buy a special radio to get more options.

If you look up "AM/FM radio" on Amazon, you'll see plenty of examples. It does not include shortwave, unless specifically labelled "AM/FM/SW". Whether LW is included or not varies, probably because LW isn't used for broadcasting in US.

I don't think it's just a US or NA thing. In my experience, at least, every casual consumer radio I ever handled that had English labels on it, outside of vintage stuff, used this terminology. More advanced consumer radios like Tecsun will usually avoid "AM" and use LW/MW/SW as appropriate, but then still refer to VHF as FM.

> People who know what AM actually means tend to use words like "transceiver" anyway, not "radio"

I referred to pilots as a counter example.

We know what AM really means and we call it a “radio.”

People also say CB radio - I’ve never heard it referred as a transceiver by that group. Hams, both.

Honestly FM receivers are not much more complicated than AM receivers and are much better. A full superheterodyne is not necessary if you really are in a survivalist scenario. A single transistor is the only non-linear component.

https://www.circuitbasics.com/what-are-fm-receivers/

Yeah but propagation.

FM is far more restricted by line of sight.

AM is not dead between cities in Texas, if you're into Country, Tejano, or church broadcasts.

The modulation, AM vs FM isn't necessarily the big determine factor on distance. AM can general travel farther on less power, but its more about the frequency choice. FM radio stations usually operate in the VHF/UHF band, which regardless of the modulation technique, it much more likely to be line of site. AM radio stations tend to operate on HF. HF frequencies have a higher change to do bounces. Its more about characteristics of the frequency being used in this case. Under the right conditions, the 6m band, even with FM, can experience "sporadic E" and you can talk quiet far on it.

FM does not transmit to thousands of kilometers...

Only because of the frequencies typically used, not because it's FM

No. The maths show that AM can be received at much lower signal-to-noise ratios.

And FM is intolerant of multipath reception which happens a on SW.

The FM receiver that you linked to is actually an AM receiver, but it is using "slope Detection" to recover the audio.

And FM is absolutely not "better" than AM. It does give a clearer signal on strong signals, but is demonstrably worse on weak signals.

Just curious why they hopping frequency

Shortwave propagates differently during the day and at night. Its propagation is mainly due to bounding off layers of the ionosphere. Different layers absorb and reflect different frequencies. During the day (relative to the broadcaster) frequencies above 12MHz propagate farther than lower frequencies. At night this effect is reversed.

Doesn't BBC WS broadcast over shortwave, not AM? I used to listen to it in many different countries (though no longer because ... Internet).

They used to have an AM transmitter that reached most? of Europe, but it was shut down in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orfordness_transmitting_statio...

Broadcast shortwave (and long wave) uses Amplitude Modulation, the term "AM" has been hijacked in some forms of English to mean "medium wave" but it's not what it means to radio engineers etc. I can't complain because I regularly refer to VHF broadcasts as FM ;-)

BTW in addition to shortwave BBC World Service broadcasts (or provides material for rebroadcast by local operators) in : Long Wave; VHF; DAB and Satellite.

Receivers are easy to put together and repair

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Building a receiver out of whatever scrap you have around is a highly recommended exercise, and even more so if you have any kids (do it with them) --- the astonishment at seeing a pile of parts come together and make sounds, seemingly without any power source, is definitely an unforgettable experience.

The electronic gadgets that surround us inevitably have their roots in tangible physics, so projects like this that demonstrate that fact are enlightening and wonderous.

Radio was among the first means of long-distance, widespread wireless communication owing to its simplicity, and that simplicity means it's very hardy against adversity and unlikely to meet its practical demise any time soon.

> But as more and more radio stations in the US are controlled by ever fewer radio conglomerates

This is what's underlying it all. Following deregulation, fewer hands gained control of more outlets nationwide, homogenizing for maximum margin on advertising to the markets with the broadest reach. Top-40, country, r&b, at-work, alternative, and at best some market segmentation in parts of the country with significant ethnic demographics.

Advertisers mainly want to pick from this menu, and AM wasn't on it, with the exception of nationally syndicated talk and regional news and sports. That put AM in a down-market position, which put it at lower revenues, which made profitability a bigger struggle, which is a big sign pointing to the "niche" door of relative commercial obscurity.

The technical aspects are a factor in terms of appealing to listeners and thus advertisers, but the decisions are made entirely on commercial grounds.

On FM, though, the frequencies from the bottom to 92 MHz are reserved for non-profit stations. You can find the local NPR affiliates there, but also college stations and lots of weird & wonderful one-offs. Like KKUP around here:

https://kkup.org/

Or religious stations, which operate as commercial in all but name. Non-profits and education and weird one-offs (I’ve worked for more than one) struggle to get by independently and are largely subsidized by some larger entity with actual cash flow. Maintaining the licenses and broadcast equipment is no small cost. But yes you’re correct, not all stations are Channels that are Clear or patronized by Snt. Clarity.

Or religious stations.

KKUP, which I actually volunteered at once, is 100% listener-funded. I just heard a song on there that I haven't heard in forever, this morning: Working Class Hero (John Lennon).

Just out of interest what sort of test do you have to pass to be a "Religious Station" ? If I start a cult of Elvis Presley followers do I get to operate a "Religious Station" ?

There's no test. You just have to be a non-profit.

It's a corporate filing status. That's your hurdle. There's a bunch of unusually generous benefits religions get.

For instance, religious workers is a separate and more forgiving visa process for immigration.

Next time you drive down through an immigrant community and see some implausibly high density of churches per block, that's what's going on.

Religious organizations are also exempt from minimum wage laws and have special carve outs for things like food inspection and OSHA.

Also they don't have to do property tax. They get all the protection of the state with zero of the responsibility.

He was talking about owning a radio station, though. Not all that stuff.

> If I start a cult of Elvis Presley followers do I get to operate a "Religious Station" ?

The 24 Hour Church of Elvis[0] definitely should have had a radio station.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hour_Church_of_Elvis

"At the end of the tour, Pierce would try (often desperately) to sell t-shirts."

Heh heh, I bought one!

You and me both.

Real question: where does the 4-letter radio naming scheme comes from? This seems to be a unique US thing.

These are called a “call sign” [1]. The International Telecommunication Union issues prefixes[2], and in the US the Federal Communications Commission issues four- (formerly three-) letter call signs under their prefixes[3][4] to commercial broadcast stations. They also require (or required? not sure what the modern regulations are) stations to regularly announce their call sign for identification purposes, so a lot of radio stations folded the sign into their branding since they had to use it anyway.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_call_signs

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU_prefix

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_signs_in_the_United_State...

[4]: Notably, ‘K’ and ‘W’ generally indicate geography, west/east of the Mississippi River respectively.

I know Canada uses C, ex: CHUM-FM and Mexico uses X like XETV in Tijuana that used to be the Fox affiliate for San Diego

Yeah what happened to terrestrial radio is a prime example of PEGs utterly obliterating everything they touch. iHeartMedia and Cumulus Media, two of the remaining conglomerates, are billions and billions in debt. I don't know how they still function

> Advertisers mainly want to pick from this menu

Stations publish their ratings by demographics and their rate card. Most national ads are moved by agency and this is all they look at. "Popular with women 25-35 at less than $60/minute? Perfect."

Local advertisers might care a little more, but not much, typically. If they're a long lasting business, they get media buying savvy pretty quickly. It's not absurdly complicated and the whole process is generally shepherded by sales executives that make pure commission.

> That put AM in a down-market position

The ratings and demographics drive this. AM is mono at 10kHz and doesn't penetrate buildings or daylight particularly well. FM is stereo at 30kHz and has far fewer issues.

There is a station driven side, but it's mostly costs. AM stations are more expensive to run. There are more modern modulation techniques, but standard AM is a power hog. FM is far more forgiving and allows you to create gain with multiple antennas in a way that AM does not. FM is easier to make directional and allows for co-location and combination in much less physical space and cost than AM. Complicated AM arrangements require an "array" of up to 5 towers to create the correct directional day/night pattern signal granted by the license.

> which is a big sign pointing to the "niche" door of relative commercial obscurity.

It was around 2006 that AM started to lose it's ratings ground. Unsurprisingly it's when you saw things like "Air America" come into existence, and XM and Sirius launching satellites and gobbling up talk formats. In my view from the time it was all a response to the big killer.. the internet.

It was at this point in time it was starting to become obvious that the internet could entirely replace radio, and for national syndicated talk formats, it could most easily replace those. For those in the industry who knew where to look, they could see the writing on the wall. They were viewed as pariahs and it fell on entirely deaf ears, but they were there and they were trying to communicate all of this.

> but the decisions are made entirely on commercial grounds.

That's where I disagree. It was technical grounds. The listeners moved. Advertisers follow the listeners. It's not some sad story of purely monetary pressures destroying an old industry, it's a hopeful story of a new industry still desperately trying to break free of the vestiges of the old ways of operating and thinking.

I don’t think we disagree much if at all. You’ve expanded on my points nicely.

Well, maybe you’re more hopeful than a curmudgeon like me.

It's certainly 99% dead for me personally but based on the ad dollars still flowing in, I'm assuming there is a still a big audience, even if it's on the decline.

What's more surprising to me at this point is Sirius. I just don't understand how this is still a $22 billion dollar company, doing $9 billion in revenue and is still growing revenue. I don't see where the value is. I haven't subscribed in almost a decade but when I left, the audio quality was really bad -- terrible digital compression artifacts -- and there wasn't really anything that interesting in terms of musical programming that couldn't be had with a streaming service like Spotify. Maybe it's all Stern and sports content that's driving revenue or is there still a big legion of people who actually subscribe for the music?

Or all the folks who live where the cell reception is sh*t (eg off the freeway) but can see the sky...

Are there that many people or places though? Even from my small hometown with a population of 300 tucked away in the mountains, there's 5g cell service from the major providers.

I'm certain places like that exist, but I'm guessing it's far less than most would imagine.

My bet is a non-insignificant amount of sirus's money today comes from their model of making subscriptions really annoying to cancel. And, of course, preying on old people that may have forgot about their subscription or don't get streaming.

There is a very large number of areas in Colorado that don't have coverage.

I didn't realize how sparse coverage was in the West until I moved out here. Once you're 5 minutes off of an interstate outside of a metro area it's pretty common still to have no signal.

