Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

DIRECTFLT · Wed May 24, 2023 4:20 am

https://apnews.com/article/am-radio-for ... 31bef617db

Ford decides to keep AM radio on 2024 models, will restore AM on two electric vehicles from 2023

Kiwirob · Wed May 24, 2023 8:20 am

We haven't had AM in Norway for almost as long as I've been living in the country. FM was switched of nationwide in 2017, all the major stations use DAB, which is great almost all the tunnels in Norway had DAB so you don't lose service when you drive through them.

GalaxyFlyer · Wed May 24, 2023 2:37 pm

AM exists in the US due to the rural areas. Much of the Midwest and Mountain West have nothing without AM or Sirius. Ford kept whip antennas due to the pickup demographic.

SQ22 · Wed May 24, 2023 4:19 pm

I have moved the posts on that topic into a newly created dedicated thread.

ER757 · Wed May 24, 2023 4:32 pm

Glad to have AM radio in my car. I get traffic reports from the local all news station while driving in the city - they do them every 10 minutes all day long. Plus I can listen to the occasional baseball or football game if I happen to be on the road when one of my local teams is playing. But other than those times, it's Sirius XM or my iPod (yeah, I still have one and it still works).

Newark727 · Wed May 24, 2023 4:35 pm

My parents got a new car last year and the absence of an AM radio in it is a recurring source of frustration.

casinterest · Wed May 24, 2023 4:56 pm

I am not sure about this push to keep AM going. On the one hand, AM works better in the mountains, but that is because of the frequency it owns( the 530-1700 Khz) vs the 88-108 MHZ band that most FM operates on.

Also FM to get what it needs to send signals needs a lot more bandwidth. So while you could put 5-6 FM channels in the AM bandwidth( 200 KHZ a station required) you would miss out on the 100+ 10 khz channel bands.

Is AM that important that we can't replace it with 5-6 FM channels that can send more information?
Will it even matter as more sattelites such as Starlink go up that can get you interent through Very High Frequency(Microwave) bands from the sky. ?

TWA772LR · Wed May 24, 2023 7:00 pm

Makes sense as a lot of traffic and emergency advisories are broadcast over AM. Yeah it's an old frequency but for something like that you need the range.

Kent350787 · Thu May 25, 2023 5:48 am

Newark727 wrote:
My parents got a new car last year and the absence of an AM radio in it is a recurring source of frustration.

My car is almost 10yo. Even though it has AM, my wife is the only one who insists on using it - the audio quality literally gives me headaches, and the same stations could be streamed (we don't have DAB+ in the car, and it's not great in Australia anyway). But AM does have its place over vast tracts of very little as we have here.

ACDC8 · Thu May 25, 2023 6:06 am

Wasn't there some sort of legislation in the US that just passed or looked into passing in regards to keeping AM standard on all vehicles in the US or something like that?

I very rarely listen to my radio - including Sirius - mostly just listen to my playlists on my phone. The odd time I do use the radio is at the drive-in movie theatre, but thats broadcast on FM.

GalaxyFlyer · Thu May 25, 2023 12:08 pm

Drive-in Movie Theater! In Vancouver?

45272455674 · Thu May 25, 2023 12:20 pm

GalaxyFlyer wrote:
AM exists in the US due to the rural areas. Much of the Midwest and Mountain West have nothing without AM or Sirius. Ford kept whip antennas due to the pickup demographic.

I have a fairly modern radio that gets AM / FM and all the other things, but most of the time I just use CarPlay.

I’m usually in areas where I have phone reception and google maps is very good at showing traffic problems.

I dislike listening to radio stations, maybe it’s also because of the self important loudmouth windbags that host the radio programs around this area.

aeromoe · Thu May 25, 2023 2:49 pm

cpd wrote:
I dislike listening to radio stations, maybe it’s also because of the self important loudmouth windbags that host the radio programs around this area.

In my crotchety late middle-age I just don't want to put up with the advertising I have no use for. I absolutely detest commercials (adverts) of any sort on any platform, therefore I refuse to listen to or watch almost all programming subject to commercials/adverts. The lone exception is YouTube where I channel surf to watch a variety of interesting, entertaining, and educational/news channels. I will put up with the occasional 'ad' on YouTube to the extent that those that offer the 'skip ad' button soon after starting the ad, I will click that. There are some short ads without the 'skip ad' option...I just accept those and wait it out.

I don't watch network television, I don't have cable, and I pay for only a couple of ad-free streaming services.

