Save Our Signal! Politicians close in on votes needed to keep AM radio in every car

[melm00se]

28. OTA AM signals

are an important aspect of national security and must be protected.

I am sure that there are some folks here are old enough to remember when AM radio dials looked like this



The little pyramids were marks (680 and 1240) for AM stations to which the public could tune to in case of a civil emergency. Every other station could be ordered to shutdown.

This also why the FCC designated only a limited number of stations in the nation that could broadcast 50,000 watts in an omnidirectional signal (clear channel). These clear channel stations can be heard across the nation at night (try it some night. Get in your car, pull out into the driveway and hit the "seek" button on your AM radio. You will quickly pick up stations from across the country that you never ever hear during the day.

The internet is fragile. It goes down. AM stations? If they have power, they have a footprint that is not limited, especially at night, to line of sight like FM radio is.

We are foolish to allow the phone companies to retire POTS in favor of VoIP.

POTS was rock solid technology. It was available 5 9s of the time. VoIP and cell? a lot more fragile.

Sometimes that old time technology must be protected because it worked all the time in the most common and the most extreme situations.