Verizon and AT&T do pretty well as long as you stick to highways, though there will still be a few dead zones even on the interstates. T-Mobile is hopeless once you are 5 miles outside the suburbs of any city. My wife has T-Mobile for her work phone and there are a few dead zones in our suburb of 100,000 people.

Oh wow, didn't know there was still such a difference, I've only ever had TMobile and Mint.

I wonder if it's worth waiting for T-Mobile's satellite features, or if I should move to Verizon?

Absolutely.

Driving up from the SF Bay to Tahoe, you'll lose cell service as you pass through the mountains - especially if you take the Highway 50 route. Drive up to Oregon, and you'll lose cell service for a long stretch roughly near Klamath Falls. (As an aside, that part of the country doesn't even have NEXRAD weather radar.)

And this is all while on the freeway or major highways. There's plenty of places out west without a reliable cell signal, or sometimes a signal that's so weak that it's not usable for data.

Where I live in New Mexico has consistently poor reception withing about 60 miles. My Spotify is almost always in offline mode since it chokes on poor signal. Radio and TV have repeaters on a nearby mountain that rebroadcast a few stations. Meanwhile Sirius works everywhere except in my garage.

For me it mostly replaces my CD changer, which doesn't exist in newer cars. When I can't decide what to listen to, have poor signal, or don't want to fiddle with the controls, it gives me a nice selection on fallbacks.

Your cell service is likely subsidized by some grant so it’s biasing your mental model or it’s a popular tourist destination.

Sirius XM is still sold as a subscription and addon package to a lot of new vehicles so the revenue probably comes in from recurring monthly subscription payments that people just get used to paying for so they can have satellite based music wherever they are.

SiriusXM plays a huge role in aviation and maritime data (e.g. onboard weather). I bet things like this are a large portion of the revenue.

As another reply said, there are plenty of places where you still can’t get a cell signal but you can get satellite. Sirius is huge for Truckers for this reason. But even where I live (Rural) If I drive East I don’t have cell signal pretty much until I hit I-5 once I leave the area around my town. It takes an hour ish to hit I-5 directly but the route I prefer to take if I’m headed to Longview or Portland which is the only reason I’d go that way is along the Columbia River and there is no cell signal for what is about an hour and a half of the drive.

I mean my music is downloaded for offline use and I don’t want a radio style of listening experience, but for my parents it is the only viable way for them to listen to music on that drive. And with regular radio you’re going to be trying to find stations you want to listen to as you live in and out of range.

Granted my parents also have a grandfathered lifetime membership.

I subscribe and enjoy it. It's great to catch Formula 1 when I'm out and about doing errands, and for 99% of my use case the music side of it is just fine. Commuting to and from work I don't need much more than "random playlist of genre x"

It works out to be $120/year, and that's with Howard Stern, and all the sports etc.

Could I do all this streaming with my phone? Most likely, however with this I don't worry when I drive down into the States that I'm now "Roaming" or really worry about data usage at all. Also I don't have to think about it.

If you look through their releases, the growth appears to be coming from doing a better job of getting a free-trial included in almost every new car and like half of used cars (I assume this is done through dealer networks).

Given that, if free-trials convert at a steady rate, voila, you have growth.

In terms of why people like it:

1) There's something somewhat Tik-Tik-like about having hyper-specialized music served to you without putting in the work of building a playlist

2) Streaming services have the somewhat annoying tendency of 'recommending' new songs to you so they can pay the artists less, since they were a 'discovery' mechanism. This leads to bad outcomes if all you want is 80's on 8 (said differently, if you like 80's music, chances are you know the songs you like already)

3) The lowest their is $13/month, which is cheaper than a phone plan with more data for a lot of people

4) There's a certain 'Sunday Ticket/League Pass' element, since you can get the radio coverage of nearly any pro sports game (even in home markets I often struggle to find the radio coverage of certain games)

5) For the traditional satellite service, they're broadcast only so they have no idea what any subscriber is listening to at any point, and some people like that.

Had it for years on the road for work and it was a life saver, never having to search for stations and listening to ads all the time. When I started working local I dropped it for streaming and that was good enough.

A few years later I was taking a multi state trip and reactivated, when I got back I re-subbed both vehicles. It's any kind of radio with almost no interruptions and it's worth the price.

> For the traditional satellite service, they're broadcast only so they have no idea what any subscriber is listening to at any point, and some people like that.

Newer cars collect data on what you're listening to and report back. At least on mine it can be disabled, but it is something that's out there.

I actually really like SiriusXM. I have 3-4 stations that I play nearly constantly whether in the car, on the house sonos system, or while on transit. My 3-year-old car has a decent (stock) sound-system, and I honestly don't hear any compression artifacts. Their IP streaming is high-quality.

Most of their music stations are basically well-curated, 4-hour playlists. Most channels have guest hosts/DJs that are legitimate to the genres (e.g. Diplo hosts his station at times) that update the playlists periodically. I still augment my music with Apple Music and podcasts, but I spend far more time with Sirius.

The unfortunate part is that they still play stupid and hostile pricing games. "Promotions" that you have to call to renew to get the stupid $25/month charge reduced to like $7/month. At that price it beats Pandora, terrestrial (am/fm) radio, and even Spotify/Apple Music if you primarily listen to curated playlists.

You sound pretty close to me to be honest. When my wife and I go on a long trip it makes it easy to put on in the car. I tend to have it on when I'm working around the house during the weekend. For me it fills in a void of wanting to listen to something more than background music, but not wanting to choose more than a genre that fits my mood. For whatever reasons all of the algorithmic "stations" that I've had on other services either deviate too much from what I originally wanted, or are too narrow and don't get enough variety.

Another thing that Sirius does that a lot of people aren't talking about is their data services. Having updated weather and fish maps live while you're offshore is pretty handy and satellite internet connections can be very pricey.

...you don't need a (relatively) expensive single sideband set and radio-nerd tendencies to pick up weather data offshore where you live? That is pretty great if so. Would that there were more of it.

I'm a little confused about your comment.

This is stuff like fishing recommendations by species, sea surface heights, temperature contors, 30m deep temperature condors, plankton concentrations, weather radar, storm tracks, wave heights, and more and then integrated into common Garmin, Raymarine, Lowrance, Simrad, and other equipment that many boats would already have. All of that data constantly updated and refreshed live even when you're miles out to sea and can't pick up common line of sight style transmissions.

Its not just a METAR weather report from an airport kinda near the shore.

I know the stuff. I wasn't clear, and was asking, quite what the parent poster is mentioning people getting here as it didn't sound quite like the forms of this service I'm aware of - I'm not sure there is something like it everywhere. Setups I've seen with full "straight onto your plotter, live" stuff have only been satellite.

The reason I subscribe to Sirius/XM is for simulcasts of news and business channels, listening to live sports events (while driving or not in front of a TV), and some of the music genre channels that are hosted by DJs, in that order.

I am switching my subscription from satellite to streaming because I will save a pretty significant portion of the monthly fee, I stream everything else I listen to or watch at home, in the office, or in the car, and the CarPlay experience is much better when you are using 100% streaming audio.

Their sports offerings are what gets me. I watch a lot of hockey and use it to listen to random games while doing other things.

huh never thought about radio games. all of the streaming packages seem overpriced but radio might be a much crappier but tolerable option, with the bonus of having other radio channels.

still gonna donate to Soma.FM tho

>Maybe it's all Stern and sports content that's driving revenue or is there still a big legion of people who actually subscribe for the music?

My dad subscribes for Bruce Springsteen's channel/show/whatever. Dude just can never get enough of Springsteen. I'd imagine there are other fans of other artists doing the same.

Pearl Jam Radio is fantastic - they play a couple full concerts per day.

I never liked Stern. I use it because it came with the car and is only 5$ a month

I think a large part of their market is that the radios come pre-installed in new cars. I dislike how it is impossible to subscribe to the middle 2 tiers of programming without actually placing a telephone call. I have zero interest in Stern or sports.

I subscribe to the Sirius XM app. I like the music stations. I have Apple Music too so I could get along without it, but I actually like the DJs, and although I could probably find similar channels on Apple, some of the Sirius mixes are a bit unique so it’s worth $10 a month to me.

The app. Not the satellite. The satellite sound quality is horrible. I can see how satellite was worth it before 4G, but now I just use my phone in the car.

I like road trips. And then I really find Sirius XM well worth the money. FM coverage is too local and choppy when going through hills / mountains. 5G? Yea, right. The closest you get is 4G from another provider, which throttles you (e.g. using T-Mobile, which will jump to AT&T where there is no T-Mobile. It'll show 4G but the speeds are slower than 56K).

So Sirius XM there it is.

Tmobile jumps to AT&T? What did you do for that to happen? We have good AT&T service in our house but when I tried the Tmobile test drive (or whatever it is that gets you a free hotspot for a while) it struggled to stay connected at all.

If I drove more I'd probably fork over the money for Sirius. I had it for free in my car for a while and it was certainly much better than FM stations. I did one week-long road trip in the Western U.S. and it was pretty cool to just keep it on the same station and it works even when there's no cell signal. Even their pop/hits stations are way better than my local FM stations, both in music selection/variation and obviously no ads/terrible DJ chatter.

But with my current driving habits that's maybe one or two weeks a year where I would really care to have it.

But wouldn't Spotify music and podcasts be a better option? Download content for listening when you lack cell coverage?

In no way am i able to understand how radio would be a better alternative, but thats just my own bias.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for $5/month or whatever discount I'm paying, it's well worth it to have a wide variety of music available on demand. I learn things I didn't know, hear music I'd not otherwise hear, occasionally they'll have well-established musicians & producers do a set and talk about people they know and why they like their music so much.

I'm sure Spotify has its own advantages (I'm a long-time Pandora user, haven't tried it) but not having to plan anything in advance and having full access to all of the stations in the middle of nowhere is quite nice.

I’d pay $5 a month if it was going to be the permanent price! When I’ve looked into it it’s more like $20 a month.

Based on my limited time with the service (bought a new vehicle last January) if I let the trial period subscription lapse, they'll offer the lower price after a couple of weeks to lure me back in.

I just let myself be lured, and anticipate doing so next time.

I refuse to support that business model of quadrupling the price for customers who forget to beg for the intro price every year. It feels so scummy. So Sirius gets no money from me.

