Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The end of AM radio in your car?

boston.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 104 posts

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#71

Post by hinata08 »

dctoedt wrote: post #9

AM radio broadcasts can reach somewhat farther than FM (and way farther at night on clear channels); that might matter in an emergency. As a middle-schooler living in the Washington DC area, I would regularly pick up WLS in Chicago, some 700 miles away, on my little crystal set at night.

yeah, Europe's AM bands were fun at night

I can still get music radio from Algeria on AM, or rock, sport and news from the UK (I believe from stations emitting from Swansea and London) I used to listen to Deutschlandfunk, France Inter, BBC4 LW on the LW band (only the latter is still active today, others were switched off in the 2010s)

Also, I love that radio is a media that is so hard to regulate. There is always some novelty to what you can listen. There used to be rock-music pirate radios in the 60s, emitting from the international waters. Some small countries like Luxembourg and Monaco would also have commercial radios to break government monopolies from neighboring countries. Then there were the pirate FM radios in the 70s and 80s

Monaco is still broadcasting some stations that don't comply with French regulations on music (Riviera radio serves mainstream English pop songs). It allows you to listen to some different music in your car. (this one is in FM, tho, so it's very local)

Some authoritarian governments were challenged by the radio too. Nazi Germany couldn't stop the BBC during WWII, for example. And you can get a lot of American radios all over the world, even when the internet is controlled. At last, none of the radio you listen to on AM end up in the history that profiles you. You can listen to a radio a night without being served the same music over and over afterwards.

AM radio won't be mainstream. But I'm convinced it still has a role for media plurality, and as a line of Defense for the democracy (and yeah, I know you can get much more from internet radios, like Anime music and everything, but it doesn't feel the same)

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#72

Post by RF_Enthusiast »

mikequinlan wrote: post #57
RF_Enthusiast wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't back up the 90%-of-people claim, but as per the industry-accepted audio listening diary survey, a giant 74% share of audio consumption comes from AM/FM broadcasters [1]. So 90 percent is very possible. [1] https://www.westwoodone.com/blog/2022/11/21/edisons-share-of... >

I got a diary from Nielson for radio stations I listened to. I never listen to radio so I entered the stations and programs I wanted to be successful, rather than the ones I was listening to (since I wasn't listening to any of them). (so NPR and the local public radio station got a little boost).

Yeah, there was a lot of "vote for your favorite station" activity when the Arbitron/Nielson diary was used as the main system.

I was working at a station when they switched from diary to the electronic PPM system. The station's cumulative numbers jumped 3-fold that month-- we had no idea that many people were listening.

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#73

Post by RF_Enthusiast »

ilyt wrote: post #68
tjohns wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wireless carriers wouldn't be able to do anything with the AM broadcast band. It's in the MF range - not useful for cellular at all due to limited bandwidth, giant antenna requirements, and ionospheric bounce.

Low speed informational text message would be good use tho

Since the antenna would not be able to fit in anyone's pocket, the best placement for a medium wave text receiver would be in the car or a fixed location, like a home. And that brings you right back to the interference problem.

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#74

Post by uni_rule »

andirk wrote: post #5
guywithahat wrote: post #2

This is the most interestingly line from his letter: > nearly 90 percent of Americans ages 12 and older — totaling hundreds of millions of people — listened to AM or FM radio each week, higher than the percentage that watch television (56 percent) or own a computer (77 percent) Admittedly it seems dubious but if true I'm surprised by basically every one of these numbers

I wonder what "watch television" means these days. I don't know many people who have broadcast or cable TV.

I am still surprised how relatively few people have a set of rabbit ears wired to their "streaming" TVs for basic news or whatever in the current year considering how cheap they are.

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#75

Post by uni_rule »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #19
toss1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the "listened to AM OR FM radio each week", emphasis on the "or". I can't say how long it has been since I checked the AM dial while driving (basically hit it by accident), but years it he most appropriate unit. What I heard (northeastern US) seemed to support some data I read that it is mostly taken over by religious and Limbaugh-type right-wing talk radio. So, that strongly left- Sen. Markey is supporting it s…

Here in NY I regularly tune into AM for news/traffic reports and sports events.

1010 still gets the job done ages later, shame they changed all the sounds to more generic ones though.

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#76

Post by Scaevolus »

RF_Enthusiast wrote: post #35
stu2010 wrote: post #14

I haven't seen much discussion about how AM gets used for local road condition or emergency communication. When you're driving and see a sign that says "TUNE TO 1610 AM" and the car has no AM receiver, what do you do? This may be a shrinking niche, but it's potentially a last bastion of AM radio usefulness.

Those low power highway information stations are actually required to be low quality audio [1]. My understanding is that back in the day, broadcasters insisted that these stations were low quality so they would not compete with commercial broadcasters. In my opinion, those stations actually make AM seem much worse than it really is. That scheme backfired in the long run. [1] 47 CFR 90.242(b)(8) https://www.ecfr.gov/c…

TIS stations have low-pass filters from 3-20kHz, but it looks like most AM stations have low-pass filters from 5-20kHz anyways to avoid interference with neighboring channels: https://casetext.com/federal-register/audio-filtering-requir...

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#78

Post by BenjiWiebe »

bilsbie wrote: post #64

It would be so cool to release AM back to the public. Maybe a longer range, low bandwidth Wi-Fi like protocol.

It wouldn't be a WiFi-like protocol. Higher noise floor, major issues with interference with your neighbor (even beyond line of sight), a total of ~1/20th the bandwidth of a single narrow WiFi channel, and antenna size needing to be many orders of magnitude larger than for 2.4/5Ghz WiFi.

Re: The end of AM radio in your car?

#79

Post by ycct »

Fatnino wrote: post #41
RF_Enthusiast wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those low power highway information stations are actually required to be low quality audio [1]. My understanding is that back in the day, broadcasters insisted that these stations were low quality so they would not compete with commercial broadcasters. In my opinion, those stations actually make AM seem much worse than it really is. That scheme backfired in the long run. [1] 47 CFR 90.242(b)(8) https://www.ecfr.gov/c…

There was (is?) a commercial station in the bay area that broadcasts simultaneously on AM and FM. I could tune the car radio to the correct frequency on each and then compare the sound quality by flipping the AM/FM switch. FM is WAY better sound quality. It's not even close.

Could have just been the stereo tricking your brain into thinking it sounded better. For example, in the late 1980's my family had a car that had an AM-only radio. One day while channel hopping one station just sounded so much better than anything we'd ever heard on this radio. Someone finally noticed a little STEREO light had lit up, because that station had recently started stereo broadcasts. Eventually we moved and later got a different car and I've never again seen a little light like that on an AM station.
Post reply on HN