7 ms·

As someone that doesn’t listen to radio a lot, but when I do it’s FM only what do we loose without AM? This article doesn’t give a single reason to argue why AM

As someone that doesn’t listen to radio a lot, but when I do it’s FM only what do we loose without AM? This article doesn’t give a single reason to argue why AM should be preserved.

throw0101a 4y ago
See "Ford to drop AM radio in new models, except commercial vehicles": * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627 Generally traffic/weather/emergency information, especially less populated regions, and remote regions (e.g., mountains) that get no other kind of signal. Various DOTs have AM radio transmitters for PSAs.
- officeplant 3y ago
  >Various DOTs have AM radio transmitters for PSAs. Yep, we've got hurricane routing signs everywhere that also mention what frequency to tune into.
rnmmrnm 4y ago
In some regions of the world AM is all you can find.
don-code 4y ago
My take is that the article argues for keeping it on the grounds of technical merit, not of purpose. Senator Ed Markey makes (https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_automakers_on_am_radio_-_december_2022.pdf https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_automa...) some better points about it: > Broadcast AM radio remains a crucial, cost-free source of news, sports, and weather, and, more importantly, is an essential medium for public safety officials — including the president — to communicate with the public during emergencies, There are several "clear channel" AM radio stations in the United States - that is, they are guaranteed no interference from FCC assignments to other stations elsewhere in the country, unlike the majority of stations which share the spectrum based on their geographic location. Because of that, they're allowed to broadcast at power levels considerably higher than other stations. This makes clear channel stations incredibly useful in the event of a public emergency (war, natural disaster, etc.). WBZ is based out of Sen. Markey's home state of Massachusetts - specifically a suburb of Boston - and I've personally been able to pick it up as far away as Erie, Pennsylvania.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >>Broadcast AM radio remains a crucial, cost-free source of news, sports, and weather, and, more importantly, is an essential medium for public safety officials One of these things is not like the others. When has sports been considered crucial? Are we catering to bookies now?
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Sports help bind communities and shape regional narratives. Whether you are a sports fan or not, I can recommend the documentary series "Welcome to Wrexham" as a fun look into the people and community of sports. (The show is about how while everyone was watching Ted Lasso, Rob McElhenny of It's Always Sunny and Ryan Reynolds of too many movies to name bought the Football Club of Wrexham, a Welsh city.)
    - dylan604 3y ago
      I guess we have different definitions of critical. We'll have to agree to disagree on sports being critical. More important to some than others, but hard sell on making it critical. Knowing if there's a tornado coming--critical. Knowing if there's horrendous traffic accident--critical. Local sports team got their arses handed to them--interesting. One of these things is not like the others
      - WorldMaker 3y ago
        If you are only interested in disasters, I suppose, but even then: knowing that there's going to be a sports-related "riot" in local bars and venue-adjacent streets can be pretty critical information that is useful when it is timely. There are definitely cities where you need to know every time there is a local game and roughly what the mood of the crowd is, because crowd physics and mob mentalities. There are "sports-related disasters" in the weather of those cities.
- doubleg72 4y ago
  I am near Erie, might have to give this a whirl
jollyllama 4y ago
There's a lot of low cost, ethnic and community stations that broadcast on AM here in the states. From Mexican, to Indian, to polka music.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  Why can't these ethnic stations broadcast on FM instead?
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Possibly frequencies are not available, or the cost of equipment is too high?
  - officeplant 3y ago
    Usually licensing & equipment costs or being in an area with a saturated market as far as FM is concerned and having to go up against media corporations with 20+ stations under their belt. I don't even live in Texas but there is a ton of weird texas stations I can find on a good night with my old reliable radioshack shortwave radio.
teeray 4y ago
Think less about the preservation of AM and more about the preservation of amateur radio in vehicles. The same EMI effects also make it difficult to operate HF in an electric vehicle. “So what? I’m not a ham and don’t care to be.” Well, consider that it’s the largest allocation of spectrum available for public use—the rest is commercial, government, and public safety. It’s an invisible National Park (international, really) that corporate entities either don’t care about or want to use for their own purposes.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Indeed, my son is studying for his tech license right now; he made several contacts with my dad when we last visited and caught the bug from him (I guess it skipped a generation).
- thakoppno 4y ago
  > an invisible National Park That is a great line. Did you coin it?
  - teeray 4y ago
    Thanks :) I actually did come up with it for this comment, but I’m definitely using it again in the future!
WorldMaker 3y ago
Some reasons most relevant to a lot of HN discussions: AM is the "child's first electronics kit from Radio Shack" science experiment. "Amplitude Modulation" is a fancy way of saying that it encodes sound mostly the way that sound waves themselves do: louder sounds get more amplitude on the radio wave. AM radio waves are just about the only part of the radio dial where the radio wave looks almost even reasonably similar to the sound wave it encodes. The number of electronics to pick up an AM signal and pass it to a speaker (to build a "radio") are about as minimal as it gets and many generations of children did it as introductions to early electronics hacking. AM Radio is the radio that you could conceivably MacGuyver a radio using common household items if you had to in a pinch. AM Radio is the radio that you could possibly even, if push came to shove, MacGuyver a transmitter for it and expect people (in a short distance at least, unless you've got a lot of power or lucky weather) to be able to hear it. Some of the laments over the loss of AM radio are a realization at how much the "floor" of electronics science likely rises. Companies want to fill the bandwidth with more digitally encoded signals, signals that need microchips and firmware and software to encode or process. Teaching electronics to children starts to feel harder and more complicated. Electronics starts to feel all the more like the realm of wizards and elite with money and special hacking tools and less something the common person can understand or "touch" with a cheap kit from a supply store just around the corner (or a YouTube video, some electronic junk, and a potato). A lot of the calls that if AM is to be shutdown more of the bandwidth should be made available to amateur radio come directly from this idea of preserving at least some of the low floor as a sandbox and play space. At the end of the day AM radio is an extremely inefficient use of that available bandwidth and it probably does make sense "for progress" to use more of it more efficiently than before. Relatedly, I think that's part of the sad answer to SETI's search against the Fermi Paradox across the sky: it makes a lot of sense to look for natural appearing signals in the sky in the decades where we are blasting human language looking signals at high power in AM radio bands, but it looks like in geological time (much less cosmological time) that period in our "tech tree" was likely ever so much a short glitch before more efficient, more strangely encoded, more noise-looking, more generally encrypted radio communications replaced them.
- mike50 3y ago
  Argument applies to the change from electrical engineering to electronics engineering circa 1900s, Try again.
JohnFen 3y ago
I would personally lose because I would no longer have radio when travelling. FM radio programming is not often appealing to me. If I want music, I play my own. AM typically has at least one or two interesting things to listen to. I value that quite a lot, and will grieve a little if it goes away. There's nothing that can replace it, as near as I can see. My two main arguments for why it should be preserved are: it's one of the last bastions for programming that actually comes from local communities, and it's indispensable in disaster scenarios.
- splitstud 3y ago
  [dead]