I agree, they also make it really hard to cancel, requiring waiting on hold and arguing with them a la AOL. They don’t seem to realize that the fact they behave this way is objectionable to whatever my demographic is… millennials I guess. I love the programming on Sirius XM but refuse to use it on principle.

I figure if I can swallow my objections and give Disney, Amazon, and Google money, Sirius is barely a scratch on my conscience.

I don’t like it on principle, but also I don’t like it because I know I’m likely to forget.

It is always possible to get the service for about $5-7/month by contacting customer support and mentioning the price and switching to a competitor. They’ll put you on a promo that lasts a year for $5-7/month. You, in turn, will put another “save $100” reminder into your calendar for next year before the billing date.. and the cycle will continue. The cycle is well documented on the subreddit, no need to take me at my word.

Yes it’s dumb but sxm also works better for my personal situation than Spotify etc.

I already pay for Apple Music and use that the vast majority of the time, especially when I’m by myself. But I still put the local FM hits station on regularly, either as background music when driving with friends or family or just when I can’t be bothered to choose something on my phone. I’d probably check out their genre stations and non-music content from time to time. It just doesn’t add up to enough to make it worth the cost, but it could if I found myself driving more.

Locally stored podcasts work, but Spotify over the air can accidentally rack up some nasty data roaming charges that you don't realize until later. And there are significant stretches of the highway where cellphone data is spotty (pun not intended).

Siris radio works everywhere you aren't driving next to something blocking the line of sight to the sky. It maintains the channel across significant distances so you're not hunting for "ok, what to listen to next?" (one time when driving to my grandparents house for Thanksgiving and changing the station as one faded I heard Alices Restaurant four times).

The main thing with Siris for driving is that its got DJs and news and such.

On my great road trip I had an iPod loaded up with songs and had that on shuffle for a few months... and while I had a few hundred hours of songs, they were all things I heard before.

Part of listening to the radio, Spotify, or Siris is that the next song might be something different.

---

https://4m3ric4.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33217395

> Download content for listening when you lack cell coverage?

That's how I use Spotify, and I've gotten the impression that nobody at Spotify has actually eaten their own dogfood w.r.t. offline listening:

- Downloaded songs/albums/playlists will occasionally un-download themselves

- Even when they're already downloaded, the UI will occasionally insist on loading some online resource, preventing me from actually picking something out of my downloaded library until either I regain cell reception or the UI eventually gives up

Meanwhile, Spotify's radio feature seems to be getting progressively worse, and gaps are popping up in its library. Spotify was at one point the thing that got me to stop pirating music; I'm about ready to start doing so again (or buying from Bandcamp for the select few artists I listen to with music on there).

I feel the same confusion about why anyone would want to download content. I don't want to pick specific bands/albums/songs. I want to always be listening live to new stuff. I also think all podcasts are awful (boring and toxic).

My in laws are in their 70s and still drive. They have CarPlay and Apple Music but Sirius works like the radio. I think sometimes companies like Apple, for all their UI genius, miss the obvious option to just mimic the thing they are trying to kill. In this case, just have an option to just make a fake dial of station and skip around. If feel similarly about tv services like YouTube tv and Hulu, just mimic the think you’re trying to kill.

The new things that become popular aren't strictly better than the things they replace. In many cases, it seems like the newness factor that makes it popular to people at all

I subscribe mostly for the music (maybe 15+ years now?), Spotify's algorithms are pretty crappy IMO. TIDAL's are better, but they're really expensive. Sirius has very good curation. And I like some of the DJs. News, stern and sports also factor in as nice to haves. It also doesn't hit my mobile data plan in the car.

I thought Spotify and Tidal are the same price, $10/mo

TIDAL's Hifi Plus was the main reason to get it, for $20. Though I guess it's fair that doesn't restrict access to their (overall better) recommendation algos.

Monopsony strikes again.

Sirius still exists because FM radio is absolute dogshit in the US thanks to the Clear Channel/iHeartMedia conglomerate effectively owning everything.

Your FM dial is absolutely terrible unless you happen to live near a good college radio station or an unusual city (San Diego can pick up some interesting Mexican stations, for example).

> the audio quality was really bad -- terrible digital compression artifacts

I've been subscribing for about a decade and I haven't experienced this. Possibly something in the tech stack here has improved.

> there wasn't really anything that interesting in terms of musical programming that couldn't be had with a streaming service like Spotify

It's easier and cheaper to get satellite radio in a moving car than reliable Internet. You can save music offline (although I find a USB stick a much easier way of doing that than a smartphone with an app with offline storage, but then again most of the music I listen to is at least a couple of decades old), but you can't get live broadcasts of things like sports events or concerts.

> I've been subscribing for about a decade and I haven't experienced this. Possibly something in the tech stack here has improved.

I've listened to Sirius in several environments across many years, spanning most of its existence. In just about every case, I found the audio quality to be intolerably terrible. This is in multiple cars in different years. Curiously, I've noticed a strain of people that claim that it sounds good. Sometimes, I've been in the same car with them at the same time, listening to the same thing. I can't account for it. I'm generally not an audio snob, but satellite radio sounds so bad, I can't stand it at all. I'd rather have silence.

I'm not sure the underlying reason for this, but I guess some people just hear differently.

> I've noticed a strain of people that claim that it sounds good.

I would say it sounds good, exactly; I can notice a difference between it and, say, listening to a high quality recording from a USB stick. But I wouldn't say it's intolerably terrible, either. Is it that you literally can't hear music, just noise? Or is it that you can hear music, but with other noise overlaid on top of it?

I can hear the music. There's some noise on top, but also the high frequency components seem to be pretty scrambled and mostly missing. Depending on the channel.

Hm, weird. That's not something I've experienced.

I think it depends on the channel too. I've read the low number channels get more bandwidth and the channels above 300 are a newer more efficient codec that not all radios support.

I've also read the Sirius version is worse than the XM version. Yes, they merged many years ago but they still run two incompatible systems. Ford was still installing Sirius until 2021.

> I've also read the Sirius version is worse than the XM version.

I wasn't aware of this. This would explain why I am not seeing the sound quality issues that other people in this discussion are describing; my latest vehicle has XM.

My folks had Sirius in their cars when they were still driving, in a mountainous pretty rural area (town of <15k in mountainous terrain within national forest). I'm not sure what if any radio stations even exist for them, when I tried tuning a clock radio in their house I found nothing. Sure there's streaming or podcasts via phone or other Internet connection, but you're paying for those as well - and there are significant chunks of the drive to that town that still don't have cell service even on a state highway.

> I left, the audio quality was really bad -- terrible digital compression artifacts -- and there wasn't really anything that interesting in terms of musical programming

I'm about to leave. Every time I go to cancel, they hook me in with a pretty good deal. Last time it was "How about $9 for the next six months?" I thought they meant $9/month. Nope, a one-off charge.

But if I listen to any channel over the course of a day, I am guaranteed to hear the same song three-four times and their diversity/catalog seems very limited.

If you try to tune to AM stations though it is literally 90% noise.

It may as well be dead because if you removed the regulation it would still be 90% noise.

The "Divided Dial" series (six parts) from WNYC's On the Media does an excellent job of detailing how and why radio in general (both AM & FM bands in the US) has come to be both so concentrated (in ownership) and divided (in content and audience). Both ... portend poorly.

The full series, with both audio and transcripts, is here: <https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/divided-dial>

Doc Searls, an old radio hand himself, often writes about the topic, though concentrating more on infrastructure than business or culture:

<https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/category/broadcasting/>

I'd argue that AM radio, much as with FM and over-the-air television, is fading fast, especially in urban regions in which broadband Internet and cable programming offer far more attractive options. For myself, I find I'm listening to podcasts far more than informational radio (though I'll listen to some music programming) over the air --- it's convenient, and has very little advertising. Less than the nominally noncommercial public broadcasting alternative.

But in rural regions, where markets are sparse, AM's range still pulls in what few people there are, and motivated and ideological ownership often drives content, radio remains a potent force. The OTM series gives strong insights into those dynamics.

(The series was mentioned downthread by danielodievich: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34602095>)

I seriously considered buying an AM radio station a few years ago. You can get a fully operational station and the land it's on for under $200k in pretty populated areas.

Something about just broadcasting whatever you want into a protected frequency band for anyone with an antenna to hear seems really cool.

How much electricity does an AM station burn?

That and content, unless you are going to broadcast only your own stuff.

I would be surprised if you could not find plenty of podcasts happy to be slotted into your schedule for no fee whatsoever.

Basically an NPR clone

Does that include licensing of the frequency or just the infrastructure? Even if it includes some duration of the license, I expect there are still regulations and red tape to maintain that license. And regulations about what you can broadcast.

Oh sure, the list of FCC rules is seemingly endless... but it's still a pretty wide margin of media and speech permitted especially on the "talk radio" side of things.

The operational requirements are a bit stringent, though—there are certain staffing and compliance requirements for the studio and transmitter facilities.

And even low-power AM transmission stations need an annoying amount of physical plant maintenance—cutting grass, trimming overgrowth, fixing all the random annoying issues that crop up when maintaining any kind of equipment at a remote site (theft, rodents, water ingress, cooling, power, comms, etc.).

That sounds like "being responsible for a building'. Buy a seagoing boat sometime to play this game on hardmode :-D

That's why AM radio these days is incredibly weird.

Lots of fire and brimstone, and right wing talk radio. Which isn't that weird, it's what you'd expect given our media ecosystem.

But also really niche stuff. A friend of mine told me there's an AM radio station in NYC which plays nothing but Black Metal.

Many of these stations carry Coast to Coast late at night, which is about as weird as you get.

Sounds like shortwave which is, apparently, primarily religious proselytizing these days.

Free-To-Air Satellite TV as well.

Anything a little less mainstream which is cheap to get into.

On shortwave you get the "Supreme Master"- who owns the Loving Hut chain of vegan restaurants. They are nice, but possibly a cult..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Hai

But late night AM, you get "Ministry in the Marketplace with Dr. Richard Hamlet" on WEZE 590. This is the craziest right wingnut radio I've ever heard, even including shortwave. Last week they were ranting on about the "death vaccine".

"By the 1950s, America had forgotten the Biblical principles that it was founded on. In the mid-60s, government-controlled education was implemented. At that time, The Foundation for American Christian Education was formed to help limit that control by educating families and even schools on the . . ."

