Ford reverses course and will keep AM radio 🎙️

[KimoCarew]

We are out here.

We have been avoiding you. It's working just fine, thank you.

The FCC came running to bail AM radio out… again.

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[KimoCarew]

I work in broadcast engineering and some of the comments in this thread just go to show how little some folks know about the reasoning behind this bill.

Most people know about the Emergency Alert System from the scary buzzing noises and random tests at night and how annoying it is when local emergency managers overuse the Civil Emergency Message alert. But on the highest level, it's designed to take over every broadcast station in the country in the event of a grave threat - think a nuclear attack or alien invasion.

The medium wave band used by AM broadcasting in the United States has propagation characteristics that make it the best way to send a signal for very long distances. For this reason, FEMA has a direct link to ~75 clear-channel AM stations called "primary entry point" to use as the first level of this system. A "clear-channel" AM station is one that is allowed to use the maximum power output of 50 kilowatts 24 hours a day, and more importantly there are, in almost every case, no other stations on that frequency anywhere in the country.

The EAS is part of a larger internet connected system called IPAWS and every broadcast station also monitors that, but if a cyber attack takes out the internet, guess what - you still have the radio path. IPAWS also feeds the emergency alerts on your phone. Something takes out the mobile phone infrastructure, guess what - you still have the radio path.

In practice, this generally just means all the radio and TV stations in your area have a tuner locked onto the nearest primary entry point AM station and the local stations relay these emergency messages should they come. But if something takes out all your local TV and radio stations, that's when it becomes important for you to be able to receive the PEP station directly.

This is why Congress wants to keep AM available in cars, and EV manufacturers who cut corners when minimizing RF interference are taking the lazy way out and nixing AM radio. Hyundai and GM figured it out, so you can definitely have AM radio in an EV. This isn't because right wing talk radio almost exclusively exists on AM and the lawmakers somehow depend on that, that's not rational.

from u/theairwavearchitect on Reddit.

I think this about sums it all up.

If we have a nuclear war or alien invasion then am radio will be the least of our worries. This is a solution to a problem that is no longer relevant. The bottom line is that there are still owners of AM radio stations and they have some political muscle.

 

[24forsure]

Great, AM radio, but no CD player!

 

[JimParker256]

Great, AM radio, but no CD player!

I said something like this around my daughter's family the other day, and my 7th-grade granddaughter looked at me, quite puzzled, and asked "What's a CD player?" She's never seen one in her entire life.

Geesh, I"m old!

 

[Phileaux]

I said something like this around my daughter's family the other day, and my 7th-grade granddaughter looked at me, quite puzzled, and asked "What's a CD player?" She's never seen one in her entire life.

Geesh, I"m old!

My 15yr old recently purchased a Hello Kitty CD player because it's retro and Mom still has a bunch of CD.

We still have a VHS & DVD player mostly because we have the (unmessed with) original Star Wars on VHS.

 

[Sembazuru]

My 15yr old recently purchased a Hello Kitty CD player because it's retro and Mom still has a bunch of CD.

We still have a VHS & DVD player mostly because we have the (unmessed with) original Star Wars on VHS.

I was surprised when I got my PS5 console (optical drive model) and it couldn't read CDs. Then thinking about it, it was probably a cost savings measure. CDs take a different laser than DVDs and BlueRays. Sony saving build costs by removing the red laser, pickup, and optical components.

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