https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/05/13/am-radio-electric-cars/

Apparently, the ignition noise in otherwise silent electric cars has gone in to the AM radio, resulting in people not being able to hear as many and distant stations as they used to. And, of course, the programming has really gone downhill as well.

But I loved AM radio as a blind kid, growing up first in the Los Angeles area and then moving to Phoenix and attending boarding school in Tucson. In the days before headphones and Walkmans, I would make my folks and others real mad at me as I flipped from station to station, not letting any song go for more then 30 seconds as I tried to figure out what stations I could hear at a specific spot when we traveled.

And, of course, there was a time when radio manufacturers made and sold high-fidelity non-stereo AM radios. Maybe they didn't have some of the distance reception that I was aiming for, but they made up for that with good, clear sound.

Anyway, the article at the link above is about the decision made by some car manufacturers, including Ford, to discontinue the availability of AM radios in their cars.

I remember listening to a radio as a youth in Seattle; clear-channel stations,WLS Chicago Dick Biondi and others at night on my crystal “Rocket Radio”!

When we took the cattle up the canyons, the only contact we had with the outside world was our battery operated hand held AM radios.

They only worked well at night.

I recently dug my 55 year old model out of storage, slapped a battery in her and she worked fine.

Of course my grandkids couldn't understand what the big deal was.

I used to listen to the BBC on a homemade crystal radio in the US. Yup, sound generated just by antenna current.

Voice of America could be picked up too. Maybe not the same one as in the song by Asia.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aWF6_WnXEVA

Did any rock band sing about the BBC?

EVs are essentially ten-kilowatt AM radio transmitters pumping their output into an electric motor. There's no way you can shield an AM radio from that. The fix was to retire AM.

Bradley wrote in part:

"Did any rock band sing about the BBC?"

No, but at least one rock song from the 1960s included a clip from a BBC production of "King Lear," at its end--The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus."

And while I didn't know about the Asia song, I can tell you that the Van Morrison song, "Wavelength," which is about listening to AM and shortwave radio, includes the line, "I can hear the Voice of America on my radio Calling Come back baby. Come back."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2023 02:20AM by blindguy.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did any rock band sing about the BBC?
>

Quite a few punk bands have (especially about getting on the John Peel show), as well as some Scottish and Irish rebels. :)

The Rezillos - Top of the Pops (about one of the BBC shows)
https://youtu.be/roZ_plpJGCM

I would have included some others, but YouTube's search function is so heavily censored nowadays. Like AM radio soon.

Wait till they come for your bodily fluids.

The band which gave me my pseudonym, Soft Machine, recorded a version of their song "The Moon In June" for the BBC program "Top Gear" in 1970 with new lyrics specially written for the occasion:

"Playing now is lovely
Here in the BBC
We're free to play almost as long and as loud
As a jazz group or an orchestra on Radio 3

There are dancehalls and theatres
With acoustics worse than here
Not forgetting the extra facilities
Such as the tea machine
Just along the corridor

So, to all our mates like Kevin
Caravan and the old Pink Floyd
Allow me to recommend Top Gear
Despite its extraordinary name

Yes playing, playing now is lovely
Here in the BBC
We are free to play almost as long and as loud
As the foreign language classes
And that John Cage interview
And the jazz groups
And the orchestras on Radio 3"

It can probably be found on Youtube...

I originally listened to it on AM radio (which was all I had).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2023 02:05PM by Soft Machine.

Very cool stuff!

So, BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda, and Tesla are taking AM radio out of their electric cars. Ford is taking it out of all its cars. Ford states that fewer than 5% of its drivers listen to AM radio.

I listen to AM on my commute to and from work, and often while driving around. I like the news, traffic, and weather reports, and the coverage of local baseball and football games. Am I really such a dinosaur?

