AM radio hasn't died yet. Heck, books haven't died yet. New media doesn't always kill old media.
The following is NOT about USA: Some lobbying very hard in various countries to introduce digital radio. When you look up the implementation details, it would be pretty bad idea to stop analog radio. Now some countries already mandate that radio in new cars and also try to mandate that all new sold radio in those countries are digital radio. It's absurde as people listen less and less radio, and analog radio has a lo…
Arguably, this is worse quality than ye olde FM on average. I mean, I could get behind a transition if they were using Opus instead of a nearly decade old hack of an even older codec... but they're not.
Thank God we're not making this mistake in the US, and digital radio in this form has been rejected: people instead are either adopting SiriusXM or phones+BT playing mixed online/offline content.
TBH I'd rather knock down all the US radio towers, reclaim all of the AM and FM radio space, and deploy 802.16? 802.11ah? something and provide low bandwidth but freeish Internet.