New cars are losing AM radio (maybe not, revised 05/23/2023)

That is an interesting case. I'm used to expecting that generally AM station signal travels farther than FM. Maybe their AM power was very low or the transmitter poorly located.

Here in New Mexico you can get out-of-range pretty easily. My factory shut down for a week back in 1989 and I took the occasion to make a lap of New Mexico. Somewhere not so far from Datil (a tiny place west of the Very Large Array) I reached a place where the autoscan on my BMW 325i car radio did not find a single listenable signal on either AM or FM.

Thinking about it, you're correct that the AM single traveled further, maybe even via a little skip type thing, but was real scratchy sooner than losing the clear FM signal.

And my other car doesn't include a cd player so using a flash drive instead.

vehicles will loose their gas tanks too but that's another thread

I will check it out

CD players either.

No problem! 1010 WINS is now on 92.3 FM. (NYC)

I agree about the disappearance of Cd players. Those of us who've got extensive Cd collections will have to put them on flash drives.

I can't remember the last time I listened to AM. My car does have it as it is somewhat older, but is the end of an era.

This article mentions AM can travel over longer distances.

https://www.diffen.com/difference/AM_vs_FM

Growing up in CT, I listened to WABC in NYC on AM radio. I suppose the sheer ads and volume of such are in fact annoying by today's standards, but other than that, nothing wrong with "free" over the air radio. Only 1/3 cars doesn't have XM. One is free, the other $99/3 years, so car# 3 if I forget I then listen to FM, but if I remember I listen to a HDCD.

I have many fond memories of listening to AM radio. Heck, that's all there was! Late nights with Wolf Man Jack...

I grew up (mid to late 1950’s) in Cleveland Ohio and loved to listen to Sky King, the Lone Ranger, Sergeant Preston, Straight Arrow, etc. Often I would miss one show because I had a paper route. Fortunately I could also get AM radio out of Detroit and catch the missed show due to the 1-hour time difference.

I never listen to it, but it's nice to have.

I still listen to AM radio for the Oilers hockey games.

Were you still there or listening when the marvelous classical music station WCLV started broadcasting? It was a constant presence in my parent's home when I lived there 1960 to 1967.

...also, as a teenager, I'm not sure I was ever exposed to classical music. I did listen to a lot of shortwave stuff on Heathkit and Knight radios that I built.

will show my age.

When I was listening to WABC, I was likely my son's age today--9.

I would hope the reception would be good, because I was recording the Beach Boys on my dad's Sansui reel to reel. I was an only child at the time, and seems I made my own adventures.

One day, my dad took me to Sears, and we got a cassette player. So now, I had my own device with which to make recordings, on cassette, using the so called "boom box" and a mono mic to the speaker. This is how kids amused themselves I suppose.

I always remember talking on the CB radio from my parents' garage, and one of the times we were talking about The Rolling Stones appearing on SNL. Google says that was 10/7/78. I'd gladly go back to being that kid.

Now I'm really going off on a tangent--I believe my aunt worked for Sylvania (can't believe they exist today), and she would get employee discounts, so that's where my dad's boom box came from...

so my musical interest has been for more than 35 years, the Grateful Dead.

I play guitar because every male seemed to in the day.

My best friend at the time played bass, because he found guitar boring. If he had his way he would have had an upright bass.

Since he couldn't afford one, he played classical (Bach was his favorite) on his Fender 5 string bass. I always thought he somehow bridged rock with classical in his abilities..

Back then, I never knew much about the Hammond B3, but it certainly has its place in rock music...

Is awesome. Seriously, now I'm only going back 25 years, but I'd watch Hockey Night in Canada in the 90's, whenever we had a trip to Montreal.

It would seem records have made a comeback--there is a record I just heard about only for sale in record stores, not online. "Limited edition." It sounds fake or comical, but I'm finding things seem to approach 4X their face value over time. I already have CDs I've never opened that have done that.

These old notions, have a warm feeling, today.

I mean look at "The Sweater," that short film. They're listening to the Habs/Leafs on radio.

I also was born and bred in Cleveland and in fact still live in the area. My favorite decade of music remains the decade 1955 through 1965, the old time rock-an-roll and golden oldies era. I don't remember: had FM been invented or discovered that early?

Phil

"... Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, ..."

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting

My all-time favorite station, the classical music station WCLV started their FM tranmission in November, 1962. Not first, but pretty early, I think.

When the power has been out for a few days, the AM radio has been the most reliable source of information. Prefer having it available in the car in addition to portable radio. Also, as posted by others, AM traffic/weather reports on the "x" minute are very helpful.

I never had a car that received AM radio that came in good.

That's the way to remove conservatives radio. I've already sent a letter to my senator.

Here in Albuquerque the main transmission of talk radio is on AM, but one or both have FM secondary copies.

We do copies a lot here in New Mexico, which lets some FM stations get heard much farther away than the useful transmission range.

In the other country, am is where the roadworks, flood, fire, warnings are found
be bloody difficult to navigate a 30km roadwork area without knwoing where you have to go

Thinking about upgrading the audio system in my car - cheaper than getting a new car and the old one runs just fine.

Those that have HD radio - is it an improvement over regular FM?

I can definitely hear the difference between FM and a CD in my car. With headphones (not while driving of course), its easy to differentiate MP3s from lossless like FLAC.

I do listen to the radio a lot... mainly FM channels like news/weather/random music to compensate for the road noise.

The main benefit I notice is that having HD Radio enables me to receive extra channels. One of the FM stations in my area has a subchannel that plays jazz music (that can't be received with a regular FM radio).

And for regular FM stations, I do notice better sound quality when I'm receiving them using the HD Radio.