Oh, and blindguy, I used to love seeing which distant station I could pick up late at night. I remember pulling in Detroit one evening from the east coast.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/end-of-a-love-affair-am-radio-is-being-removed-from-many-cars/ar-AA1b8VO1#:~:text=Automakers%2C%20such%20as%20BMW%2C%20Volkswagen%2C%20Mazda%20and%20Tesla%2C,from%20all%20of%20its%20vehicles%2C%20electric%20or%20gas-operated.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2023 06:40AM by summer.

While I was never able to pick up anything from the east coast on my receivers, I do remember pulling in WLS in my dad's pickup truck while we were camping at Glamis Sanddunes in Southern California. This was before KDXU came on the air in St. George, Utah on the same frequency.

For info:
The FCC (amerures called it Fox Charlie Charlie) set up clear channel stations so listeners in remote places could listen at night…
Many junior am stations with conflicting frequencies were required to go off the air at night.

I believe KSL was a clear-channel station in that era.

GNPE wrote in part:

"I believe KSL was a clear-channel station in that era."

You are correct. In fact, it was the only single AM clear channel between Denver (KOA at 850 kHz) and the stations on the west coast.

The usual suspects hate it because anyone can set up an AM station and the signals travel further. AM Radio helped bring down the Iron Curtain and broadcast into National Socialist Germany. Much better to have everything on a handful of social media sites which can then be policed to say what is, and what isn't "trusted media."

> The usual suspects hate it because anyone can set
> up an AM station and the signals travel further.
> AM Radio helped bring down the Iron Curtain and
> broadcast into National Socialist Germany.

Which is it, Elmo? Bringing down the Iron Curtain established by the USSR or bringing down the Nazis?

There were nearly fifty years between the two.

Why don't you ask Elmo if he has any evidence to support the proposition that AM radio contributed significantly to the fall of the Iron Curtain?

Yeah, I thought not.

The Hero with a Thousand Asses has many opinions but not as many facts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty

While RFE and RL were not AM-based (they wer/are shortwave; I remember picking up the former a couple of times during the 1980s and 1990s on my own SW rig), both were effective at getting the U.S. message and supplying actual news to Communist-block countries and the Soviet Union. And I wouldn't be surprised if, particularly in eastern European countries that bordered NATO countries, especially East Germany and West Berlin, if local AM radio from some of the non-Communist countries was helpful in informing these countries' citizens about what was going on in the West and eastern European countries and the Soviet Union that those countries weren't airing on their own stations.

With regard to Nazism, I suspect that the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) did provide some SW services to the citizens of those countries, though at the time (this was some 15 years before the founding of RFE and RL), they were probably not as sophisticated as they've since become.

blindguy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Ra
> dio_Liberty
>
> While RFE and RL were not AM-based (they wer/are
> shortwave; I remember picking up the former a
> couple of times during the 1980s and 1990s on my
> own SW rig), both were effective at getting the
> U.S. message and supplying actual news to
> Communist-block countries and the Soviet Union.
> And I wouldn't be surprised if, particularly in
> eastern European countries that bordered NATO
> countries, especially East Germany and West
> Berlin, if local AM radio from some of the
> non-Communist countries was helpful in informing
> these countries' citizens about what was going on
> in the West and eastern European countries and the
> Soviet Union that those countries weren't airing
> on their own stations.

Agreed. But it is easy to overestimate the effect such broadcasts had. Consider RFE broadcasts encouraging Hungarians and Czechoslovakians to rise against the USSR in 1956 and 1968, respectively. In both cases the US lived to regret having instigated rebellions that produced nothing but the death of naive young democrats when the tanks rolled in.

The fall of the Iron Curtain did not stem measurably from RFE and similar networks. The Eastern Bloc collapsed from within as decades of mismanagement ruined the Soviet economy, the Afghan War sapped public support, Solidarity in Poland weakened the bonds between erstwhile allies, and Gorbachev embarked upon reforms that were incompatible with the state. Western broadcasts were a marginal factor at best.


