[HN Gopher] The end of AM radio in your car?
___________________________________________________________________
The end of AM radio in your car?
Author : lleb97a
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-12-05 11:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.boston.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.boston.com)
| scelerat wrote:
| > Markey cited statistics from the Pew Research Center News
| Platform Fact Sheet from September 2022 which said 47% of
| Americans receive their news from the radio.
|
| I believe that explains quite a bit. Without being snarky, AM
| radio is home to political opinion that is largely sympathetic to
| a conservative viewpoint and I suspect that is one reason that
| Markey wants car manufacturers to keep it (and why perhaps other
| lawmakers would be indifferent or even eager to see it disappear)
|
| Not an adherent to the views commonly espoused on AM talk radio,
| I nevertheless see the utility for some kind of low-tech
| broadcast format which is easy and inexpensive to tune in and
| broadcast over. AM fits the bill, and has much longer range than
| FM
| dctoedt wrote:
| AM radio broadcasts can reach somewhat farther than FM (and way
| farther at night on clear channels); that might matter in an
| emergency.
|
| As a middle-schooler living in the Washington DC area, I would
| regularly pick up WLS in Chicago, some 700 miles away, on my
| little crystal set at night.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| A crystal set needs no battery power, the signal is enough to
| power the audio. I had fun making one with those 20 in 1
| electronics toys as a kid. I think that one didn't tune so you
| heard multiple stations at once.
| hinata08 wrote:
| yeah, Europe's AM bands were fun at night
|
| I can still get music radio from Algeria on AM, or rock, sport
| and news from the UK (I believe from stations emitting from
| Swansea and London) I used to listen to Deutschlandfunk, France
| Inter, BBC4 LW on the LW band (only the latter is still active
| today, others were switched off in the 2010s)
|
| Also, I love that radio is a media that is so hard to regulate.
| There is always some novelty to what you can listen. There used
| to be rock-music pirate radios in the 60s, emitting from the
| international waters. Some small countries like Luxembourg and
| Monaco would also have commercial radios to break government
| monopolies from neighboring countries. Then there were the
| pirate FM radios in the 70s and 80s
|
| Monaco is still broadcasting some stations that don't comply
| with French regulations on music (Riviera radio serves
| mainstream English pop songs). It allows you to listen to some
| different music in your car. (this one is in FM, tho, so it's
| very local)
|
| Some authoritarian governments were challenged by the radio
| too. Nazi Germany couldn't stop the BBC during WWII, for
| example. And you can get a lot of American radios all over the
| world, even when the internet is controlled. At last, none of
| the radio you listen to on AM end up in the history that
| profiles you. You can listen to a radio a night without being
| served the same music over and over afterwards.
|
| AM radio won't be mainstream. But I'm convinced it still has a
| role for media plurality, and as a line of Defense for the
| democracy (and yeah, I know you can get much more from internet
| radios, like Anime music and everything, but it doesn't feel
| the same)
| olyjohn wrote:
| From the Portland area, I could pick up KGO from San Fransisco
| at night. Never cared for the content as a kid, but it was
| still fascinating!
| tjohns wrote:
| If you're not familiar with the term, look up "clear-channel
| station". (Not to be confused with the advertising company of
| the same name.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear-channel_station
|
| https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Station-
| Albums/WSM/Cle...
|
| Stations like KGO receive special status to protect against
| interference, and in return are required to transmit 10,000
| Watts _minimum_. Most transmit at 50,000 Watts. The idea was
| to make sure even the most remote parts of the country with
| no local stations would be able to receive one of the clear-
| channel stations at night.
| [deleted]
| cschneid wrote:
| > The AM band in the United States covers frequencies from 540
| kHz up to 1700 kHz
|
| I wonder if there's something useful to do with that range. It's
| a big chunk of lower frequencies right there, in the range that
| reliably does over-the-horizon propagation (although better at
| night perhaps according to wikipedia?)