That last paragraph just sounds like your average right-wing Christian radio station of which there are thousands across the US. Heck, your last paragraph there could've been from Dr. Dobson on the Focus on the Family radio show which is quite mainstream among American Evangelicals (of which there are many).

As for the Loving Hut restaurants... oh, that's what I went to downtown? It did seem culty. They were playing some video on a loop about world peace, etc. I've gotta say, though, their vegan shrimp were quite good - a very good approximation down to the texture.

Seems like you could get the same thing with ham radio for far less cost (albeit far less cachet by virtue of not being ex officio)

Amateur radio is for 2-way communication only. No "broadcasts" allowed (with some _very narrow_ exceptions).

That would kick ass. Part of me wishes the FCC opened the AM band to "public access" (legit radio piracy — perhaps with a 50W or so ceiling?) but the way the internet has unfolded suggests to me what a shitshow that would become.

>just broadcasting whatever you want

but that's not exactly true unless you wear an eye patch, roll your Rs when you speak, have a wooden leg, and have a parrot perched on your shoulder.

that $200k buys you equipment and land. it does not include any licensing or royalty payments for the content you ultimately decide to broadcast. if you have a full 100k flamethrower of a transmitter, the utility bill for that bad boy is not something I'll envy from you.

Funny I never thought of that now obvious fact that a radio transmitter like this will suck so much power it'd cost a bunch in electricity

while not being a radio engineer myself, i spent some time around them for several years. even got to go to the antenna farm with them on one excursion. these things are no joke with the electrical wiring. just seeing the size of knife switch disconnects is an indicator of don't mess with this. never mind all of the other high voltage signage. there's a few other fun facts of broadcast towers that really makes you wonder if this is something you really want to be doing as a "hobby"

don't know the level of urban legend, but i have heard that BASE jumpers that climb to the top of a tower to jump will start to feel their fillings heat up by the time they get to the top.

I mean, how much would a feed of podcasters’ syndication cost?

I guess that’s not really a thing, but it’s gotta be cheap if you’re sharing some portion of revenue that they weren’t otherwise getting.

>I mean, how much would a feed of podcasters’ syndication cost?

That's like asking how long is a piece of string?

How much is part of negotiations. The more people following, the higher the number. The larger the ego of the podcast producer(s), the higher the number. The more desperate the radio op is, the higher the number. If the podcaster has a set price tag type of licensing, then they must be new or are very naive or just don't feel like negotiating. In content licensing, you always shoot high in negotiations. If they come back with a yes on the first offer, you learn to shoot even higher the next time as you're leaving money on the table. If they do the more natural response of a much lower counter, then you get to play the traditional game. If they are someone so big of a broadcaster that they come in with an offer, never accept on first offer either. Always make them provide at least a second offer.*

*I'm not a professional anything in this regard, so don't take the word of rando inteweb person. Talk to your lawyers regarding licensing offers. I'm just someone who has been near/around these things for a long time.

Just wondering, how did you find them? Just googling it, or through craigslist, or through a friend?

Probably BizBuySell

Yeah, looks like there is a couple there. It looks like there is also a site dedicated just buying and selling radio stations.

There is a guy around Boston who did this: Bob Bittner

Bought an old Cambridge AM station for cheap.. runs at low power to keep the costs low.

Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJIB (740 AM)

For years they had no commercials, but took donations (but they were never non-profit).

> Something about just broadcasting whatever you want into a protected frequency band for anyone with an antenna to hear seems really cool.

If I ever get ridiculous amounts of money that could be burned on frivolous stuff like this without a worry, I'd make something similar to Fallout's radio stations.

I once got a part time job as an overnight engineer for a collection of faith based radio stations. Wild stuff. 5 FM stations. One of them, the latin station was the largest FM station in the market. 3 AM stations. Two rebroadcast the FM and one was an AM station to itself.

I know a bit about radio, but one of the most surprising things to me was why they had to have me there and paid me so little. I would be the ONLY person in the building overnight and on holidays. Sure I was there to "engineer" a couple shows that were put on by weirdos who paid to have a show on the late night air that broadcast to shut ins and prisoners. But the real reason was AM radio. The sun sets at a different time, every day. The FCC requires a person to be at the helm at sunset to manually lower the power of the AM stations and write in the log book that they did that. If you don't lower the AM power at sunset, your signal will bounce around the world over and over echoing and causing all sorts of interference.

Terrestrial radio as it is controlled and broadcast might be "dead" but EM waves are not a product. They are real estate. No one can actually stop you from sending some electrons around in a circle in a little box other than social norms. I think about this constantly, still. Go take a look at CrowdSupply[0] and the products that are shipping now that stick together a bunch of SDR chips to some high throughput and think about what you can do with that and some consumer GPUs. I think in the next couple years the way we use radio is going to change in ways that will really surprise us. There is definitely a meta resonance radio space that our current systems (as far as I'm aware) are not operating in and it's weird and exciting.

Also, Jeff is a freaking treasure and is doing some of the best tech communication out there. I'm so happy that he's back from his procedure and releasing new stuff. I should buy some of his merch or something. We all should.

[0] https://www.crowdsupply.com/fairwaves/xync

AM is not dead, if you've ever lived or visited outside of the big metropolitan areas. It's normal to have a radio on the kitchen counter tuned to the local station, for gossip, local news, talk, and ads that are actually relevant to you.

.. and of course, baseball.

Is AM a genre of radio or a transmission method, or both?

This kitchen radio is common too in the UK but the radio would be FM at the least, more likely DAB these days. BBC Radio 4 or '5 Live' nationally and the BBC have dozens of local radio stations all over the country. All talk, no music.

Kind of both. It's a transmission method (amplitude modulation) that's very lo-fi which leads to it rarely being used for music, which dominates other radio. So it ends up being talk shows, sports, news, traffic reports, etc.

"very lo-fi" is pretty relative... FM offered higher quality audio, but that came mostly from the fact that it was not as prone to interference. (And yes, it was stereo instead of mono, but I think stereo AM became a thing eventually.) Other than that, if the station you were listening to was not far away, there wasn't really any difference in perceptible quality _if_ you had a decent receiver and antenna, which most people didn't. It was cheaper and easier to make an FM radio that sounded good compared to AM.

If you tool around the HF ham bands at night, sometimes you will catch a couple of hams conversing in AM near the top of 40 meters. The ones that have spent some time tweaking their audio and transmitter sound like they're sitting right next to you. Very crisp and clear, especially next to single side-band!

One leads from the other: the nature (transmission range, operational costs, and quality… or lack there-of) of AM radio in North America led it into rural-focused, talk-only (and eventually “conservative”) programming - and sports (just like how BBC Radio 5 is also AM, not FM).

If you really want to jump into the time machine, rent the movie "American Graffiti."

When all they had was AM, that was the social network for teenagers.

First you'll need to navigate the time machine to the video rental store.

Maybe you've heard of renting movies from Amazon? It's all the rage.

If you want to get a feel in real-time, visit a site offering WebSDR[1]. Look for a receiver in the US and tune between 530-1700KHz in AM mode. Note that reception will vary based on time of day [2].

[1] http://websdr.org/ is a good place to start

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station

5 live is actually AM-only (outside of DAB) and is really the only time I listen to AM (in the car when football is on etc.)

Amplitude Modulation (AM) is a transmission signal format. It works by modulating the amplitude of a chosen carrier wave (the frequency you tune in to). Your receiver filters out the carrier wave and leaves you with an ordinary sound signal.

It is also a genre, in the sense that it is almost exclusively used for news and talk radio. This is because the bandwidth available on AM bands is not really suitable for rich content like music.

Even in the big areas. KFI-AM and KNX-AM are still huge in Los Angeles, for example. Both have FM simulcasts but I've gotten KFI-AM in Arizona and Nevada no trouble, and the KNX FM simulcast in particular has odd coverage gaps.

The counterexample in LA is KABC-AM which is a shadow of its former shelf.

I’ll still listen to KFI every so often when I’m in socal. Some interesting, if not provocative, local news coverage.

> AM is not dead, if you've ever lived or visited outside of the big metropolitan areas.

Decent amount of AM in Toronto, Canada. Mostly talk shows and lots of sports broadcasts/discussions. 680 is handy for news/weather/traffic as their format is to do a 'loop' of major topics over a period of 30 minutes.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFTR_(AM)

1010 also broadcasts on shortwave to be able to hit cottage country:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFRB

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottage_country

In Greater Toronto area, I like 1150AM which used to be sports station (opex galore) (and an oldies/community radio station before that), but in a cost-saving measure, now just simulcasts a subscription (!) business news TV station (BNN Bloomberg).

There's a lot of angry shouting shows on AM radio.

I listen to political talk radio on AM, even though it simulcasts on FM, all the time for a few reasons.

1. Signal strength is much more consistent and further reaching.

2. I don't have to worry about my wife changing the station on the AM radio in the car. The FM radio could be set anywhere, but when I'm driving I just change it to AM and there's my station.

3. There's a "je ne sais pas" factor in the fuzziness and softness of the audio that I find pleasant and less harsh than what you get with talk radio on FM. Maybe for the same reason people like the sound of vinyl records, though I'm not into vinyl.

> "je ne sais pas"

"Je ne sais quoi", perhaps? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/je_ne_sais_quoi

"Je ne sais quoi" means "I don't know what"; "Je ne sais pas" just means "I don't know".

It's funny you mention this, because it's effectively the same thing, mais si tu parles français, tu pourrais finir par dire l'un ou l'autre.

re: #3

I agree with you. There's something about the aesthetics of AM radio that favors talk radio. In a former life, I would listen to a lot of political talk radio (from a few major brands), and switching over to listen to them in FM just wasn't the same. I preferred listening on AM.

There's also something about the sound of AM that is somehow nostalgic and reminds me of taking long road trips cross-country in lowly populated west or mid-west states with my grandparents. The "reach" of an AM station somehow connects with me and the impression on me will unfortunately die with my generation; at least, I know my kids have no consideration for AM radio, or radio at all for that matter.

I've never listened to AM radio on purpose, and I'm not young. From what I've heard, it's a content desert that consists primarily of religious/crackpot programming. As fewer and fewer new cars support AM¹, the writing is on the wall, and there should be concrete plans to reallocate that spectrum for something more useful.

