Once upon a time - say, about fifty years ago - most cars had a radio like this.
And for many of not most of us, it was all you needed. Even though you could only get AM radio, there was still plenty to listen to on the band. There was news, there was talk, there was big-band music, and of course there were the Top Forty stations that played all kinds of pop from MOR and disco to . . . MOR and disco. Okay, the "cool" stations on FM played Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd while people with only AM in their cars had to settle for the Carpenters and Donna Summer (with Barry Manilow in between), but hey, it wasn't all MOR and disco. Remember that the Eagles and Elton John made the Top Forty back in the seventies, as did Edgar Winter with his instrumental "Frankenstein." You still had FM at home; you didn't need it in your car.
Now, of course, AM has been largely abandoned. The hit-single radio format migrated to FM in the early eighties, cassettes and compact discs allowed folks to being their favorite LPs with them, and Sirius XM has practically made all terrestrial radio obsolete, with its hundreds of channels offering music of all forms, hip-hop (see what I did there?), news, talk, and sports. And folks who listened to AM big-band stations like WNEW-AM and, later, WQEW-AM in New York never stopped loving big-band music . . . they just died. Back in the eighties, folks with older cars had to bite the bullet and buy an FM adapter for their car radios (myself included) to hear our favorite music stations. All that's pretty much left on AM radio are right-wing talk shows. And of course, there will be sport.
Which is exactly why many automakers want to get rid of the AM band entirely from car radios. They believe that newer forms of communication can substitute for it.
Not so fast. Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have resurrected the old Boston-Austin alliance by joining forces to introduce the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would mandate AM radio in all motor vehicles sold in the United States. Cruz called the exclusion of AM radio "enormously harmful to both free speech but also to a robust democratic process," citing the inability of motorists to hear conservative talk-radio host without AM radio in their car, while Markey has cited the fact that emergency broadcasts use AM radio for official news during natural disasters. A comparable bill in the House also has bipartisan support.
For a technology that first emerged commercially a hundred years ago, AM radio is incredibly versatile. Its signals cover 90 percent of the American population, a single station's signal can be received hundreds of miles away (I once got in New Jersey an AM station from Fort Wayne, Indiana), it can be heard widely over rural areas that rely on it for news and information, and it continues to work in mass blackouts to allow emergency broadcasts to continue uninterrupted. For all of the sophisticated digital broadcasting and satellite radio we have, AM is still enough for many people.
And some AM stations, by the way, still play music. WMTR in Morris County, New Jersey still plays pop oldies from 1955 to 1980, which is good enough for me.
Needle to say, for all of my love for satellite radio, I support the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act because a lot of people want it and, just as importantly, they need it. I still listen to AM for news reports and weather forecasts. I even listen to WMTR every now and then. Newer sonic-communication technologies should only supplement, not replace, AM.
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