As someone that doesn’t listen to radio a lot, but when I do it’s FM only what do we loose without AM? This article doesn’t give a single reason to argue why AM should be preserved.

throw0101a 4y ago

See "Ford to drop AM radio in new models, except commercial vehicles": * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627 Generally traffic/weather/emergency information, especially less populated regions, and remote regions (e.g., mountains) that get no other kind of signal. Various DOTs have AM radio transmitters for PSAs.

officeplant 3y ago
>Various DOTs have AM radio transmitters for PSAs. Yep, we've got hurricane routing signs everywhere that also mention what frequency to tune into.

rnmmrnm 4y ago

In some regions of the world AM is all you can find.

don-code 4y ago

My take is that the article argues for keeping it on the grounds of technical merit, not of purpose. Senator Ed Markey makes (https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_automakers_on_am_radio_-_december_2022.pdf https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letter_to_automa...) some better points about it: > Broadcast AM radio remains a crucial, cost-free source of news, sports, and weather, and, more importantly, is an essential medium for public safety officials — including the president — to communicate with the public during emergencies, There are several "clear channel" AM radio stations in the United States - that is, they are guaranteed no interference from FCC assignments to other stations elsewhere in the country, unlike the majority of stations which share the spectrum based on their geographic location. Because of that, they're allowed to broadcast at power levels considerably higher than other stations. This makes clear channel stations incredibly useful in the event of a public emergency (war, natural disaster, etc.). WBZ is based out of Sen. Markey's home state of Massachusetts - specifically a suburb of Boston - and I've personally been able to pick it up as far away as Erie, Pennsylvania.

