Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following news via Radio World:
Markey, Cruz Reintroduce AM Bill in the Senate (Radio World)
The legislation would require AM radio reception in new cars
The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act has been reintroduced on Capitol Hill.
The legislation passed the Senate Commerce Committee in 2023 and the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2024, and many legislators have expressed support. Yet backers could not get it across the finish line at the end of the recent Congress in December.
Senators Ed Markey, a Democrat, and Ted Cruz, a Republican, now have reintroduced the bill, which has 40 Senate co-sponsors. [Continue reading…]
AM radio is just beating a dead horse.
NRSC-R102: Measurement of AM Band RF Noise Levels and Station Signal Attenuation https://www.nrscstandards.org/reports/nrsc-r102.pdf
In June 2009 the compulsory shutdown of full service analog TV occurred in the USA. The telcos wanted the 700 MHz band TV was using. Digital TV allows transmitters on the same site to use adjacent channels which analog cannot. The Government subsidised set top boxes for those on benefits. With out this decision you would still be using narrow screen TVs where the hue has to be constantly adjusted and ghosted images change hue. The effect of this mandate was to produce a huge market for digital receivers which dropped the price to realistic levels. The switch off of analog radio has been a failure because it is voluntary particularly on listeners. I note there is only one all digital HD radio station on air in the AM band and none in the FM band. in 23 years. Norway switched off analog radio in 2017 and Switzerland 2024.
From the start of 2020 all new passenger cars in the European Union had to have digital terrestrial radio fitted as standard. In India, nearly all new cars have DRM/AM/FM receivers, voluntarily installed by the manufacturers at no extra cost. They have a national coverage of DRM signals to listen to.
My objection to the AM act is not that it is compulsory as above but the selection of a 105 year old technology which has poor sound quality and is susceptible to noise from arcing sources and unsuppressed rapidly switching power supplies used by most equipment on mains electricity as well as electric vehicles.
Outside of North America there are two pure digital radio systems DAB+ and DRM. Both have much better, reliable sound and are capable of Emergency Warnings. This is where FEMA would decide the area of the emergency, and as required an alert signal is transmitted along with the existing digital radio program. Only in the specified area will this signal will wake radios on standby, make a siren sound to wake potential victims and crews, and make a loud announcement. Multiple alerts can exist as would have been required in the California fires. In addition a map of each area can be displayed, along with indexed detailed text instructions. The index can contain the name of each fire. In addition the location of Police closed roads can be received by the infotainment system so that a bypass route can be calculated in a vehicle escaping the emergency. There is also controlled access so that the above can be sent to emergency crews either individually or in groups. This is all going on whilst the rest of the audience are listening to their usual programs. India has this system now wating for an emergency.
Get the politicians to see these new digital radio systems in action and don’t make compulsory a technology which is expensive to broadcast, wasteful of electricity, polluting and has earned its place in a museum.
>The switch off of analog radio has been a failure because it is voluntary particularly on listeners.
Yes, the listeners were not particularly interested in switching to digital. Why you’d like to force them to do so?
>Norway switched off analog radio in 2017 and Switzerland 2024.
Please do not spread false information. As of today, Norway has 585 FM transmitters and Switzerland has 319.
>Get the politicians to see these new digital radio systems in action
You would need to show them some receivers, which I think can be a little bit problematic in case of DRM.
>don’t make compulsory a technology which is expensive to broadcast, wasteful of electricity, polluting and has earned its place in a museum.
According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, pollution is “damage caused to water, air, etc. by harmful substances or waste”. How does it apply to radio broadcasting? What harmful substances are generated by radio broadcasting? Is there a radio transmitter that produces exhaust gases or sewage? Am I missing something?
Why not NOAA Weather Radio for every vehicle, in addition? Could do a lot of good.
Pete,
It has similar issues as cell phone base stations. The NOAA transmitters and cell phone base stations are in the emergency zone and are most likely to suffer electricity blackouts. Also how does the signal get to the transmitter from the National Weather Service? Is it susceptible to blackouts too? NOAA transmitters are located https://www.weather.gov/nwr/station_listing and operate on 162 MHz AM which restricts their coverage range. If a broadcast station has a failure either they or their audience will give pressure to repair the fault. A failure on a weather transmitter in a remote location which is only listen to when the weather looks bad is unlikely to be reported until it is too late.
Since major broadcasters cover much larger areas. the transmitter can be well out of the danger zone. If you are going to mandate a radio technology in new vehicles it will take around 10 years until enough vehicles have been sold to make the system effective. It is much better to install a new proven technology with more functions which will be maintained by the existing broadcasters.
In my post above it is also possible to use a few high power high frequency DRM transmitters to cover the whole of the USA. DRM receivers are all Software Designed Radio technology so the short wave bands are easily added at little cost this could be specified in vehicle radios. This was trialled by the CoastGuard in Alaska.
> This was trialled by the CoastGuard in Alaska.
The trial has ended (somewhere around 2017 I think?) – what were the results? As of today they do not transmit in DRM, so I infer that they didn’t find it useful – otherwise a full-scale service would have been launched.
As much as I’d like to see this, in the USA, you should not force companies to include what should be a supply and demand accessory at the consumer side. Even in the 1970’s and 80’s, I still remember that vehicles could be ordered with nothing, but a blank plate, in the center of the dashboard. A radio was still an added expense accessory. What does suck about vehicles today is that there’s no room in them to add an aftermarket car stereo, and even worst, a two-way radio, to install. Again, in this country, it should be the consumer that should ask for accessories, not the government.
NOAA/NWS facilities have backup power. They transmit a strong signal at 162.4 to 162.55 MHz VHF FM, not AM as you stated. They have both analog and digital signalling to trigger alerts a wide variety of inexpensive receivers. There is enough signal overlap that even when a transmitter is affected, there is almost always another receivable signal. The S.A.M.E. system alerts are county specific (larger counties have sub-county IDs), and there are 80+ types of alerts. Several years ago an ice storm followed by extreme cold knocked out power and Internet over a large area surrounding me. Cell towers began dropping offline in less than 24 hours, which ended all Internet access for us. 3 days into the outage with more foul weather, the NOAA/NWS stations remained online, along with terrestrial AM, FM and TV stations. The WeatherRadio network *works*.
There are a lot of areas out west that rely almost solely on AM. FM is weak, and cell service is completely absent in too many areas. AM radio is still the best source for emergency information when other sources are almost non-existent.