|
| The benefit of AM being super simple to build a receiver for is
| less relevant nowadays, FM is trivial to get radios for now, and
| ham radio uses SSB for voice for the most part in the lower
| frequency ranges.
| perilunar wrote:
| > I wonder if there's something useful to do with that range.
|
| Non-directional beacons! In Nth America NDBs are 190-535 kHz,
| but elsewhere they are 190-1750 kHz, overlapping the AM radio
| band. Keep decommissioning the more expensive VOR stations in
| favour of satnav (and release the spectrum), but keep NDB
| transmitters as a low-tech/low-cost backup.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| I'd bet that most would conclude that the best use for those
| frequencies is broadcast.
|
| In Seattle, half a million people listened to KIRO-AM 710 last
| month [1]. In Boston, 454,600 people listened to WBZ-AM 1030
| [2]. In Los Angeles, 625,500 people listened to KFI-AM 640 [3].
|
| It's difficult to justify discontinuing an audio service that
| is performing as a top conduit for audio (more than Spotify or
| Pandora, for example) because of a perception that the service
| is no longer viable.
|
| [1] <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/seattle-tacoma/> [2]
| <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/boston/> [3]
| <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/los-angeles/>
| RF_Savage wrote:
| The only real use I'd see would be some new iteration of
| Loran-C, to have something harder to jamm and spoof then
| current GNSS systems. But the local noise from car and other
| electronics would likely make it less useful.
| guywithahat wrote:
| This is the most interestingly line from his letter:
|
| > nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older -- totaling
| hundreds of millions of people -- listened to AM or FM radio each
| week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56
| percent) or own a computer (77 percent)
|
| Admittedly it seems dubious but if true I'm surprised by
| basically every one of these numbers
| sempron64 wrote:
| All this requires to be true is that basically all Americans
| who are in a car weekly turn on the radio when driving, which
| is very believable. Some people also still have a radio in the
| kitchen of course.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Is it? It's been years since I, most of my family, or my
| coworkers have turned on the radio (for non-Bluetooth
| audio)...my aging FIL insisted on it during a trip back in
| August (to much good-natured ribbing from his kids) but
| that's the last time I remember.
| toss1 wrote:
| Note the "listened to AM _OR_ FM radio each week ", emphasis on
| the "or".
|
| I can't say how long it has been since I checked the AM dial
| while driving (basically hit it by accident), but years it he
| most appropriate unit. What I heard (northeastern US) seemed to
| support some data I read that it is mostly taken over by
| religious and Limbaugh-type right-wing talk radio. So, that
| strongly left- Sen. Markey is supporting it so strongly says
| something. But, if there are actually high listener ship, then
| for sure, it could be a critical emergency communications
| channel, and worthwhile just for that
| water8 wrote:
| darkerside wrote:
| Makes me wonder if 60% of people listen to FM radio every
| week, 30% to AM radio, and they incorrectly aggregated them.
| Fatnino wrote:
| San Francisco used to have a station with left wing talk show
| hosts.
|
| Then some big corpo (cumulus?) snapped up the station and the
| cast changed significantly, with the station swinging to the
| right very noticeably.
|
| I switched it off permanently soon after. This was around the
| time I discovered I get more useful traffic information from
| my phone anyway.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Here in NY I regularly tune into AM for news/traffic reports
| and sports events.
| uni_rule wrote:
| 1010 still gets the job done ages later, shame they changed
| all the sounds to more generic ones though.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| Just an example: In Seattle, the #2 rated station last month
| was KIRO-AM 710. Sports play-by-play and local sports talk
| performs really well on AM [1].
|
| In the same ratings book, the religious and right-wing talk
| radio on AM continued with a poor performance. I think that
| generally content is more important than the technology
| delivering the audio (although probably anything would
| perform better to at least some extent on FM).
|
| [1] <https://radioinsight.com/ratings/seattle-tacoma/>
| splitstud wrote:
| r00fus wrote:
| Does it count those instances where my Ford randomly plays FM
| radio (sometimes even randomly AM) before I managed to connect
| BT/Carplay or if that either of those happen to disconnect?