dylan604 4y ago
>>Broadcast AM radio remains a crucial, cost-free source of news, sports, and weather, and, more importantly, is an essential medium for public safety officials One of these things is not like the others. When has sports been considered crucial? Are we catering to bookies now?
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  Sports help bind communities and shape regional narratives. Whether you are a sports fan or not, I can recommend the documentary series "Welcome to Wrexham" as a fun look into the people and community of sports. (The show is about how while everyone was watching Ted Lasso, Rob McElhenny of It's Always Sunny and Ryan Reynolds of too many movies to name bought the Football Club of Wrexham, a Welsh city.)
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I guess we have different definitions of critical. We'll have to agree to disagree on sports being critical. More important to some than others, but hard sell on making it critical. Knowing if there's a tornado coming--critical. Knowing if there's horrendous traffic accident--critical. Local sports team got their arses handed to them--interesting. One of these things is not like the others
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      If you are only interested in disasters, I suppose, but even then: knowing that there's going to be a sports-related "riot" in local bars and venue-adjacent streets can be pretty critical information that is useful when it is timely. There are definitely cities where you need to know every time there is a local game and roughly what the mood of the crowd is, because crowd physics and mob mentalities. There are "sports-related disasters" in the weather of those cities.
doubleg72 4y ago
I am near Erie, might have to give this a whirl

jollyllama 4y ago

There's a lot of low cost, ethnic and community stations that broadcast on AM here in the states. From Mexican, to Indian, to polka music.

PeterisP 4y ago
Why can't these ethnic stations broadcast on FM instead?
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Possibly frequencies are not available, or the cost of equipment is too high?
- officeplant 3y ago
  Usually licensing & equipment costs or being in an area with a saturated market as far as FM is concerned and having to go up against media corporations with 20+ stations under their belt. I don't even live in Texas but there is a ton of weird texas stations I can find on a good night with my old reliable radioshack shortwave radio.

teeray 4y ago

Think less about the preservation of AM and more about the preservation of amateur radio in vehicles. The same EMI effects also make it difficult to operate HF in an electric vehicle. “So what? I’m not a ham and don’t care to be.” Well, consider that it’s the largest allocation of spectrum available for public use—the rest is commercial, government, and public safety. It’s an invisible National Park (international, really) that corporate entities either don’t care about or want to use for their own purposes.

aidenn0 4y ago
Indeed, my son is studying for his tech license right now; he made several contacts with my dad when we last visited and caught the bug from him (I guess it skipped a generation).
thakoppno 4y ago
> an invisible National Park That is a great line. Did you coin it?
- teeray 4y ago
  Thanks :) I actually did come up with it for this comment, but I’m definitely using it again in the future!

WorldMaker 3y ago

Some reasons most relevant to a lot of HN discussions: AM is the "child's first electronics kit from Radio Shack" science experiment. "Amplitude Modulation" is a fancy way of saying that it encodes sound mostly the way that sound waves themselves do: louder sounds get more amplitude on the radio wave. AM radio waves are just about the only part of the radio dial where the radio wave looks almost even reasonably similar to the sound wave it encodes. The number of electronics to pick up an AM signal and pass it to a speaker (to build a "radio") are about as minimal as it gets and many generations of children did it as introductions to early electronics hacking. AM Radio is the radio that you could conceivably MacGuyver a radio using common household items if you had to in a pinch. AM Radio is the radio that you could possibly even, if push came to shove, MacGuyver a transmitter for it and expect people (in a short distance at least, unless you've got a lot of power or lucky weather) to be able to hear it. Some of the laments over the loss of AM radio are a realization at how much the "floor" of electronics science likely rises. Companies want to fill the bandwidth with more digitally encoded signals, signals that need microchips and firmware and software to encode or process. Teaching electronics to children starts to feel harder and more complicated. Electronics starts to feel all the more like the realm of wizards and elite with money and special hacking tools and less something the common person can understand or "touch" with a cheap kit from a supply store just around the corner (or a YouTube video, some electronic junk, and a potato). A lot of the calls that if AM is to be shutdown more of the bandwidth should be made available to amateur radio come directly from this idea of preserving at least some of the low floor as a sandbox and play space. At the end of the day AM radio is an extremely inefficient use of that available bandwidth and it probably does make sense "for progress" to use more of it more efficiently than before. Relatedly, I think that's part of the sad answer to SETI's search against the Fermi Paradox across the sky: it makes a lot of sense to look for natural appearing signals in the sky in the decades where we are blasting human language looking signals at high power in AM radio bands, but it looks like in geological time (much less cosmological time) that period in our "tech tree" was likely ever so much a short glitch before more efficient, more strangely encoded, more noise-looking, more generally encrypted radio communications replaced them.

mike50 3y ago
Argument applies to the change from electrical engineering to electronics engineering circa 1900s, Try again.

JohnFen 3y ago

I would personally lose because I would no longer have radio when travelling. FM radio programming is not often appealing to me. If I want music, I play my own. AM typically has at least one or two interesting things to listen to. I value that quite a lot, and will grieve a little if it goes away. There's nothing that can replace it, as near as I can see. My two main arguments for why it should be preserved are: it's one of the last bastions for programming that actually comes from local communities, and it's indispensable in disaster scenarios.

splitstud 3y ago
[dead]