End of a love affair: AM radio is being removed from many cars
Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Tesla and other automakers are eliminating AM radio from some new vehicles, stirring protests against the loss of a medium that has shaped American life for a century
By Marc Fisher
May 13, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Scott DeLucia discusses traffic, sports and whats good to watch on TV during his WTAW morning show The Infomaniacs, in College Station, Tex. (Danielle Villasana for The Washington Post)
Americas love affair between the automobile and AM radio a century-long romance that provided the soundtrack for lovers lanes, kept the lonely company with ballgames and chat shows, sparked family singalongs and defined road trips is on the verge of collapse, a victim of galloping technological change and swiftly shifting consumer tastes. ... The breakup is entirely one-sided, a move by major automakers to eliminate AM radios from new vehicles despite protests from station owners, listeners, first-responders and politicians from both major parties. ... Automakers, such as BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda and Tesla, are removing AM radios from new electric vehicles because electric engines can interfere with the sound of AM stations. And Ford, one of the nations top-three auto sellers, is taking a bigger step, eliminating AM from all of its vehicles, electric or gas-operated.
Some station owners and advertisers contend that losing access to the car dashboard will indeed be a death blow to many of the nations 4,185 AM stations the possible demise of a core element of the nations delivery system for news, political talk (especially on the right), coverage of weather emergencies and foreign language programming. ... This is a tone-deaf display of complete ignorance about what AM radio means to Americans, said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade journal covering the talk radio industry. Its not the end of the world for radio, but it is the loss of an iconic piece of American culture.
For the first hundred years of mass media, AM radio shaped American life: It was where Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his fireside chats; where a young Ronald Reagan announced Chicago Cubs baseball games; where DJs such as Wolfman Jack along the U.S.-Mexico border, Larry Lujack in Chicago, Alan Freed in Cleveland, Cousin Brucie Morrow in New York City and Don Imus in California, Texas, Ohio and New York howled, growled and shouted out the latest pop hits.
Through the snap and crackle of distant lightning and the hum of overhead power lines, AM radios sometimes-staticky signal dominated the countrys soundscape. From the 1950s into the 1970s, Top 40 hit music stations in many big cities maintained astonishing shares of the audience, with 50 percent and more of listeners tuned to a single station, meaning that people could walk along a city sidewalk and hear one station continuously blasting out of transistor radios, boomboxes and, above all, car radios. ... But technology moved on, and the silky smooth sound of FM radio and then the crystal digital clarity of streaming stations and podcasts narrowed AMs hold on the American imagination.
{snip}
The removal of AM radio from cars where about half of AM listening takes place has sparked bipartisan protests. Some Democrats are fighting to save stations that often are the only live source of local information during extreme weather, as well as outlets that target immigrant audiences. Some Republicans, meanwhile, claim the elimination of AM radio is aimed at diminishing the reach of conservative talk radio, an AM mainstay from Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck to dozens of acolytes of the late Rush Limbaugh. Eight of the countrys 10 most popular radio talk shows are conservative. ... The automobile is essential to liberty, right-wing talk show host Mark Levin told his listeners last month. Its freedom. So the control of the automobile is about the control of your freedom. They finally figured out how to attack conservative talk radio.
{snip}
Gift Article
https://wapo.st/3pG00Li
By Marc Fisher
Marc Fisher, a senior editor, writes about most anything. He has been The Washington Posts enterprise editor, local columnist and Berlin bureau chief, and he has covered politics, education, pop culture and much else in three decades on the Metro, Style, National and Foreign desks. Twitter https://twitter.com/mffisher
Ocelot II
(115,280 posts)If there's money to be had, some FM stations might fill the gap anyhow.
jimfields33
(15,474 posts)Info that wont be released now. Minority language supporters are unhappy due to no longer having ability to hear the stations. Its not all right wing complaining.
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,899 posts)DC's "traffic and weather on the eights" station is now FM; it has been for years. That is generally not the case, as one who has driven across the country well knows.
There are a lot of Latino-oriented AM stations in the DC area.
jimfields33
(15,474 posts)mobeau69
(11,079 posts)jimfields33
(15,474 posts)mobeau69
(11,079 posts)jimfields33
(15,474 posts)Paladin
(28,204 posts)Well, boo-fucking-hoo. (nt)
Chipper Chat
(9,637 posts)At every stop you heard the snarling voice of Rush limbaugh at every stop every stop.
mobeau69
(11,079 posts)RKP5637
(67,032 posts)short. Areal communications and cell phone type could be lost. Shortwave can get through sometimes a few thousand miles depending on the skips. Like someone else said, just get a small cheap portable AM radio.