|
| Because that's about the limit of my usage of any terrestrial
| radio.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| You may listen more than you think. Also counted is in-store
| (and in-restaurant) listening. That's the main reason why so
| many stations go with all-Christmas music formats.
|
| Most independently owned retail and eating establishments
| also qualify for a copyright infringement exemption if they
| play music originated by a radio or television broadcast
| station licensed by the FCC [1].
|
| [1] 17 US Code SS110(5)
| <https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/110>
| cwkoss wrote:
| No way that's true. Wonder if they're getting selection bias,
| ex. the 90% of the people who are willing to take an
| unsolicited survey on their land line phone.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| I can't back up the 90%-of-people claim, but as per the
| industry-accepted audio listening diary survey, a giant 74%
| share of audio consumption comes from AM/FM broadcasters [1].
| So 90 percent is very possible.
|
| [1] <https://www.westwoodone.com/blog/2022/11/21/edisons-
| share-of...>
| mikequinlan wrote:
| I got a diary from Nielson for radio stations I listened
| to. I never listen to radio so I entered the stations and
| programs I wanted to be successful, rather than the ones I
| was listening to (since I wasn't listening to any of them).
| (so NPR and the local public radio station got a little
| boost).
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| Yeah, there was a lot of "vote for your favorite station"
| activity when the Arbitron/Nielson diary was used as the
| main system.
|
| I was working at a station when they switched from diary
| to the electronic PPM system. The station's cumulative
| numbers jumped 3-fold that month-- we had no idea that
| many people were listening.
| andirk wrote:
| I wonder what "watch television" means these days. I don't know
| many people who have broadcast or cable TV.
| uni_rule wrote:
| I am still surprised how relatively few people have a set of
| rabbit ears wired to their "streaming" TVs for basic news or
| whatever in the current year considering how cheap they are.
| andirk wrote:
| Those ears need to be HD-capable or whatever the term is.
| And I need to get those HD rabbit ears so I can watch
| sports on broadcast tele instead of choppy rando streams.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| It seems reasonable to include things like FUBO, which offer
| both broadcast and TV channels.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Trending down slowly, but still 40% of US households:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/612660/paid-services-
| bro...
| ilyt wrote:
| Basically "old people"
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/659779/cable-tv-
| penetrat...
| andirk wrote:
| What is historically the highest % of US households with
| TV?
|
| (Paywall. And that is the most aggressive form I've ever
| battled.)
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Hmm, I guess my mass of adblocking extensions in FF must
| work pretty well, I had to dismiss a single modal. But it
| looks like Peak TV was reached by about 1980[1], 98% of
| households!
|
| 1:
| https://www.americancentury.omeka.wlu.edu/items/show/136
| mgkuhn wrote:
| What exactly does he technically want to preserve? Does he really
| care about amplitude modulation? Or does he care about the
| frequency band (medium wave, HF) and its propagation properties?
| Or does he care bout the geographic reach of these stations?
|
| Amplitude modulation is a historically important technology,
| because it was technically very simple to receive in the early
| history of radio, and because it was more bandwidth-efficient
| than FM. But it remains utterly badly suited for mobile
| reception, because it is highly sensitive for multi-path
| interference (unlike FM).
|
| We have now far better modern, digital modulation schemes,
| including DAB and DVB-T2 for VHF and DRM for long, medium, and
| short-wave transmission. They provide (thanks to OFDM) much
| better audio quality and interference resistance than the old
| analogue modulation schemes, and they are also far more power
| efficient, which substantially reduces the enormous electricity
| bills of the transmitter stations. They also are very bandwidth
| efficient, and can be used in single-frequency networks.
| jejones3141 wrote:
| Agreed about digital modulation, but I recall hearing multipath
| a lot more on FM, or perhaps it was just more obnoxious there.