Same here. My WPR (Wisconsin's NPR) offers HD1-3, all using 88.7MHz, with 1 as news & music, 2 being all music, and 3 as all talk.

Sadly, all of them are currently in a spring fundraising drive.

There are a few things I heard first, on that station, 1060 AM. And when we used to go to NYC often, I would listen to traffic on the two's.

1. PA stating that if you buy something anywhere that was not taxed (online or another state), you will have to report it on your state income tax

2. SD v. Wayfair ending badly, we're going to be taxed on internet purchases

3. NJ raising the gas tax and it would be going into effect, with support from both parties (that was surprising)

I do admit it's been a while since I listened, but I did about 8 years ago

I am not sure what to think. I use the radio all the time when I drive, but it is almost invariably tuned to an FM station. However, there are a few rare times when AM comes in handy.

For quite a few years one of my babies lived in Miami. When I drove the 2,200 miles to get there my truck with basic FM & AM had no classical music available. If I flew and rented a car I’d have HD and classical music.

Here in the Colorado front range many FM stations are in the mountains overlooking the plains which is the equivalent for line-of-sight propagation of a >3,000 foot tower. OTOH there are some stations without the moola for a top of the mountain site and they can have poor propagation. There is an FM jazz station here that after ~5 years has matured into what I find nice. I can barely receive it in my truck even though I live in town. The terrain is too dissected. They recently obtained an HD channel on the mountain.

Colorado Public Radio has music much to my taste but their local FM repeater was also impossible for me to receive.

My geriatric ears can no longer appreciate Hi-Fi so a $150 or $200 HD radio would suffice for me. My F-350 has a non-standard radio (not DIN) and the plastic parts to make it fit cost ~$400. I am too offended and too cheap to buy an HD radio under the circumstances. Since I seldom leave cell phone coverage I sometimes stream BBC-3 while driving.

I always listen to baseball on AM

here in Philly the games are on FM now. I've seen a few stations go from AM to FM here.

…being stationed at Ft. Devens, MA, about 25 miles west of Boston, back in the late 60’s and early 70’s. About 5 o’clock in the morning I would be able to get WLW in Cincinnati on the radio. Just a slice of home for about an hour or so, then it would disappear.

Ford has changed its mind. Now including AM radio on some models. See https://www.autoblog.com/2023/05/23/ford-to-add-am-radio-bac...

Perhaps due to government pressure? See https://www.autoblog.com/2023/05/17/u-s-lawmakers-want-to-ba...

See: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/05/23/189237/ford-decides...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/23/23734497/ford-am-radio-re...

"... And for the two electric vehicles released without AM radio capabilities, a software update would be pushed to restore it. ..."

Since a software update won't add hardware, e.g. an AM detector and tuning and oscillator circuits for the AM band I infer that we are dealing with an SDR (software defined radio). I find that fascinating.

Have I got that wrong??

According to the link I’ve attached, many cell phones have a chip that is FM radio capable but the chip in the US isn’t enabled. See https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/04/16/40...

Each night I go to sleep listening to the BBC World Service repeated on FM by NPR using an old Motorola phone with that chip. Something like that certainly could be the case here. I just find it unlikely that the marketeers who happen to make lots of the important engineering decisions thought: "maybe,,, maybe,,, just in case,,, we should build in a secret AM capability."

Although a mechanical engineer, I retired from a major electronics manufacturer in 2018. These days "marketeers" are only remotely involved in the engineering decisions. One major reason is the use of a multi-task single chip in much of the radio based consumer electronics. As an example, the company Skyworks Solutions Inc. makes a line of single chip digital radio receivers that can handle multiple tasks depending on the configuration of the final consumer product. One such chip, specifically the Si468x, is around $10 (in large quantities) and can support global analog and digital radio standards including AM, SW, LW, FM, FM RDS, HD, DAB (common in Europe), DAB+, DMB, and DRM(30). Note I said global because our US based frequency standards may differ from Europe for instance.

If you design a device that supports AM, FM and time functions, say a simple alarm clock radio, you do not purchase a different chip that a radio that supports AM, FM, and HD would utilize. The same chip is used, just programmed to enable or disable the appropriate functionality.

I just gave up with AM Radio, I can never get good reception anyway.

I was watching Mecum Auto Auctions last week on TV and the guy’s describing the cars up for auction stated that the car up for auction had an 8 track player in it. He went on to say that they did not have an 8 track tape for it, but that cassettes were making a comeback in some cars. It will be interesting to see if this holds true. I have a bunch of cassettes that I can’t play anymore.

The Washington Post recently had a lengthy article about this. Here is the link if you are interested:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/05/13/am-radio-el...

Thank you! I read about the Si468x and it's siblings and that was quite interesting.

Would be doubtfull of Cassettes, 8-Track, or VHS, BETA ever coming back. It is much cheaper, easier, etc to just press a CD disk.

Plus what part of the younger generation would ever purchase a CD anymore, let alone some ribbon-of-tape version that had a slew of problems if the tape heads were dirty. Did you ever have a tape jam up in the player?

As long as they can get the songs on their smartphone it's an all-in-one solution for them.

….when the commentator said that. But, he did say that there are some cars coming out with them. He is a car guru and should know what he’s talking about but maybe they are aftermarket units. I thought vinyl records were a thing of the past but I have a 21 year old granddaughter who thinks they are the coolest thing ever. Something about frequencies and the sound of the needle on the vinyl. She has started collecting them and for Christmas this past year, she bought me a TSO vinyl album and a Bing Crosby album. Both brand new. Also, for some reason, colored vinyl is popular. The TSO album I believe, was red.

Saw something on TV that said ford is putting it back. Can't confirm at this point

The technical pros/cons of AM radio in vehicles; see https://www.motortrend.com/news/am-radio-new-cars/