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,750 posts)machoneman
(3,952 posts)PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,750 posts)Thank you for catching that.
Meadowoak
(5,517 posts)hunter
(38,264 posts)The speakers in their cars are connected to their cell phones via Bluetooth. Their phones are where their music, podcasts, and anything else they care to listen to are.
My mom used to work in radio back in the days when it was very much like WKRP in Cincinnati everywhere, even in larger markets. Those days are mostly gone. I used to enjoy driving across the country tuning into quirky smaller radio stations along the way.
Now it seems like it's all been drowned out in fascist political and religious crap; the usual idiots celebrating their cruel and capricious gods, many of them nationally syndicated. Any god that endorses the likes of Trump should be flushed down the toilet.
twodogsbarking
(9,308 posts)Maninacan
(25 posts)The only way i can listen to Stephanie Miller is WCPT Chicago 820. Too bad it goes WBAP Dallas at night. AM reception used to be better or antennas were better.I am trying to put a real antenna on my van so i can get better reception.
KS Toronado
(16,911 posts)Is that a spinach can?
Maninacan
(25 posts)The can is a Van
gopiscrap
(23,674 posts)MurrayDelph
(5,281 posts)55+ years ago, I discovered what the capacitor charging on my camera's strobe would do to my AM radio, so the shielding a radio would need in an electric car would be ridiculous.
And 35+ years ago, I was living in L.A. and being sent to teach in Phoenix and Seattle. Many a night I would be out in my car listening to clear channels KFI and KNX in Los Angeles (the latter of which used to play Olde Time Radio).
Once AM radio consolidation occurred and radio stations became nothing but sports, Limbaugh (and fellow travelers), and send-us-money and-we'll-make-sure-it-gets-to-J'Hesus, I reveled in the discovery my new car's CD player could play MP3s, so I burned my own CDs of audiobooks and Olde Time Radio.
Three years ago, I bought a newer brand-new car that has no CD option (but ironically still has AM), but has a flash drive port, so it's full of podcasts and audiobooks. And a portable SiriusXM receiver and low-end subscription give me MSNBC, Stephanie Miller, and 24-hour When Radio Was.
The next cars will probably have SiriusXM installed by default. Progress?
Aristus
(66,096 posts)After my parents got divorced, my mothers parents bought her a basic, bare-bones Ford Escort so she could work and run errands.
Manual shift, no A/C, and no CD, cassette player, or FM radio. AM only.
Its amazing what comes standard in cars nowadays.
pstokely
(10,511 posts)no $ in those
CTyankee
(63,771 posts)I like NPR classical music station.
pstokely
(10,511 posts)or does your computer lack a CD/DVD drive?
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,899 posts)They are powered through cigarette lighters. I hear that the discs skip a lot due to all the bouncing around of a car in motion, though.
The output is taken from the headphone jack. It can be sent to the car's radio by a cassette or through the FM radio. If you have a new enough radio, it has an AUX jack that can take the CD player's output signal directly.
CTyankee
(63,771 posts)It's me, not you. I can't understand most anything techie.
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,899 posts)Last edited Mon May 15, 2023, 09:21 AM - Edit history (2)
Feign disappointment at the lack of good stuff (which won't be too hard, if your local yard sales are anything like the ones around here).
Say, "do you have any old electronics?"
If the people running the sale say, "you know, we have this old portable CD player," you may be a winner.
Discman
Portable CD player
They can be carried around on your person. In that case, they are powered by two AA cells. You listen to them through headphones.
You can also take them along in a car. In that case, they get their power from a cigarette lighter adapter. You can't listen to them through headphones. You have to get the signal from the headphone jack to the car radio in your dashboard. There are three ways to do thi.
If your car radio has a cassette player built in, there are cassette adapters that are inserted into the cassette player part of your car radio. The other end of the cable is a 3.5-mm headphone plug.
Or, if your car radio does not have a cassette player built in, you can transmit the signal from your portable CD player via a short-range FM transmitter. The transmitter is powered via the car's cigarette lighter. Best Buy et al. sells these things. Maybe you can find one of these at a yard sale too.
If your car radio has an AUX IN jack, you can attach the CD player to the car radio directly via a cable with a 3.5-mm plug on either end. That's the easiest solution, but the one that it least likely to be encountered, depending on how old your car is.
machoneman
(3,952 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)I use it for a couple of stations and to receive my Bluetooth from my devices via a small FM transmission device.
Get rid of AM and reallocate the spectrum.