¹ https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-why-some-automakers-tune...

The only time that I've actively listened to AM purposefully (other than curiously "just to see what's there") is AM 1610. [0]. 1610 is often used in the US for Visitor Information -- short 3-10 minute recordings on automated loop [1]. I find them useful when visiting a new park for the first time, and before I stop in the visitor center.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1610_AM

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers%27_information_stati...

[2] Yellowstone National Park 1610 recording. https://www.nps.gov/media/video/view.htm?id=E4A26B7F-1DD8-B7...

This is a great use of radio, thanks for pointing it out.

As a kid, my parents got me a cheap AM transmitter toy that broadcast on 1610.

Cutting edge tech in the early aughts, it ran on AA batteries and had a tape player, a microphone, and an aux in. My broadcasts made it across the cul-de-sac from my room. It was immensely enjoyable.

I was given one of those too, i think i still have it in a box somewhere. spent a lot of time playing dj with it.

My dad bought me a little 0.5W FM transmitter kit, and taught me how to solder putting it together. I definitely spent a bit of time making believe I was a radio DJ back then.

That sounds cool! I would have loved that. Early aughts you say? As in 2000-2009?

I can’t readily find when these became a thing but search for ‘pantry transmitter’ - I’m fairly sure that, whether for kids to muck around with, or to play the sound of your own vinyl records on another radio in your own home, these kinds of micro transmitters have been in use for decades.

I listen to AM radio for car repair, cooking tips & recipes, music, weather, latest news, sports, and much more.

This is really interesting, and also very foreign to me given that all of this is available on-demand in any form you like (i.e. YouTube videos for car repair). Do you happen to be a trucker? I'm trying to imagine the scenario where AM radio specifically is the best way to deliver this content.

The problem with on-demand is that it takes time and energy to go actually demand it. With radio, if you are working in the garage or garden or on a jobsite, you just tune into some station, and you get guys talking about fixing cars or something and that's it. With youtube or spotify or whatever, you have to go search for something interesting, it lasts for 15 minutes, and then you have to search again. Or maybe you get a podcast that last an hour. But it's never set and forget like radio. It's all just a waste if time unless you have something very specific you want to hear, rather than just background chit chat.

But never just backup chitchat: there's always a massive amount of unpleasant advertising.

Not a trucker. there are some areas where data is not available. In some countries I use pre-paid mobile phones. I turn off data in those places.

I (try to) walk at least an hour a day. I also hike trails. Ever seen a bear wait for Click and Clack[0] demonstrating the noise a worn CV join makes? Nor have I. ;-)

I have several hobbies which involve manual labour, but no major attention required (weeding, kneading, etc.). I can listen to the radio and still enjoy my hobby.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Talk

You seem like the right guy to ask: Is there a modern edition of Car Talk? I miss those guys so much.

Ah! Just posted about Click & Clack.

I have heard some here and there, but nothing close to them. :'(

I have heard a station in California (do not know call sign), the motor man, or the motoring man. There was also in Detroit a station where two guys tried to pick up similar like C&C, car show or something.

Those guys were unreasonably entertaining for people who were also so unbelievably knowledgeable about cars. Diagnosed some of the most bizarre things from the tiniest of details.

British guy here: sorry if this is a silly question but are you talking about an actual radio station which is just people talking about repairing cars? That’s so interesting! Nothing like that here. Maybe the odd specialist show once a week like Gardener’s Question Time or whatever.

Mostly, yes! Not quite just talking about repairing cars, but cars in general with a core of repair related stuff. One of them passed away in 2014 and to me the show can't be the same. But you can check out past episodes here: https://www.cartalk.com/radio/browse/

I'm not even remotely a car guy but they're super entertaining. Perhaps one (two) of a kind talent.

Ask the A&Ps is a podcast that’s a pretty similar concept but for general aviation.

> it's a content desert that consists primarily of religious/crackpot programming.

There's quite a lot of that stuff -- but it's not the only kind of programming in the dial.

All I listen to is AM radio in the car. If you're like me and your musical tastes are outside the mainstream then FM radio is useless. Unless you're in a big city or anywhere in Louisiana then quite simply you're not going to find any blues or Cajun music and probably little if any jazz.

Tesla ships without AM radio for technical reasons. The electric motors in EV's generate electromagnetic interference that interferes with the AM band. Ford EV's do have AM radio standard however.

> If you're like me and your musical tastes are outside the mainstream then FM radio is useless

If you're after a personalized experience, wouldn't a smart phone and bluetooth (or carplay, etc.) be the way to go?

> Ford EV's do have AM radio standard however.

Had? My ‘21 has it but I’ve seen complaints from people with newer models that don’t have it.

But that could easily be due to some kind of parts shortage issues too. Hard to say these days.

I'm the founder of an audio ads startup. To put things in perspective the global radio market for ad dollars is ~$35 billion to $40 billion depending on who you ask. All of podcasting is $2 billion.

To be clear the shift to all digital is happening but am/fm radio has a long ways to go before being irrelevant and this shift will likely take a few more decades. Don't sleep on traditional media.

I think the shift away from radio is being helped by the overabundance of ads on that platform.

And the lack of ability to just skip past them.

Where does DAB radio fit into this? What you're talking about is more about on-demand vs live, rather than analog vs digital isn't it?

> To put things in perspective the global radio market for ad dollars is ~$35 billion to $40 billion depending on who you ask.

Others say $25 billion globally for terrestrial/OTA and satellite combined, and those physical mediums appear to be a shrinking slice of that. You can see the industry scrambling to redefine all live-streaming audio as "radio" as radio-the-medium evaporates.

> On the other, companies like Tesla stopped shipping AM radio entirely, and if you want to add it on, they'll gladly retrofit your EV for $500.

Reason #27 for not buying a Tesla. When you're on the highway and see the flashing lights saying "Tune to 520 AM for adverse road conditions" what are you going to do?

> When you're on the highway and see the flashing lights saying "Tune to 520 AM for adverse road conditions" what are you going to do?

Look at Waze to see what's actually happening, like I always do.

Usually these signs are on interstates in the middle of nowhere (e.g. mountain/forest/desert). It's not unusual not to have a signal.

And frankly, even if you did have a signal, it's not likely Waze will be of much help. There are often few travelers on that road, and chances are none of them is using Waze.

How do the signs get the updates? Could be satellite but it’s probably 3G/LTE unless someone is manually setting it, but then it’s probably made it’s way into Waze when it was last online.

The same thing I've done when I've seen such a sign at any time in the past 52 years. Completely ignore it.

Let me give you a real scenario. I was entering a hilly/mountainous region, and the sign said "Tune in to AM 520 for rock slide information when lights are flashing" and the lights were flashing. You're just going to ignore that?

Yes, you’ll find out when you get there. If it’s dangerous they’ll close the road.

Yes, that is exactly what I, and most other people, would do. Do you REALLY believe that anything other than a minuscule percent of drivers would tune into such a warning? I doubt that even one out of a hundred would.

US2 over Stevens Pass near me has a similar useless warning that some miniscule percent of drivers ever tune in to. The AM radio broadcast us just going to say to use caution because rocks may appear on the roadway unexpectedly. A normal person is able to infer that caution is needed based on the terrain and the “rock slide information broadcast” sign.

> Reason #27 for not buying a Tesla.

It's not a Tesla thing, really, it's an EV thing. You'll have to stick with ICEV for the foreseeable future if you need access to AM. The electric motors cause a lot of interference.

It's not that simple. Ford, GM, Hyundai and Kia at least have figured out how to put an AM radio in an EV. Tesla and some European EVs don't have AM radios[0].

[0] https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-why-some-automakers-tune...

Someone started an AM radio station in my small town which has managed to survive for 7+ years now so there must be a workable business model there. They focus on hyper-local news & sports coverage that you just can't get anywhere else. The really clever thing they did was to use the launch of the radio station and broadcast location downtown as advertisement for their streaming app. They got a lot of local news coverage and public interest simply by doing something unusual like starting a new AM radio station in a tiny town. They still do AM but I believe the vast majority of their listeners stream. Super clever because someone like my Dad would never know a streaming station existed but he knows they exist because he can drive by the studio and see them broadcasting through the window.

What's the station's call? I’m always curious about these small broadcasters. I believe there's still a lot of potential left in terrestrial radio. The domination of the airwaves by private equity, however, is only going to squeeze it to death.

https://www.snsnonline.com

My city has a newsradio AM station that's still doing well and lots of people listen for the traffic reports, but they started simulcasting on FM as well recently to futureproof themselves. The FM signal has far better sound quality of course but thats not really necessary for news reports. But the AM signal can frequently be heard when the FM is completely lost to interference.

I dont know of any other big am stations, my car has separate presets per band, so newsradio is permanently on for the AM signal and their FM is frequently on the fm preset.

AM is here to stay for at least a few more decades. In the US it’s a lot more scarce to find AM broadcasts that aren’t either political or religious (often extremely so) because of the market for renting airtime and the longer reach than FM.

But AM is still bread and butter for South/Central America and Africa. Not sure how much it is used in Southeast Asia but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was still very popular there too.

Eventually it’ll be gone due to the inevitable March of technology, but it has plenty of life left in it.

So in Boston (which is the No. 10 radio market),

https://ratings.radio-online.com/content/arb013

WBZ 1030 AM (news radio) hovers around no. 5. They transmit on HD radio also (HD 2 on 107.9 FM), but the range is limited compared with AM.

RKO 680 AM (local right wing talk radio) is also near the top.

Conclusion: AM is not dead

In rural Saskatchewan, where I am from, farmers listen to AM radio literally all day long because they don't get good FM reception. It's too sparse and the demographic is too non-technical to even know what Spotify is.

I was on a multi-day hike (Tasmania, Australia) some years ago, where we would need to know if snow was falling further ahead, as the pass would be difficult in snow, so we would need to turn back in that case; it would be easier to turn back well before reaching the pass. I packed an AM radio to listen to the weather forecast in the morning; before sunrise, the ionosphere reflects AM waves, so the distance of the signal is greatly enhanced (the hike was in a mountainous area and had no straight-line to any radio towers). In fact, I couldn't get the local radio station's reception, but did get reception for heaps of other stations, one of them over 2000km away; I almost wonder if the local station was being drowned out by distant ones (or more likely the ionosphere reflection is better a shallow angles)

While OP is (was) in Australia, for those reading in the US that are interested in something similar, you're better off bringing an FM radio with you that can receive to the NOAA weather radio frequencies, and simply tune to the frequency / channel for your region.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Weather_Radio

How does this handle situations where you haven't got 'line of sight' (or rather, an unobstructed path) to the transmitter (e.g. when you're nestled in between some mountains)?