| Traveling around large buildings or under a metal bridge would
| bring that familiar rapid flutter as the car moved through
| places where the reflections would reinforce and cancel. (You
| can drive through a lot more wavelengths per unit time for FM
| than AM.)
| vjulian wrote:
| My favourite radio ever is AM 740 in the Boston area-- WJIB, a
| listener-supported station broadcasting hits from the late 30s to
| 70s easy listening. Where else in broadcast these days can one
| expect to listen to the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, or Herb
| Alpert and his Tijuana Brass in the original AM sound? Good music
| for the soul.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| Surprised the FCC has not stepped on EV manufacturers for the RFI
| they create.
|
| They won't just interfere with medium wave broadcast.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| AM needs better content. Where are the podcast channels? I think
| it would be cheap to set up a station that just rebroadcasts
| podcasts.
| stu2010 wrote:
| I haven't seen much discussion about how AM gets used for local
| road condition or emergency communication. When you're driving
| and see a sign that says "TUNE TO 1610 AM" and the car has no AM
| receiver, what do you do?
|
| This may be a shrinking niche, but it's potentially a last
| bastion of AM radio usefulness.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| What about sports broadcasts? I often listen to games in my car
| on AM.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| As do many people. AM stations that run play-by-play sports
| programming do very well in the ratings, and do very well
| with the station's sales team.
| freedomben wrote:
| The skill of the broadcast announcers is remarkable. They
| paint the scene with audio-only in an amazing way.
|
| My father (and my grandfather before him) takes a little
| battery-powered AM radio with him to games (football,
| baseball, etc) and listen to it while watching the game
| live. They've even muted the TV and used TV picture with
| radio sound to get a better experience. That makes it easy
| to take naps and close your eyes without missing key parts
| of the game.
| vikingerik wrote:
| One thing that makes a radio-TV combination work less
| well nowadays is latency in the TV feed. Running 15 to 20
| seconds or even more behind the radio is not uncommon
| with all the processing and distribution layers that go
| on with a modern video feed. I've heard of setups where
| someone plugs a radio receiver into a computer with
| software to buffer and apply the same delay.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| In a sample size of maybe 10, every time I've seen one of those
| highway signs and tuned to the station, the quality was so bad
| I couldn't make out any words and so got no useful information.
| If that's the last bastion of AM usefulness, scrap it and give
| that spectrum to the wireless carriers. Frankly, for stuff like
| road closure information I'm a lot more likely to get that from
| Waze (delivered over a 5G connection) now anyway.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| I don't think wireless carriers would want 1.2 MHz at that
| low of a frequency. They'd have the same issues with
| interference that broadcast stations have. The transmit
| antennas would take up acres of land (each element hundreds
| of feet long). Receiver antennas would also need to be large.
|
| Also, very little data would fit in such a tiny spectrum
| window.
| tjohns wrote:
| The wireless carriers wouldn't be able to do anything with
| the AM broadcast band. It's in the MF range - not useful for
| cellular at all due to limited bandwidth, _giant_ antenna
| requirements, and ionospheric bounce.
| ilyt wrote:
| Low speed informational text message would be good use tho
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| Since the antenna would not be able to fit in anyone's
| pocket, the best placement for a medium wave text
| receiver would be in the car or a fixed location, like a
| home. And that brings you right back to the interference
| problem.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Tunnels near me just say "Turn on your radio" and blast the
| whole FM spectrum at least (might try it with AM too!). Guess
| you can do this in a tunnel!