As far in-car, I just have a USB stick in place that cycles through the tunes I have loaded to it. Easy-peasy. Just my way of thinking on the subject.

ltbewr · Thu May 25, 2023 3:38 pm

The reason why some EV vehicle makers want to not have AM radio access is apparently as the audio can have electronic noise from the components in those vehicles. Additional shielding, some re-arrangement of components would be necessary for it to be listenable.
AM radio in the USA is mostly news, sports, political/social talk, foreign language (usually Spanish) broadcasts or for very rural areas. In recent years, many such AM stations have moved to or added FM stations broadcasts. AM Radio may be useful in very rural areas for any critical weather information or news where also no or very poor mobile smartphone signals so it does have its purpose.

FGITD · Thu May 25, 2023 3:44 pm

Made the switch to Apple Music and never looked back. It has pretty much every song you could imagine, on demand, with no commercials.

As for AM radio, it’s still too important for emergency broadcasts so it won’t go anywhere.

Revelation · Thu May 25, 2023 3:50 pm

casinterest wrote:
I am not sure about this push to keep AM going. On the one hand, AM works better in the mountains, but that is because of the frequency it owns( the 530-1700 Khz) vs the 88-108 MHZ band that most FM operates on.

Also FM to get what it needs to send signals needs a lot more bandwidth. So while you could put 5-6 FM channels in the AM bandwidth( 200 KHZ a station required) you would miss out on the 100+ 10 khz channel bands.

Is AM that important that we can't replace it with 5-6 FM channels that can send more information?

Will it even matter as more sattelites such as Starlink go up that can get you interent through Very High Frequency(Microwave) bands from the sky. ?

I think you're answering your own question: AM and FM channels aren't the same, they have different range properties. Also they are free of charge to the receiver, unlike most satellite-based services. I personally don't listen to AM or FM broadcasts, but it seems others do.

aeromoe wrote:
cpd wrote:
I dislike listening to radio stations, maybe it’s also because of the self important loudmouth windbags that host the radio programs around this area.

In my crotchety late middle-age I just don't want to put up with the advertising I have no use for. I absolutely detest commercials (adverts) of any sort on any platform, therefore I refuse to listen to or watch almost all programming subject to commercials/adverts. The lone exception is YouTube where I channel surf to watch a variety of interesting, entertaining, and educational/news channels. I will put up with the occasional 'ad' on YouTube to the extent that those that offer the 'skip ad' button soon after starting the ad, I will click that. There are some short ads without the 'skip ad' option...I just accept those and wait it out.

I don't watch network television, I don't have cable, and I pay for only a couple of ad-free streaming services.

As far in-car, I just have a USB stick in place that cycles through the tunes I have loaded to it. Easy-peasy. Just my way of thinking on the subject.

It sounds like we have similar takes on things.

I'm a big u2b viewer, enough that to me it is worth paying for the premium service to skip u2b's ads, so all I have to skip over is the junk many content providers insert. Hint: I don't want a VPN service. I have Amazon Music because I have some Alexas that use it to play music. That's about all I pay for in the media space.

I use over-the-air for the little bit of broadcast TV I watch, mostly NFL games. I use a pay-as-I-go plan for mobile data so I avoid streaming over mobile data. My friend is mad at me because he says his wife is too stupid to understand the difference between wifi and mobile (his words, not mine) so he has to pay a big mobile bill every month.

Most of the time when I'm in my car my phone is streaming music via bluetooth to the car's stereo. My phone has tons of storage space on it, more than my entire collection of ripped music, so I never run out of things to listen too.

Revelation · Thu May 25, 2023 4:04 pm

ltbewr wrote:
The reason why some EV vehicle makers want to not have AM radio access is apparently as the audio can have electronic noise from the components in those vehicles. Additional shielding, some re-arrangement of components would be necessary for it to be listenable.

Very true. It is extra cost of materials and extra engineering time to get it right. They prefer to pretend AM doesn't matter, but it seems they are finding out it does.

FGITD wrote:
Made the switch to Apple Music and never looked back. It has pretty much every song you could imagine, on demand, with no commercials.

Things that require mobile data might not be viable in certain places or for people with limited resources.

As for AM radio, it’s still too important for emergency broadcasts so it won’t go anywhere.

I think it's death will be from the broadcaster side. Electricity ain't cheap these days and it requires a lot of electricity to run a big AM station. It also requires a lot of land to host the broadcast towers in many cases, which can mean a lot of money in taxes. Depending on where that land is, the station may be better off selling off the land and moving to FM on a shared tower elsewhere, or just shutting down. It's a hard business to make money in these days, given there are so many different ways to receive content.

