Car radios, capitalism, and politics.

Hi again, dairyair.

Yup, you're right about a slowly-declining AM listenership. As one who grew up with radio as the sole home entertainment feed, I've grown kind of used to it and have followed it for many, many years. AM in particular lends itself to a nighttime hobby of searching for and identifying distant/faint AM stations. Most locations can hear over 200 of them when conditions are right and the radio has a directional antenna.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

 

Hi again, drluggit.

It's nice to know that there are others out there in cyberland who, just like me, are capable of making mistakes!

Best wishes to you and yours.

 

Amber alerts also issued through cell phones.

 

Hi, Lee Atwater.

Ah, yes. Conspiracy theories. I've spent a bit of time learning how to spot them. Also, how to tell 'hard' news from slanted news and speculation. Not everyone's skilled at this.

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

 

it would take a special kind of any car to survive an EMP burst … you ought to look for a pre 1970s Willys Jeep if you’re worried…

 

It’s not a lame excuse. It’s logistics.

In an emergency situation, especially nationally, AM signal is the most effective and most resilient method of communication for a variety of reasons. It has much farther reach than FM or mobile coverage. So in a disaster scenario where there are electrical power failures you need far fewer broadcast stations to get up and running.

Also, many huge rural areas have very little FM or cellular coverage, but good AM coverage. So AM is the only way to reach people in those areas.

Keeping AM in vehicles isn’t related to how much time drivers listen to AM radio. It’s a national security issue that has protocols built around AM radio. When the lights go out or you feel the ground shake and your phone quits getting signal, people who want information and understand these issues fire up the AM radio for information. People who spend time in the wilderness or very rural areas depend on AM for weather information as well.

Here is a bit of documentation.

https://www.nab.org/amtoolkit/amEas.asp#:~:text=AM radio stations have a,in rural or remote areas.

I don’t think a national information network designed to be efficient and resilient is funny. We all have different senses of humor I guess.

 

That not what progressivism is all about. Progressivism is dedicated to taking choices away from people and forcing them to conform to the standards set by elites, who may or may not have the right expertise or all of the answers. If you think that choices are part of the plan for the new “progressive” world, you will be sadly disappointed.

 

Unfortunately cell phone towers knock out XM signals for brief intervals. The more towers, the more interference.

 

Hmmm, I have never lost XMS signal unless I'm parked against tall buildings! Open roads, never..

 

I have such. But yes, the point being that anything that relies on advanced electronics would be rendered useless.

 

I lose it all the time when I ride by cell towers in Florida. Trees and garages can do it in too if you park under them.

I thought that the cell tower thing was not true, and then I checked it out on the Internet. It’s true.

 

Weird ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I get parking under tree's or in a garage, but long as you can see the sky you should be good to go.. I live less than a mile "As the crow flies" from a large cell tower, never had an issue and my radio is in my 2008 GMC half ton?

 

It’s when you drive by them, and they are directly beside the road or close to it that they knock out the XM radio. The range is maybe 300 to 400 feet, and the knockout range is not perfectly semantically. The signal can fade in and out as you drive by.

My radios are In Cadillacs, a CT-6 and XT5.

 

Well, lame is subjective.
AM is a dying technology.
Instead of forcing companies to put in a dying product, the gov't should update their infrastructure to keep up with technological advances.
There's literally dozens of ways to get out an Emergency alert.

All of what you say is true, but that's not an excuse to force companies to put in antiquated technologies.

A lot of those rural areas don't have good high speed internet access, the gov't hasn't forced them to go upgrade technology in those areas so they can get faster internet.

What happened to companies making and selling a product that fits their target buyers?

 

Right wing media is expert at giving birth, and voice, to them. Because the minions must constantly have something new to grind their teeth over.

 

The Asian car manufacturers are keeping them. It is the American manufacturers that are removing them (apparently their engineers are incapable of overcoming the issue). Once you drive a Toyota, I can't ever imagine you driving another American car in your life. I am ever so glad this issue won't affect me - nothing but Toyotas since 1998.

In the end, I am more than 50% convinced that this is a political attack and has nothing to do with incompetent engineering. AM Radio is a Red Pill dispensary. If you can't add AM radio for less than $20 cost to the auto manufacturer, you are doing it wrong. Losing 5% of your customers on a $50K sale for a $20 component would seem to be the height of idiocy. The fact that the American manufacturers are coordinating to drop it together is a strong indicator that this has nothing to with inept engineering and smacks of collusion to attack free speech.

If the car manufacturers want to save some money, get rid of the airbags.

 

anti airbag? why on a flat earth would the automakers want to kill their customers by not including air bags ?don't they self regulate?

 

I have 2 Toyota's. I concur, I may never buy anything but a Toyota for a car.

I won't jump into conclusions without evidence as to why a car mfg may or may not want to delete an option from their autos.
I personally don't care.
I might listen to AM radio for 1 hour out of an entire year. And that might be to find some sports program I can't get on FM. And only while driving in remote areas.

 

Yes, I can remember the time when they were forcing auto makers to include FM radios as part of the radio option. The argument was for "inclusion." Now the argument is "exclusion" so that fewer people in "fly over country," where FM is not good because of its limited range, won't hear from the "evil right wing radio hosts." The only thing left for them will be XM, which requires special equipment and a subscriber fee.

 

Name the new technology that accomplishes what AM radio does in the context of national emergency communications. No, actually you made a claim of dozens. Name dozens specifically. No waffling or goalposts relocation!

Not all customers are you. Maybe you don’t care about having access to national emergency or weather information when traveling through areas with NO other services. But some of us do. What customers want is subjective, yes. Not all are uninterested in the most reliable, resilient and highest coverage technology available.

Sorry, you aren’t installing high speed fiber in many of these areas. And you still have the problem of that fiber being USELESS in many conceivable emergency situations. And nobody is trenching in fiber to their remote cabin or outfitters camp. AM radio is the best technology available to cover the most area and deal with the most emergency scenarios. That’s just the way it is.

I think it’s interesting you are against mandates for AM radios in vehicles (equivalent of seat belts etc.) but are upset others aren’t forced to put on high speed Internet.

 

If a product one wants to buy doesn't have the features one wants, they typically won't buy that product.

As another poster mentioned, Toyota and other foreign auto companies still kept AM radio. Buy the product you want with the feature one wants.
Why does gov't have to force a feature onto a company?

email
IM
live chat
websites/blog
SMS/text
phone
voicemail
video
FM radio
Satellite radio

Maybe there isn't 12 or more. Maybe I missed some.

I hope that eases your uneasiness of my post.

 

Because it is inconceivable that anyone would find any use for a vehicle, that didn't pick up AM Radio stations.


BTW, I can't remember, the last time I listened to AM radio. Probably to get a weather, or maybe traffic report, from an all news station in my area: 1010 WINS News. The internet has made reliance on the radio for such information, obsolete.

A simple answer, to the problem: podcasts.
Someone else, also mentioned "streaming" services (but I am not very savvy, when it comes to such distinctions).

 

Thanks for trying. But my earlier post explains none of those function in many emergency scenarios. And none are concurrently widely available, resilient and open source. Satellite radio would be fine but it’s expensive so information would only be available to those who can afford it. But you would be ok mandating a fee based service in new cars?

No, I’m still confused as to why you don’t want as many people as possible to have access to emergency information.

 

Stop being logical; you know how much confusion that causes amongst the lefties.

 

The consumer should decide. This is one more reason not to buy an electric car.