AM radio faces uncertain road ahead as automakers nix it from the dashboard

DAB is aomething you buy in a pot shop here in the USA

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The TRS-80 Model 1 did the same. It had no on-board sound, so certain games came with the instruction to put an AM receiver near the computer & tune to a certain frequency. The interference from the game (e.g. a slot machine) coincided with the noise transmitting to the radio & so more-or-less provided crude (at least, synchronized) electronic sound effects.

The FCC told Tandy to fix it & that was one of the improvements with the Model 3 (which was built within a single enclosure). Presumably they could come down on the auto companies the same way.

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But that cuts both ways, meaning that someone in St. Louis will no longer get weather alerts concerning the DFW area, because WBAP’s signal covers a huge portion of North America.

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One thing that’s bugged me for a while is that quite a few smartphones include chips and hardware that would make them physically capable of directly receiving old-fashioned radio signals without using data. (At least for FM frequencies) We’re already walking around with the technology in our pockets all the time, so I really wish that phone makers made this feature easier to use, especially for emergencies.

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Before the streaming era, I had a couple of smartphones that could receive FM. I also vaguely recall that the manufacturer deliberately disabled the chip in some variant models.

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I have a Samsung Galaxy J2, which didn’t come with an FM tuner pre-installed but I was able to install an app to enable it. It requires using corded headphones which it uses as an antenna, which isn’t an issue for me but probably something that a lot of folks wouldn’t want to do.

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Historically Cable and (cell) Phones have been slow to recover after major disasters. They may be good enough for warnings, but if after the disaster you need to know where to go to get food, water, or evacuation support you will likely be out of luck.

Broadcast is a little better, but as you go up the technology scale it gets harder to use in a post disaster situation. If you don’t have power we can assume TV is not an option at all. FM is probably using your car, or a pre-prepared disaster radio. AM is an interesting option because you can use an amplified system, or you can use an unamplified system. Simple AM receivers can be passively powered by the signals they capture. It’s not going to be a good loud signal but they can work. If you know what to do, building a simple crystal radio is fairly easy from scrap.

And as @David_Guilbeaul pointed out the transmitter side for AM is also easier to roll out.

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I’m still waiting on longwave to make a comeback.

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The existence of “Sirius XM” suggests that The Powers That Be could put an emergency radio receiver in every vehicle that would always be line-of-sight to a satellite transmitter … if they felt like it

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Not sure that’s true. AM doesn’t need line-of-sight; not sure that’s true of FM, DAB+. Phones have issues of their own when trying to get a bulk message out.

I remember as a kid waiting until near bed-time and tuning into AM stations about 800 km / 500 miles away.

Are there radio buffs on-thread who can clarify?

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You’re right. Coverage widespread especially at night. AM radio receivers easy to make; razor blade with a wire “tickler” for instance…although routing that through your wireless headphones might be a puzzler. The classic headphone for this improvised radio is a telephone handset, good luck with that :slight_smile: .

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There is a digital AM equivalent that never really got any attention

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In the event of a CME severe enough to disrupt communications on Earth sats might be out too. CME not too likely, but worth considering perhaps

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Is that a “bouncing off the ionosphere” thing, or…?

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Some “bouncing” , some refracting around the Earth. The WWV time signal that the ‘atomic’ clocks use is all “ground wave”, at least if you want the most accuracy. Coverage is at least 1500 miles. “Skywave” propagation can be farther but is not reliable ( or useful as a timebase . Now GPS is used for these applications commercially but kitchen clocks use WWV still). BTW the reason it is farther at night is related to the height above Earth of the relivant layer of the ionosphere. Solar radiation affects that

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I couldn’t fall asleep without listening to Cousin Brucie or Dan Ingrahm when I was a kid, but I haven’t listened to AM radio for decades. And then there’s this…

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i listened to a great podcast series on how that came to be, but the truth is, it’s long since metastasized to fm radio.

the lower end of the fm dial in many places is filled with stations - many of them owned by salem media who owns most of the am ones - with fascist christian value programming

some monopoly enforcement could go a long way in restoring am and fm stations to actually local hands

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It’s not fair :sob:

Conservative talk radio never “attacks” anybody /s

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Musically, AM Radio unofficially died in Boston MA when WRKO(AM), (680 kHz on the radio dial), the number one Top 40 AM radio station, flipped to all talk in the early 1980s. We still had WILD(AM), (1090 kHz on the radio dial), the premier Black music AM radio station until about 2006 when it flipped to all talk as well. Funny thing about WILD-AM though is it only broadcast from sunrise to sunset .

Info gathered from bostonradio.org and my limited memory. :upside_down_face:

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Curses! How will my myrmidions receive their instructions inconspicuously while evading the radio detector vans by driving around in the future?

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