You can talk all you want about emergency broadcasts, but when push comes to shove no one will pay to keep AM alive just for that.

Interestingly enough, I have at least a dozen radios in my house capable of receiving AM, FM, and many other radio bands and modes, so I think I'm covered. I also have a part-time job where I'm paid to be part of an emergency services radio network. TBH it is of dubious value. Most em-comms should be thinking satellite these days.

FGITD · Thu May 25, 2023 5:16 pm

Revelation wrote:

FGITD wrote:
Made the switch to Apple Music and never looked back. It has pretty much every song you could imagine, on demand, with no commercials.

Things that require mobile data might not be viable in certain places or for people with limited resources.

As for AM radio, it’s still too important for emergency broadcasts so it won’t go anywhere.

I think it's death will be from the broadcaster side. Electricity ain't cheap these days and it requires a lot of electricity to run a big AM station

Admittedly Apple Music is a bit of a luxury, but I’ve got hundreds of hours of entertainment downloaded so at the very least for me, lack of mobile data won’t stop it.

Have to agree on AM though. When the broadcasters decide they’re done, so too will AM. Not worth it to support a whole structure for limited purpose and use

ACDC8 · Thu May 25, 2023 7:55 pm

GalaxyFlyer wrote:
Drive-in Movie Theater! In Vancouver?

Yup - in Langley.

http://twilightdrivein.net

When I lived in the Okanagan Valley, I went to the one in Enderby every weekend.

https://www.starlightdrivein.ca

mxaxai · Thu May 25, 2023 8:39 pm

Revelation wrote:
You can talk all you want about emergency broadcasts, but when push comes to shove no one will pay to keep AM alive just for that.

AM has far higher range than FM (talking about the traditional classification where AM is in the kHz range, FM around 100 MHz - the key characteristic is the frequency, not the modulation technique).
Unless you want to set up many additional towers in remote areas, AM is the only way to provide any coverage there. Or satcom, obviously. But clearly cars don't (yet) include satcom as a standard add-on.
So as long as the government feels the need for terrestrial emergency broadcasts, they'll keep AM alive. Commercially, AM would've died long ago.

Revelation · Thu May 25, 2023 9:05 pm

mxaxai wrote:
So as long as the government feels the need for terrestrial emergency broadcasts, they'll keep AM alive. Commercially, AM would've died long ago.

In the US at least, I know of no government program that keeps AM alive for any reason at all, including emergency broadcasts, it only survives where it can be supported by market forces. I think when it does die the government will be OK with all the other ways there are to get info out to the public (FM radio, Sirius-style satellite broadcasts, Internet alerting, etc).

Personally I think it only survives in the US mostly because of the habits of the older demographics, and it's not just out in the countryside. Some people still turn on AM for their news fix when on the road, or for talk, mostly politics/religion/sports, or live sports events (lots of major league baseball this time of year around here).

Here in New England, USA the AM broadcast band far from dead. I can turn on my modern ham radio transceiver with a decent antenna that also covers the AM band and find a signal on pretty much every 10 kHz channel from 550 kHz up to 1590 kHz. Both NYC (WINS) and BOS (WBZ) news stations were still on the air last time I checked.

Apparently a lot of US AM stations can find enough advertising revenue to pay their bills from their core audience, but I don't expect it to last for long. The one closest to me is barely scraping by. The only original content they have is when they rent out their airwaves for a fee to wanna-be political talk show hosts. It's up to those hosts to raise enough money to pay for their air time. The rest of the time they rebroadcast religious or political content that is also paid for or has enough advertisers in the market willing to sponsor ads on such shows.

Revelation · Thu May 25, 2023 9:23 pm

If anyone wants to see what the AM band (or pretty much any other part of the radio spectrum from 0-30 MHz) looks like, either google 'kiwisdr' or go to http://kiwisdr.com/public/ and select the aqua-blue 'KiwiSDR Map' to find a station, or just pick one from the list. In my case I picked the 'KA1GXR 0-30 MHZ SDR | ASHLAND MA USA' station which is in the Boston media market. Then when the web page for the station comes up, go to the red 'select band' dropdown in the top-middle of the box on the right, and pick 'MW' for the medium wave band. Then you'll see tons of bright lines going up and down the screen. Double-click on one of the bright lines and you'll see the yellow tuning indicator move and you should hear the audio from an AM broadcast station. You can hop around and listen to lots of other stations and decide for yourself if AM is dead or not. It definitely is not in the Boston media market!