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| Those low power highway information stations are actually
| required to be low quality audio [1]. My understanding is that
| back in the day, broadcasters insisted that these stations were
| low quality so they would not compete with commercial
| broadcasters.
|
| In my opinion, those stations actually make AM seem much worse
| than it really is. That scheme backfired in the long run.
|
| [1] 47 CFR 90.242(b)(8) <https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/
| chapter-I/subchapter-D...>
| Fatnino wrote:
| There was (is?) a commercial station in the bay area that
| broadcasts simultaneously on AM and FM. I could tune the car
| radio to the correct frequency on each and then compare the
| sound quality by flipping the AM/FM switch.
|
| FM is WAY better sound quality. It's not even close.
| ycct wrote:
| Could have just been the stereo tricking your brain into
| thinking it sounded better. For example, in the late 1980's
| my family had a car that had an AM-only radio. One day
| while channel hopping one station just sounded so much
| better than anything we'd ever heard on this radio. Someone
| finally noticed a little STEREO light had lit up, because
| that station had recently started stereo broadcasts.
| Eventually we moved and later got a different car and I've
| never again seen a little light like that on an AM station.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| But, if you ever hear AM Stereo you'd be amazed.
| tjohns wrote:
| You're talking apples and oranges.
|
| FM is absolutely better sound quality than AM. That's why
| music is mostly on FM. (On the other hand, AM uses less
| bandwidth and travels farther, since it's in the MF band
| and can bounce off the ionosphere. That's the tradeoff.)
|
| At the same time, the highway information stations the
| parent poster is talking about are _low power_ AM stations
| designed to play a road condition message within a distance
| of 3-5 miles from the antenna. The audio is often very poor
| quality, _even for AM_ , because of the transmit power
| restrictions placed on them.
|
| That said, it's worth noting the places you need these
| highway information stations most are also often places
| with some of the worst cellular coverage. If you drive in
| the mountains, they can be essential.
| supermatt wrote:
| Although FM has a higher bandwidth, from a listeners
| perspective its more likely that you were experiencing a
| narrowband monaural AM - hence the massive difference to
| your ear.
|
| Stereo or wideband AM is much clearer:
|
| http://www.amstereo.org/sound.htm
| Scaevolus wrote:
| TIS stations have low-pass filters from 3-20kHz, but it looks
| like most AM stations have low-pass filters from 5-20kHz
| anyways to avoid interference with neighboring channels:
| https://casetext.com/federal-register/audio-filtering-
| requir...
| windows2020 wrote:
| After a recent hurricane decimated our area, a battery powered
| emergency AM radio was, for some time, the only source of
| information available. Communication resiliency shouldn't be
| decreased without good reason.
| bilsbie wrote:
| It would be so cool to release AM back to the public. Maybe a
| longer range, low bandwidth Wi-Fi like protocol.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| It wouldn't be a WiFi-like protocol. Higher noise floor, major
| issues with interference with your neighbor (even beyond line
| of sight), a total of ~1/20th the bandwidth of a _single_
| narrow WiFi channel, and antenna size needing to be many orders
| of magnitude larger than for 2.4 /5Ghz WiFi.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| RE " ....That crackle apparently just doesn't fly with luxury
| auto brands. BMW spokesperson Rebecca Kiehne told me, "Electric
| motors cause interference on AM which is why BMW decided to
| remove this option. While it could be offered, BMW's performance
| standards are very high and we don't offer a product that meets
| less than those high standards."...." Apparently BMW * _high
| standards do not extend to removing EMI*_ that interferes with
| AM. It could be done if they really wanted too.
| progman32 wrote:
| I've toggled the software switch to re enable AM radio in my
| 2014 i3 electric. Seems to work fine.
| audiofish wrote:
| AM radio is a pretty poor standard considering how much power and
| bandwidth it uses, due much to the very limited modulation
| technology available in the 1920s.
|
| DRM (no not that DRM--Digital Radio Mondiale) is a modern digital
| standard that promises much better spectral efficiency, power
| efficiency and range. See https://www.drm.org/. It is similar in
| concept to DAB, using an OFDM carrier, but with more robust error
| correction and equalisation, and lower bit rate codec to handle
| larger broadcast areas.
|
| There is a hope that this could upgrade existing AM broadcast
| infrastructure, allowing rapid coverage of large areas without
| the expense of building out new towers.