------------------------
> With regard to Nazism, I suspect that the BBC
> (British Broadcasting Company) did provide some SW
> services to the citizens of those countries,
> though at the time (this was some 15 years before
> the founding of RFE and RL), they were probably
> not as sophisticated as they've since become.

I would go farther. The greatest value of Western broadcasts lay in their transmission of hidden messages to spies in various parts of Eastern Europe. But even there the effect was minimal--or even negative--given that the British establishment was riddled with spies who fed all the codes to the Eastern Bloc governments, meaning that when the expatriate forces were dropped at night into Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, they were almost without exception rounded up and killed.

Propaganda machines were better by the 1970s and 1980s, to be sure, but they never approached the importance of developments within the Soviet empire itself.

"Oh Hippie, you think everything is a conspiracy."

Ed Harris in "The Abyss"

Let's play.

Why are you going on about one political influence but ignoring another? After all, pushing EVs as a solution to fossil fuel burning has enormous repercussions for poisoning the planetary environment. But, "they" must surely know that. So "they" plan to release "free energy" for cars that does not need batteries. But it does require power electronics (called hard switching) that are intrinsically incompatible with AM receivers. Pushing aside existing FCC rules China-style is of greater significance.

My 72 Chevy pickup only has an AM radio but I only listen to one station out of Calgary. Lethbridge's last AM station signed off at least a decade ago.
When I was at Ricks in 67 my little AM radio could pick up our local station from 500 miles away over several mountain ranges and on the odd night I could catch Wolfman Jack broadcasting out of California. Good times, great music.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2023 09:04AM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

You bring up a good point. Outside of the U.S., the Canadian and Mexican authorities have been moving all of their AM signals to the FM Band for the last twenty or so years now. This could happen because the radio authorities in those places never allowed FM broadcasts to grow as fast as they did in the U.S., meaning that the U.S. cannot do the same now with its AM facilities (most of the AM stations heard on the FM band in the U.S. now are using translators--small, much less powerful (up to 250 watts) transmitters that are placed between existing FM stations in various U.S. markets. Unlike their AM counterparts, they don't get out very far.

And except for stations that dual broadcast over both AM and FM, FM in the U.S. areas in which I've lived has a different flavor. It's more music oriented or news article oriented like NPR. AM is its own thing, and I think is needed for its areas of strength.

I guess drivers are now listening to podcasts, apps, etc. I have no idea how you pull those up safely while driving. Do you set it ahead of time, and go? And how do they get traffic and weather updates?

I still miss 1090 CHEC.

Me too. I knew some of the DJs.

I had memories of some of the DJ's names, but now they've faded. I remember in the early 70s, CHEC had a phone-in contest called 'Call the Shot'. I phoned in a few times, but never 'called the right shot'. One time I was ready with my cassette player and recorded it. The only thing left of the CHEC towers is a small building that stood by the three towers at the S turn north of Welling. But somewhere in an attic box, is a cassette tape onto which I recorded, both sides, of 1090 CHEC that I took down to Ricks College. I played it now and then when I wanted to feel like I was home.

I use AM in bad weather, WCCO in Minneapolis has great weather coverage. When I was working their traffic reports every 10 minutes were great. Now I don’t care, but if I were working losing that info in my car would annoy me.

As a kid I spent an inordinate about of time at night trying to pick of stations from as far away as possible. WABC in NYC was easy, and I listened to Cousin Brucie Morrow for years. WLS was pretty easy, KOMA was very intermittent. Radio Havana must have put out a killer signal - they were fairly easy to pick up. I sometimes got French stations out of Quebec. Every once in a while I could get KSL on the east coast.

Hardly anything anymore uses the boxy 9 volt batteries that were common in radios back in the day,

My best AM radio story - I was living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where listening to KSL at night was pretty reliable. On long drives back to the US, Herb Jepko was an entertaining companion.