VHF (FM radio in the US is in the VHF band) propagation can definitely change at different times of day.

One of my favorite activities in the summer is to go get lost in the Cascades, and when the sun goes down, settle in to a hammock with a little multi-band radio to see what I can pick up. As the evening wears on, I can typically start to receive FM radio stations in Canada several hundred kilometers away. Once the sun has risen again, I can no longer tune those stations no matter how much I fiddle with antenna orientation. NOAA weather bands also become easier to tune clearly at night.

As to why VHF frequencies seem to propagate better at night, I could only speculate, but they do seem to—at least on occasion.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywave : > Because the lower-altitude layers (the E-layer in particular) of the ionosphere largely disappear at night, the refractive layer of the ionosphere is much higher above the surface of the Earth at night. This leads to an increase in the "skip" or "hop" distance of the skywave at night.

Also came across this interesting page: https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/am-stations-at-night

Oh cool, I hadn't heard of E-skip as a phenomenon before! Thanks for that info, it's really interesting.

I've heard the comment of HD Radio being a failure multiple times. Personally, it doesn't seem to be true to me, as the majority of my radio listening happens on receivers with HD Radio on stations with HD Radio. I didn't even go out of my way to make sure I bought just the right trim of a car with HD Radio or an AV receiver with HD Radio, it just had it. Most of the radio stations in my market offer HD Radio and several have multiple subchannels. A few of my go-to stations are HD Radio subchannels as those often are operated with minimal to no advertisements (usually just self promotion and station ID).

I realize HD Radio is pretty much US-only, but am I seemingly the only one actually using HD Radio?

Is HD Radio equivalent to DAB+? If so, it’s alive and well in Australia (insofar as radio is alive and well)

Yes, HD Radio is what the US went with instead of DAB/DAB+.

Though transmitter and receiver hardware is entirely incompatible, so an imported car or radio from the EU/Australia would not be able to tune in any HD Radio signals.

Even today, not all brand new cars and replacement head units include HD Radio tuners—many are still analog AM/FM only. Pair that with most cars and trucks on the road not being brand new, and market penetration is very low outside of people who bought the right new cars in the past few years.

Many (but not most—yet) stations which launched HD signals in the past decade have since switched them off to give more bandwidth back to the analog signal, and to avoid ongoing HD licensing fees.

> Many (but not most—yet) stations which launched HD signals in the past decade have since switched them off

Once again, this just seems very different from my personal experiences. Where I'm at, there's more HD Radio content on the air today than there was even just a few years ago, and far more content than a decade ago. One of the stations I listen to the most only started transmitting HD Radio in 2017, and another only started and exists only as a digital multicast channel in the last year.

The majority of the FM radio stations in my area seem to transmit HD Radio, with some of them even using all 4 digital channels (MTS + 3 SPS multicast). Only a few of the smaller ones don't transmit any HD Radio. I haven't noticed any stations in my market turning it off or reducing their presence.

In the UK, FM often sounds better than DAB. I know that in theory DAB offers superior quality but it's compressed so multiple stations are broadcast on the same frequency.

I don't listen to the radio much anymore (work-from-home keeps me off the road, which is where I'd normally listen to radio).

But I am with you, I have found the HD sub-channels to be very palletable to listen to compared with the main channels. Even NPR is getting hard to listen to, but some of the alternative HD channels are quite enjoyable, especially for "unpopular" genres like folk, bluegrass, original (roots) country, Americana, 40's/50's, etc.

I don't think it's a failure. Maybe it's a failure of monetization, but I think it's a success in terms of content availability and lack of advertisements.

I had a Pioneer car stereo with HD Radio available and I listened to it a lot, especially since a lot of the channels on there seemed to be free of ads. Once that stopped, the car stereo got updated to a AndroidAuto/AppleCarplay-capable device and I was no longer listening. So yes, you weren't the only one for a while but you may now be :) .

I live in Australia and when I go on a decent road trip its interesting when you lose mobile phone coverage, then FM radio coverage leaving just AM radio.

In summer you can drive along just listening to news and sport coverage (Cricket).

In the country it is the primary source of news and emergency information. During flooding and bushfires most other forms of communication are not available especially during prolonged power outages.

Of course, if you go outside the AM coverage area you lose that as well but that's a different story.

My uncle, a dedicated ham, worked his entire career in radio. Now he makes some nice pocket money in retirement keeping some old rural AM stations running because no one else really understands how they work.

AM radio is no different than any other radio: If the content is good, people will listen.

It's worth noting that for decades, FM was considered a graveyard of talk programming, with occasional classical mixed in. Today, the situation has been reversed.

In cities where there is enough money to produce good content, AM radio does well. In smaller places, where there isn't enough money available to create good content, AM stations are very often relegated to satellite- and internet-fed formats.

The most recent Chicago ratings I can quickly find¹ (June, 2022) show AM doing well, with AM stations ranking #5, #11, #23, #25 and #27 in a market of over 50 stations.

But even in small places, while the FMs will dominate all day long, a good AM or three will dominate the morning drive when they present local programming.

Electric cars are starting to be a problem for AM radio, which is why so many now have FM translators, and free internet streams. But AM will have a place on the air for a very long time to come.

/I've worked for about a dozen different AM stations in my lifetime.

¹ https://robertfeder.dailyherald.com/2022/06/13/chicago-radio...

the problem with AM is quality. You can't put music down it which really limits your options.

Music went out over AM for decades just fine; what band do you think people were listening to back in the pre-TV days of the big console radio?

I'll occasionally find a decent AM music station even these days, and when it's not being overwhelmed by all the modern RF noise, it sounds just fine.

The OP listed some AM stations that were near the top of the rating in the Chicago market. I looked at the list and the top two AM stations were no surprise: WBBM and WGN.

It's not really a good idea to look at these two stations to get an idea of the health of the entire AM market. These two are giant class A clear channel stations that date back to the 1920s and the origination of AM radio licenses. Being in the center of the continent they can do omnidirectional broadcasting without "wasting" power like a station on the coast would. They're among the few that can still afford to be "local" station with very little syndicated content (and broadcast a lot of sports to vast swaths of the US and Canada that have no local professional sports team), and they'll probably be among the last of the AM stations to shut down.

We generally haven't been using pre-TV big console radios for decades now too. In places where range matters less (such as Europe) AM has been pretty much dead for a while already, not even speaking about transmitting music.

Ok sure, but "AM is not currently used for music" is a far cry from "You can't put music down [AM]".

I invoked the old radios because you certainly heard a lot of music through them and they all used AM, whether over medium-wave or short-wave frequencies. Same for the ubiquitous All-American Five tabletop/kitchen radios; I've owned them, they sound just fine if you can find an AM station that's playing music.

You can put music through a PC speaker too. Some old games even managed to play some real bangers this way; but these days I'd say that stating "you can't put music through a PC speaker" when talking about commercially viable means of music playback is justified even if not technically true.

There is nothing wrong with the quality of AM radio.

It transmits almost the same audio bandwidth as does FM. The problem is the cheap and crappy radios designed for the USA market which have flooded the market.

Whatever, try getting a high-quality AM radio and having a listen. For example one of the upmarket SDR radios with variable IF filters.

In upstate NY you might think so. The only channel you can really count on during the day is the one that used to have the Rush Limbaugh Show. Around sunset though the atmosphere changes and there is a short time you get DX and can hear Bloomberg radio talking about the stock market being about to open in Hong Kong and then hear it fighting with the "Black Information Network" in Detroit.

Well, he's in St. Louis and it isn't doing well there.

1430 AM ("The Crazy Q") was the last bastion of oldies in the 50s, early 60s sense. Its license, as well as a few others, were held by a man who was a convicted felon and apparently that's a no-no. Anyway, it folded and that was that.

I dig around and there's just not much else I can find on the AM band aside from talk, some kind of Catholic radio, sports ...

AM radio is still my go-to for sports. Nothing like summertime and MLB on the radio while I work on a side project in the garage. College football and basketball too. Love those hometown announcers!

Having grown up in the USA, I was never into AM even though my father was. He would find the most nails on a chalkboard stuff on the dial and leave it there. Probably not the best impression of a medium.

Fast forward and now I live in Japan. My first job required a long ride by car to deliver/pick up supplies then do manual labor. Like most manual labor jobs there was a radio on all the time and it was the oldest worker (in his 70s) who got to set the station. I listened to hours of AM radio in Japanese. Baseball games (they feel more alive over AM than in person oddly enough), news, shopping (yes, shopping channel like advertising by radio), stand-up/comedy routines and the odd oldie track from the 70s or earlier that sounded even more nostalgic due to it being on AM. This is what finally gave me a love for what it had to offer. It may be a dead format in the west but in Japan it seems to still kick around.

> it was the oldest worker (in his 70s) who got to set the station.

Is this (oldest worker's choice) a Japan thing, or just a thing at that worksite?

Probably not a universal rule that the oldest chooses the radio station, but Japan used to have a strong culture of age based seniority and social hierarchy. A traditional Japanese introduction involves a slight verbal dance around sharing your age and profession, so the meeting parties can determine their relative social status and what type of honorific language may be appropriate for each to use.

I think seniority has become a bit less of a factor especially for younger generations who are starting to ease away from some of the more rigid hierarchies.

I happened to listen to this podcast this morning which has some interesting things to say about this topic:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-divided-dial/

AM radio is long gone in Europe, in Italy the last stations did shut down years ago. The audio quality of AM is too low for any practical use, and didn't evolve in the years, such as implement stereo transmissions. FM is much better, it can provide decent quality with stereo sound.

Even FM will not probably be still around for much longer, even if I'm not in favour to the transition to DAB radio since I like vintage Hi-Fi systems in the end it will be abandoned, transmitting with digital is much cheaper since you need less power for a similar coverage and you can multiplex more stations in a single frequency.

In the U.K. it’s still used to broadcast some national BBC stations (BBC R5 Live, BBC Asian Network) that aren’t available on FM and in some more areas it’s used to broadcast stations that are also on FM (BBC R4). They still also operate some LW! https://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/help-guides/fmmwlw-radio/fm-...