|
| The MW/HF bands are great for coverage because of the longer
| wavelength, relative to the VHF bands used for FM and DAB.
| hulitu wrote:
| > and lower bit rate codec to handle larger broadcast areas
|
| That's why DAB is crap. Because people are greedy and don't
| care about quality.
| audiofish wrote:
| Agreed, but the alternative here is AM which has never been
| good quality. DAB was a big step down from FM quality because
| the choice of codec / bandwidth assigned to stations was
| pretty bad (and bandwidth == $$!)
| dirkf wrote:
| Are you referring to the original DAB (using MP2) or the
| upgraded DAB+ standard (using HE-AACv2)? I think most, if
| not all, stations have switched to DAB+. I'm told the
| quality is better than FM and based on my experience it's
| certainly not worse as far as I can hear. Of course, since
| FM is analog it degrades linearly whereas DAB+ is digital:
| it either works or it doesn't. This might skew the
| perception of quality.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Obviously you know this, but AM is absurdly easy to implement.
| A pencil, razor blade, some wire and an earphone is all it
| takes to make a crude receiver.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio
| blueflow wrote:
| This sometimes happens on accident. I had circuits turning
| into AM radios when i touched them at specific screws or
| pads, with some random frequency hard-tuned in. At night,
| when the reception was better, you'd hear voices!
| freedomben wrote:
| One of the first electronics kits everybody gets is a build-
| your-own AM radio. It's awesome cause it's easy enough for a
| beginner but also does something cool.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Indeed. No way that replacing trivial to implement,
| ubiquitous communications technology with complicated,
| processing intensive, proprietary solutions could go wrong.
| lormayna wrote:
| I am an huge fan of DRM, but the lack of receivers it's a good
| limitation for that.
| audiofish wrote:
| That is true, although I know of one company close to
| production of a <10$ module for OEMs to integrate.
| datpiff wrote:
| Haha me too
| lormayna wrote:
| This will be fantastic. I am looking forward to it!
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| What a shame. I've lived in a rural areas for most of my adult
| life. FM reception is notoriously poor due to the terrain. AM
| repeaters were always a nice touch. Also worth noting that AM
| radio content is absurdly easy to support and transmit.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| AM content absurdly easy to receive for; that's for sure.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I doubt AM is easy to transmit in practice. Complicated
| modulation schemes cost almost nothing, but high power is still
| expensive and needs real engineering.
|
| It might be easier on a DIY level, but on a commercial level
| complexity is free, substance and power are expensive.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| AM transmissions (10 kHz) are relatively narrow compared to
| other broadcast formats, so the power bill is less than FM
| (200 kHz) and TV (6000 kHz).
|
| The real cost problem in 2022 is the size of the antenna. The
| entire tower, or array of towers, is the antenna. They can
| take up many acres of land. It is hard to justify not selling
| out and replacing those towers with more lucrative
| residential, retail or industrial development.
|
| A single station's antenna could be 5 properly spaced towers,
| each hundreds of feet high.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| It's a notable argument you bring up that AM stations are
| sometimes the only audio service available in remote areas.
|
| The characteristics of AM (i.e., daytime groundwave and
| nighttime skywave) provide service that other services can not.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I find it funny... here people are afraid their clients (cars)
| will lose AM support, and in europe, we feer the very-soon coming
| date when our governments will shut down FM radio, leaving a
| bunch of cars (those without DAB radios) musicless or tied to
| some kind of mobile phone connected to AUX ports situation.
| chha wrote:
| Or as they say: Welcome to Norway! [1]
|
| [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/13/norway-
| becomes...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Are you from norway?
|
| I'm guessing you had a mandate that all new cars need to have
| DAB receivers.. when did that come in action? Because here in
| slovenia, you could still buy a new car without DAB just a
| few years ago. Basically, i'm just wandering if all your cars
| sold in the last 10+ years already have dab (by mandate) and
| the turn-off wasn't a real pain for most, or if like 80%+ of
| your cars on the street just lost radio reception?
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