So I'm driving down the road listening to a local station, CJOB I believe, 580 AM. They are playing something by the Supremes. I switch to KSL, and damned if they aren't playing the exact same song. I switched back and forth a few times, and they were absolutely in synch, except the KSL version had a lot more static.

Then I looked over to the side of the highway. I was driving past the CJOB transmitter, and the first harmonic for a 580 kHz signal is going to be double the frequency, which is, you guessed it, 1160 kHz, the KSL frequency. Radio stations are designed to suppress harmonics, but when you are right next to the transmitter, obviously some harmonics are strong enough to overpower distant stations.

Finally, that freshman physics course I took in university paid off. I understood what had happened. ;)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2023 11:49AM by Brother Of Jerry.

Some of you old farts may remember an apparently now unrepeatable experience involving AM radio, or as I remember it, AM RADIO!!!

And if I experienced it in a little city of about 70,000 people, those of you in bigger radio markets almost certainly experienced it.

So, there you are, cruising whatever your favorite strip of roadway was, with either some friends or your crush, listening to your favorite radio station was, involving a loop of whatever was hot, meaning the Top 40 hits of the moment.

And pretty much to invoke this moment, this now unrepeatable experience, a song would begin that you just didn't like that much, so you'd stab at the dashboard to hit the button for the other station that played Top 40 hits...

And it was the same song!!!

And you'd go back to the first station to confirm it...  Then back to the second station, and everyone would f'ing freak out like it was the Second Coming!!

Then 2:36 minutes later, or less, the moment was over, and the tear in the curtain of reality was mended, and you went on with your life.

And it hasn't been all that bad a life, has it?  Except, either you should have married your crush, or you shouldn't have...  Will we ever know?

AM radio should have ended years ago. There is no reason for this ancient inferior technology to exist.

      

If you have good programming people still dig AM radio. Also who’s going to broadcast the local high school games?

I've noticed that all of the road signs alterting drivers regarding highway conditions advise drivers to tune their radios to an a.m. frequency... How's that gonna help drivers w.out an a.m. radio??

Do you really want to take your hand off the steering wheel and take your eyes off the road to mess with the idiotic touch screen radio in your car to find that station ?

Well, someone sitting in the passenger seat could do that. In my neck of the woods, you have some very long over-water bridges and underwater tunnels. If there is an accident, you need to know about it. If there are wind or weather restrictions on the bridges, you need to know about it.

Rush Limburger both saved and ruined am radio. No loss now.

He was a big player but you had Larry King. You had Art Bell.

FM signal does not travel well. Does not like hills and canyons. AM still works there.
FM does not work very far from the Station that generates it.
AM does.

TV gave us "improved" fidelity and carity and cut the broadcast distance by more than half.

Where I am this means NO broadcast Television. Used to get it on the antenna but now the signal doesn't travel as far. So, we don't do broadcast TV any longer.

FM here is severely limited for the same reason. But at night we can get Olkahoma City, Chicago and other stations on AM while getting normal stuff for us, US & Canadian stations.

Seldom use the FM in the vehicle. Won't be buying a new one any time soon either. Not just because no AM radio, but few options with bench seats or hybrid bench seats in the front. Can't stand the shoehorned in fighter cockpit feel. Love the bench type seats. Cloth preferred. In seat heaters sound good but getting into the vehicle at 20 below zero on leather seats is no fun. Even worse when it is 100 degrees outside - and you have to park in the sun. Cloth is nicer for me.

:Last gripe is simple. Neighbor has a really nice EV - but can't park it in the garage because the maker says it might catch on fire. He really had a nasty winter when it was 25 below, 20-40 mph winds and he had to run an extension cord from the garage to the vehicle to charge while it sat there - depreciating in the weather that keeps the rif-raf out of here.

Seems my junior senator has finally done something right.

https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/threads/ford-reverses-decision-and-will-keep-am-radio-on-vehicles-%F0%9F%8E%99%EF%B8%8F.73902/

The stupidity. It burns.