Until two weeks ago I used to listen to Absolute Radio in my car over MW but they shut it down.

AM is everywhere in North America. News/sports/traffic/weather in particular. So it is still practical. AM Stereo even was thing since the late 80s, just required a receiver.

> AM radio is long gone in Europe

Still alive in Spain.

The issue about AM being low quality is a bit misleading...

In Europe the audio bandwidth of AM is almost the same as FM, especially with the BBC stations. And likewise in Australia, the gov ABC stations still transmit high quality audio on AM BC.

The problem is that most cheap radios were designed for the USA market, where most AM channels broadcast talk shows, and so their receivers are fitted with narrow IF filters.

The proof of this of course is to listen to any decent radio which has a narrow/wide switch. Back in the day, the hobbyist magazines would often publish designs for HiFi AM receivers. And many of the modern SDR receivers have a selection of IF filters which can sound quite amazing on AM.

There are even a few stations still transmitting Stereo AM, and most of those sound as good as FM on a decent receiver.

I pulled an old Kenwood HF transceiver my dad had given me about 10 years off of a shelf in the garage about a week ago. While I was digging around for the various pieces of it (long story short, it was broken, started repairing it, got overwhelmed, boxed it for a decade) I found a USB SDR in another box. I hooked up the SDR and checked out the FM broadcast band from the basement. The online radio guide showed that there were about 80 FM stations within 60 miles. In the basement, I could pick up about 35 of them. 1/5 were Christian stations. 2/5 were country (and/or western) stations, and the other 2/5th were interesting. A couple of 'adult album alternative' stations, a couple of Spanish stations, a few classic rock, a classic hip-hop, etc.

Once I got the transceiver repaired and functioning, I checked out the AM band on the Kenwood with a endfed shortwave antenna strung up in the back yard. between the local stations and the ones coming out of Denver, I think I could pick up about 20 of them with reasonable fidelity. They were, without exception, all talk. Some religion, some sports, a LOT of politics. Shortwave, which is arguably more dead than AM, seems to at least have more interesting content on it. (Still a lot of christian content, but also some propaganda / government news stations and some cool music coming across in languages I don't understand.).

Radio, as a hobby, requires a lot of poking around looking for signal these days.

Great discussion. I listen actively to AM in the car and when I’m camping. We’re moving to the Olympic peninsula from Seattle this year, and I’m so excited to start pulling in Canadian AM stations - many stations from Victoria and Vancouver are audible, and it’s not just talk - there are multiple Asian cultures broadcasting music, in particular I revisit one station playing Bollywood and what sounds like devotional music from india, depending on the hour.

Anyone curious about listening can get up and running with the cheap portables mentioned on other threads here. I’d add that I event;y bought and rtl-sdr dongle [0] and mla-30 active loop antenna, attached it to a small spot on my roof, and am pulling some distant things in without interference. Getting that loop antenna up 25 ft off the ground was especially helpful. [1]

If you want to listen, my xp is getting a decent antenna established is key. Another way for the curious to start listening without equipment is one of the many web-based SDR (software defined radio) sites, like this one [2]

[0] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/

[1] https://www.rtl-sdr.com/reviews-of-the-low-cost-mla-30-wide-...

[2] http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

AM radio helped kindle my lifelong interest in technology and music.

Grew up in Alaska in the '50s. When I was 8, my Dad bagged me some old headphones, wire, a variable capacitor and one of those new-fangled 'diode detectors' from a friend at Elmendorf Air Base.

Much coil winding and fiddling later, I was able to hear KOMA in Oklahoma, a great rock station. KOMA Klimbers!

Nowdays, I find AM content distasteful in the extreme, hardly ever listen. But fond memories of an early influence.

Tesla is singled out in the article, but there's a general problem of interference with AM radio in electric vehicles--which seems like the biggest challenge for AM. There are some legislative rumblings to do something about it. https://jalopnik.com/u-s-sen-ed-markey-really-really-wants-a...

Tesla does include HD-Radio on their FM tuner, in Phoenix the most popular AM stations are available on one of the HD radio sub-channels.

With 50,000 W of power, we go by faster miles an hour.

AM is where the really green student DJs get to train, because if you screw it up, there's no one there to hear you :P At least during the daytime. You can pick up a lot of distant stuff at night.

Shortwave, on the other hand, is alive and well. You can find some really nifty stuff out there. Everyone ought to own something like the old Realistic DX-350 and scan the bands now and then.

> With 50,000 W of power, we go by faster miles an hour.

With the radio on! https://youtu.be/6ZWoJ8_75Mo

> Shortwave, on the other hand, is alive and well. You can find some really nifty stuff out there. Everyone ought to own something like the old Realistic DX-350 and scan the bands now and then.

The current model Tecsun PL-330 supports SSB, and is a champion portable receiver. Contemporary SW radios offer amazing performance at a low price. I wish there were more to listen to, though.

Nice! How long does it last on a charge? That's one of the main advantages of the DX-350 over later Realistic digital tuned models, runs forever on a set of 4x AA batteries.

There's still some interesting stuff out there, I found a program called "Alt Universe Top 40" sandwiched in between the usual religion programs on WRMI. Good enough to bother tuning in every week, and they upload to Mixcloud too so you can still listen if conditions are poor. They also send QSL cards :P

The various little radios based on the new Silicon Labs chips (Si4735 and similar) have an amazingly low current draw.

Not surprising to see something else good from Si Labs!

There are actually a few AM stations in my area. Now, if my car radio still worked, I would totally listen to them because when it DID work, there was a lot of good local news and personalities on there. Did my heart good to hear opinions on current events in my area from people actually effected by it instead of an outsider from a completely different city's opinion on it all.

I would love to see AM radio opened up to private citizens. Take podcasting and move it to AM radio, where a person can pay or subscribe to a frequency and broadcast on it. Not so much as a corporation but something easier, cheaper, and more accessible to average citizens. Maybe that's a recipe for disaster but it's an idea..

The problem is the FCC. Here's the handbook for KFGM, the local community radio station in Missoula, MT:

https://www.1015kfgm.org/_files/ugd/7578a3_dcafddc8fa53435d9...

And the relevant quote:

> U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens explained the attitude of the FCC, in his opinion, in a 1978 decision on George Carlin's famous "Filthy Language" piece about the seven dirty words:

> “Patently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen, not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be let alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder.”

The handbook goes on in detail about what the station will accept and what it won't, but the point is simple: The airwaves are not as free as the Internet, and giving the broadcast booth to the average person is legally dangerous to the station. Getting the average person to understand copyright is one thing, especially since most of the oiks insist it's about plagiarism and attribution, but allowing someone who thinks Carlin's Seven Words are a good starting point to broadcast without a filter is going to get the station shut down.

It's alive and well in my car when it comes to news. AM 1030 WBZ

I want to hear the technical side here. So, sure, AM radio is fading. But audio content delivery is alive and very active. So in practice everyone will just move over to podcasts and it'll be fine.

But what happens with the spectrum if we just turn it off? The ~1MHz band is basically useless to digital transmission. There's not enough (literal) bandwidth to put anything modern on it, and the transmission characteristics lack the ionospheric reflections of short wave, so it's only a to-the-horizon kind of thing anyway.

So do we just turn it off? Is there anything useful to do with it? Or is there interesting astronomy we could do without the interference?

Maybe the reason AM radio continues limping along is that there really aren't any takers and this is just junk spectrum?

1 MHz doesn't give a lot of room for frequency hopping and frequency modulation, but that doesn't stop it from being useful for digital transmission. You can still transmit zeroes and ones with amplitude modulation. (The hybrid HD radio tried that, though few Americans bought into that.) The biggest problem with that from micro-usage of the spectrum by personal devices is interference and error correction, but we're doing a veritable ton with Bluetooth today in one of the noisiest and easily interfered with bands in current regulation so there's certainly ideas out there to try.

That said, there's also probably nothing wrong with leaving spectrum quiet. We don't need to fill every band possible of the electromagnetic spectrum with digital noise, despite how hungry our devices seem for additional bandwidth.

> So in practice everyone will just move over to podcasts and it'll be fine.

Podcasts and radio are very different mediums. I don't think one adequately replaces the other.

Not all applications require a lot of bandwidth.

Cars are rather important for radio listenership. So when AV cars finally arrive, the effect on radio should be large - former drivers would be more able to consume different forms of entertainment in the car, and I don't think many would remain with radio only.

I really dislike this type of usage of the word "dead". There's not a general consensus on what it means. Does it mean unpopular, not as popular as it once was, literally unusable and inaccessible, or some subtle variation?

Something I don’t see mentioned:

Some (many?) new cars don’t have AM radios. And since people in cars seems to be a huge chunk of AM/FM radio listenership that’s a very big problem for AM stations.

I know the Mustang Mach-E removed it in the newer models.

The article also mentions that Tesla cars dropped AM support by default and now sell a $500 upgrade to the radio just to get AM radio back.

That is not correct, you cannot add AM. The radio fee is for people who upgraded their computer hardware and want a new radio that is compatible with the new computer. The new radio does not have AM.

I would like to see a "national public" satellite radio. Pump the National Weather Service and another channel or few with public domain entertainment on it, to get people to buy them (eg. Eton radios) and chuck them in the closet for a severe weather or disaster event.

I understand the science decently, but I don't understand the economic feasibility. I assume if it were feasible, it would have been done by now.

But it seems like something that will become more economically feasible in the near future as space transport progresses.

I've been listening to AM broadcasts a lot over the last few months. I can get good reception from 2-3 local stations on my crystal set. One gives me state and national news, interviews, the weather; useful stuff. From the other I've learned a lot about aliens, nutrition, debt and debt consolidation, Gray Man, World War III, psychedelic drugs, skinwalkers, Christian dating situations (ex: non-abstinent partners), the holiday/inflation deals on Smith & Wesson steel, various troubling situations involving Biden and his son...