Detailed Instructions: http://kiwisdr.com/ks/using_Kiwi.html

Revelation · Thu May 25, 2023 9:39 pm

ACDC8 wrote:
GalaxyFlyer wrote:
Drive-in Movie Theater! In Vancouver?

Yup - in Langley.

Based on this I decided to try to listen to AM radio in the MW band in the Vancouver area.

Link: KiwiSDR: Software-defined receiver at KJ6EI/VE7 Booth Bay, British Columbia, Canada

Not as busy as the Boston media market, but still, over a dozen signals in the MW band to be listened to. Many are not in the English language, so maybe AM is important to non-English speakers? In English, I hear news, sports, comedy, music, religion: a pretty typical mix.

45272455674 · Fri May 26, 2023 3:21 am

Revelation wrote:
casinterest wrote:
I am not sure about this push to keep AM going. On the one hand, AM works better in the mountains, but that is because of the frequency it owns( the 530-1700 Khz) vs the 88-108 MHZ band that most FM operates on.

Also FM to get what it needs to send signals needs a lot more bandwidth. So while you could put 5-6 FM channels in the AM bandwidth( 200 KHZ a station required) you would miss out on the 100+ 10 khz channel bands.

Is AM that important that we can't replace it with 5-6 FM channels that can send more information?

Will it even matter as more sattelites such as Starlink go up that can get you interent through Very High Frequency(Microwave) bands from the sky. ?

I think you're answering your own question: AM and FM channels aren't the same, they have different range properties. Also they are free of charge to the receiver, unlike most satellite-based services. I personally don't listen to AM or FM broadcasts, but it seems others do.

aeromoe wrote:
cpd wrote:
I dislike listening to radio stations, maybe it’s also because of the self important loudmouth windbags that host the radio programs around this area.

In my crotchety late middle-age I just don't want to put up with the advertising I have no use for. I absolutely detest commercials (adverts) of any sort on any platform, therefore I refuse to listen to or watch almost all programming subject to commercials/adverts. The lone exception is YouTube where I channel surf to watch a variety of interesting, entertaining, and educational/news channels. I will put up with the occasional 'ad' on YouTube to the extent that those that offer the 'skip ad' button soon after starting the ad, I will click that. There are some short ads without the 'skip ad' option...I just accept those and wait it out.

I don't watch network television, I don't have cable, and I pay for only a couple of ad-free streaming services.

As far in-car, I just have a USB stick in place that cycles through the tunes I have loaded to it. Easy-peasy. Just my way of thinking on the subject.

It sounds like we have similar takes on things.

I'm a big u2b viewer, enough that to me it is worth paying for the premium service to skip u2b's ads, so all I have to skip over is the junk many content providers insert. Hint: I don't want a VPN service. I have Amazon Music because I have some Alexas that use it to play music. That's about all I pay for in the media space.

I use over-the-air for the little bit of broadcast TV I watch, mostly NFL games. I use a pay-as-I-go plan for mobile data so I avoid streaming over mobile data. My friend is mad at me because he says his wife is too stupid to understand the difference between wifi and mobile (his words, not mine) so he has to pay a big mobile bill every month.

Most of the time when I'm in my car my phone is streaming music via bluetooth to the car's stereo. My phone has tons of storage space on it, more than my entire collection of ripped music, so I never run out of things to listen too.

We all seem similar, I hate adverts on TV and radio as well. I just leave the radio muted or on low. Only get navigation instructions if I'm using the nav (Google maps on Apple CarPlay).

I don't even watch TV now.

ACDC8 · Fri May 26, 2023 4:52 am

Revelation wrote:
Based on this I decided to try to listen to AM radio in the MW band in the Vancouver area.

Link: KiwiSDR: Software-defined receiver at KJ6EI/VE7 Booth Bay, British Columbia, Canada

Not as busy as the Boston media market, but still, over a dozen signals in the MW band to be listened to. Many are not in the English language, so maybe AM is important to non-English speakers? In English, I hear news, sports, comedy, music, religion: a pretty typical mix.

Couldn't tell ya - like I said, the only time I use the radio is for the drive-in theatre and thats on the FM band.

Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Car dependency

Re: Car dependency

Re: Car dependency

Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Car dependency

Re: Car dependency

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Re: Ford decides to keep AM radio on US 2024 models

Who is online

Popular Searches On Airliners.net