“I sit alone and watch your light, my only friend through teenage nights and everything I had to know, I learned it on my radio.” Roger Taylor/Queen
It seemed that AM radio had nine lives. Every time the frequency platform was declared dead, it somehow roared back to life; however, this time, it appears that AM, after more than 100 years, is going the way of the horse and buggy.
Most major car makers including Tesla, GM, Volkswagen, BMW and Audi have announced AM radio will no longer be available in their electric vehicles and, according to Forbes magazine, Ford is planning to phase out AM receivers in all of their cars with the exception of the Mustang EV.
Toyota, Hyundai and Honda plan to keep AM in their vehicles for now, according to the Washington Post.
There are roughly 4,000 AM stations currently broadcasting in the United States.
Not everyone is happy about the news, and some members of Congress are calling for legislation to keep AM in cars sold in America.
“This is a tone-deaf display of complete ignorance about what AM radio means to Americans,” Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a radio trade magazine, told the Washington Post.
Rep. Greg Pence, R-Ind, who is leading the bipartisan effort to keep AM in cars, calls the platform “crucial” in emergency situations such as natural disasters and says that AM plays a role in national security.
Others have suggested that the move might be a conspiracy to remove conservative talk shows, which dominate AM, from the air. However, local radio host Austin Rhodes, who has broadcast on many different formats on AM and FM for nearly 40 years, says he does not buy the conspiracy theories.
“There are legitimate technical concerns, the set up of electric vehicles interferes with the signal, so it’s probably practical for (auto manufacturers) not to include AM in their EV’s,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes points out that most large AM stations, such as WGAC 580 locally, long ago began simulcasting their content on the FM band.
“Stations like WSB (Atlanta, Ga), WBT (Charlotte, NC) and even the first station to broadcast commercially in America, KDKA (Pittsburg, Pa) are all found on FM these days,” Rhodes said.
The reason auto manufacturers are abandoning the platform has to do with how AM signals are transmitted.
FM, or frequency modulation, broadcasts on higher frequencies from a small antenna placed at the top of a tower. It takes a tremendous amount of power to get a strong signal over a large area.
FM operates much like a revolving bull horn.
For amplitude modulation, or AM, the tower itself is the antennae. The tower pushes the lower frequency signal downward into a metal grid or coil array around the tower which then shoots the signal into the atmosphere, according to the Nineveh University College of electronics engineering. The signal then rains back down over the coverage area.
A 5,000-watt AM signal on a choice frequency at the low end of the dial will have the same coverage area as a 100,000 watt FM signal.
However, even though AM is a much stronger signal, it does have its limitations as any AM listener can attest. While AM is fueled with electricity, electricity is also its bane.
AM radio is not compatible with an EV unless the manufacturers spend an enormous amount of money to develop new shielding techniques that would make the EV’s even more expensive than they are now.
According to the Radio Research Consortium, 41% of people listen to AM/FM terrestrial radio, and the rest are embracing streaming music and podcasts for in-vehicle entertainment. Most of the same live content can be streamed through the radio station’s app and stations are now producing their own podcasts as well.
So, the giant WGAC tower on Washington Road behind and near Jim Hudson Lexus, which has been a landmark on the horizon since the 1940s and was once the tallest radio tower in the state of Georgia, won’t be coming down anytime soon; but it is clear that the sun is finally setting on AM broadcasting.