What else. I don't know, I learn so much from my radio that it's hard to keep track! And it's so much more engaging than your typically maybe-just-as-sane Netflix documentary with its jarring interview style. The AM hosts actually let their guests talk, uninterrupted, and at length, so you can hear what their points are in the way that they meant to say it. The other night a caller phoned into this expert cryptozoological guy they were interviewing and related how a canid, "too big to be a dog but too small to be a wolf", planted itself on the road in front of his truck before morphing into a woman before him (at night!). And he and this doctor they had as a guest were able to work through the experience on the spot; it wasn't some high production story that cut back and forth through irrelevant fancy stuff for 20 minutes before finally explaining what the guy saw.

I'm only partly being tongue in cheek... This is how "information diet" + learn more about radio new years resolutions have been working out for me. All this crazy stuff has replaced the social media and news/opinion drama I would get wrapped up on before. It's free, actually enjoyable (because of the radio projects, not the broadcasts), mildly to thoroughly amusing (because of the broadcasts), and the insanity is gone as soon as I take the headset off. It should get better soon as well. I'm going to build an FM receiver next, and I hear they still play music on those channels!

I have been curious about why AM stations exhibit the demographic effect you see (in terms of programming, station ownership, etc).

Is it because of something to do with the licensing of the spectrum, and the cost of buying that? Or because of the restrictions around broadcasting (content and distance) of any given station? Or the cost of equipment to operate?

So interesting that something about how the domain operates that creates a different dynamic of what you hear on the radio in AM vs. FM.

The Divided Dial from On The Media https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/divided-dial would be a fantastic - if somewhat lengthy - answer to your question.

A strong second to that recommendation. Excellent series.

I'll also note that there are transcripts for all five, er, six, episodes, if that's your jam.

Thanks!

I just discovered last week that Teslas don't have AM radio. I was trying to get the 49ers game as we were driving and I couldn't find the button for AM radio to listen to the broadcast, so I got my wife to search for me. She eventually found a link that said that because of the noise from the motor, AM radio wouldn't work so they removed it entirely. I was a bit shocked but I guess that's just how it is.

Funny that I saw a similar piece in WSJ commentary section 2 days ago:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sadness-and-static-as-am-statio...

https://archive.is/xTwGc

OTOH, CB radio has been lately getting harmonised and deregulated all over, and AM is one of the legal modulations (along with FM and SSB). So a lot of opportunity to enjoy "warm AM sound" with your neighbors, even if the cell goes down.

[edit] they even have portable ones! (look up "Randy", no SSB though). And with a half decent SDR you can record the whole 40 channels at once, to see if there is anything worth joining in.

The article/video mentions Tesla - curious to know if other EVs have omitted the AM radio from the car, or have worked around the inteference issues

Apparently Ford is starting to remove them from their EVs due to struggles related to interference. I don't listen to AM that much in my EV (Mach E) but the few times I have tried it seemed to work acceptably.

it's gone from Volvo and I think some other cars as well (like BMW, Audi, etc)

One of our cars is a 2023 Audi e-tron and it has no AM radio.

My immediate question was, was it harder and more expensive to specify a radio module/part with FM, but not AM ?

It seems like a design flex and not an actual cost or UI affordance, etc.

It is annoying because sports broadcasts in the Bay Area are typically on AM.

The problem isn't in fitting an AM radio, but in suppressing the Electromagnetic interference from the Electric motors and circuity.

Hopefully the FCC will wake up and insist that they fix the interference, and not just hide it by not fitting an AM radio.

Nissan Leaf here. AM radio works fine.

Given that Tesla will add it for a fee(and older Teslas had it), I presume its removal is not technology-related.

That is not correct, you cannot add AM. The radio fee is for people who upgraded their computer hardware and want a new radio that is compatible with the new computer. The new radio does not have AM.

You miss the point: Tesla chose not to fit AM radios because it would have made suppressing the electrical interference so much harder. Hopefully this will change as the FCC starts looking closer at the E.M. interference from Teslas.

I live in Portugal. I haven’t tuned an AM radio station in more than 20 years. And at the time there were already few stations, and the ones remaining were just a replica of what they also broadcasted over FM.

I understand that AM still has a place in long range broadcasting to regions of the world where other ways of spreading information may be blocked, but I honestly thought AM had been mostly dead for decades…

AM radio has one value for me, if you live in a city with a 50kW station that has traffic announcements every 10 minutes on major screw-up areas/bottlenecks (bridges, tunnels, etc), you can sometimes get around even more efficiently than using google maps to drive with. And by truly not taking your eyes off the road to look at screens of any devices to know where the traffic problems are.

I still listen to baseball on the radio.

Although I'll mention that nowadays it's also streaming online. So I really only use it with AM radio in the car.

AM radio transmission relies a lot on the characteristics of the earth where the antenna is. In St Louis, you need less land to site your antenna than the east coast. A few years ago, one of the big AM broadcasters on the east coast sold their 75 acres of now prime real estate that they bought many decades ago for their antennas. The price was around $1M per acre.

> constantly push listeners to download an app to 'listen anywhere.'

I remember wondering how on earth iHeartRadio managed to integrate with so many small, local radio stations. As an IT consultant it was a struggle to get a small shop to keep as much as an API up.

Turned out they simply bought up all the stations.

One of my hobbies is listening to Yankees games on my old wooden tube radio from the 20s. It's alive for me!

Like shortwave broadcasting, AM have their place nowadays, it brings a comunication service to their target. It's true that it isn't as popular as before, but take a look to the postal service and their letters. Who writes a letter today? but you can do it without problem if you want.

Not at all. AM radio is where I get all my great financial tips on Gold, REITs, and vitamin supplements!

More seriously, the clear-channel license holders are still a big deal. It's pretty amazing to be able to cover half the country from one transmitter. WSM out of Nashville is still relevant for example.

I suspect there’s some sort of weird money cleaning operation with AM radio.

The crazy talk people are pretty toxic for normal advertisers, and it’s dominated by weird supplements and other weird stuff. Plus, all of the hosts say the same thing, all of the time.

Not at all. And when they simultaneously try to broadcast AM content on FM bands, it sounds like crap. It's arguably where the majority of any given marketing budget goes, probably only edged out by FM, but maybe not.

One of the few instances where the title being a question actually makes sense.

All I listen to is AM radio, so if it's dead then maybe I am a zombie.

Let's hope that DRM (https://www.drm.org/) will replace AM. At the moment, the big issue is the lack of cheap receivers.

I dunno. The disaster that was the switch to digital TV broadcasting makes me leery of this.

I have a dozen or so DRM channels programmed into my SDR. Even a couple of MW AM ones.

And I tune through them every day or two.

The problem is that the performance of DRM is terrible. It takes a hugely strong signal before it is free of drop-outs, plus is very intolerant of any interference on the same channel. And of course drop-outs with DRM are very jarring, as they lock up the channel for many seconds.

When compared with a conventional AM Transmitter from the same city, at the same power, the AM TX is far more pleasant to listen to.

Which software are you using to decode DRM?

It's not dead for baseball fans in the NYC Metro area!

I was gonna say baseball, keeps at least a few people in their surrounding areas tuned into AM (Oakland As for me).

Probably won't last forever but it's still damn satisfying to be able to catch the game over the local airwaves.

I sure hope it isn't dead. I listen to it every day.

It is mostly dead here in Western Europe for over a decade now, I'm assuming a mix of relatively high cost, yet almost no relevance.

Someone I spoke to once said that the frequencies that AM uses aren't all that useful for many other kinds of services.

Yes, the Medium Wave AM band is quite narrow and wouldn't fit a single TV station, or a useful amount of Internet.

That said however, there are lots of other systems which could fit in the MW AM band.

How could I possibly get the latest news about Fidel (his death hasn't stopped it) without Miami Cuban AM radio?

FWIW.. IIRC in the 70s Syracuse NY was known for having a prog rock station that actually broadcast on the AM band.

Is AM radio a US-only thing? Because I've never heard anything broadcast on AM here is Sweden.

We have it in the UK. The BBC still broadcast on it (at least they did last time I tuned in). I believe there are some sports stations who use it too. My dad would listen to cricket on it in the car all the time when I was a kid.

Not US-only, but it appears that Sweden is indeed one of the countries that no longer supports it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_wave#Use_in_Europe

Shortwave on plain consumer radios is AM. A lot of stations there, a lot of them from China.

AM radio (called "medium wave radio" in Europe) is still used in Eastern Europe, the UK, Spain etc.

The last AM broadcasts in Sweden stopped in 2010, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B6lvesborg_medium_wave_tr...

For a full list of AM radio stations in ITU region 1, see https://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php

It will be once all cars are EV. The noise generated by the motors will make it infeasible.

It's not infeasible (Tesla vehicles used to have AM radios). My EV has an AM radio. It works.

Well, yes, but only if the FCC doesn't insist on them meeting standard EM interference rules.

Not when you're at everest base camp and listening to the BBC world service.

Recent vintage Porsche 911s only have FM. anti-flex.

I'm no expert, but it seems like that mid-frequency part of the spectrum could be put to much better uses.

Invoking Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

AM may have it's technical limitations, specifically when compared to FM, but as a medium it's not dead and I doubt it's about to be anytime soon. It's still very popular amongst political talk, at least here in the U.S.

Edit: spelling

That may be true, but as anecdota I had a show on one of those talk stations just a year ago. They broadcast on 2 frequencies on the FM dial, covering a wide geographic range.

In my experience, talk and even music on AM radio in Africa is used more then FM. I believe this is because the cost associated with AM equipment costs, and the distances AM can cover.

I can get an AM signal in the middle of nowhere with a diode and a bunch of wires.

Until the FCC declares AM broadcast illegal (and likely for some time after, as pirate radio stations will attempt to fill the dead air out of sheer contrarianism), there will always be users of the AM band. Hell, as popularity wanes, I'll bet that broadcasting expenses will go way down, so we could very well see a renaisseance in the next couple decades as community groups take to it as a new-old means of distribution.

The existence of simulcast doesn't make the AM broadcast any less real. It just broadens the listener scope.

It is dead to me and has been for decades. Once in a while I'll put on the AM band when driving and there is nothing for me.

    - hispanic music -- i don't speak spanish and not growing up with it, I have no connection

    - conservative talk radio -- as a liberal, I find it more terrifying than anything. hosts and callers will declare that liberals think this or that, or that we are trying to do this or that, things that I and none of my liberal friends would identify with. I was surprised to find out that liberals hate freedom and want to force our kids into being gay. I guess I'm way behind the curve.

    - biblical literalism

    - (edit) I forgot sports. does nothing for me.

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