It's like this. AM is the lowest common denominator and that's why it's being mandated. There's nearly 100 years of experience of having AM radios in vehicles,

It's like this. AM is the lowest common denominator and that's why it's being mandated. There's nearly 100 years of experience of having AM radios in vehicles, it's easy, very cheap and it works. Everyone knows how it work and millions still listen to it. Even if you never use the AM radio in your car someday someone else may do so to get emergency info (it has a much longer range than FM). BTW, most of my radio experience has been in FM broadcasting, so I'd naturally choose that as a better quality broadcast medium. But we're not talking about that here, but rather the fact that AM radio is the LCD for a multitude of reasons. Incidentally, I've also worked on the transmission side of television and I've been involved with spectrum management from a policy perspective. What I've notice in these posts is the tendency to dismiss AM simply because people have become unfamiliar with it given the many media options available today. What people forget or have never understood is that to get that high quality video and sound on your smartphone, or on your widescreen OLED TV requires a huge amount of very complex infrastructure, and it takes many people and many organizations to do so. Only the slightest thing has to go wrong and the whole edifice will come crashing down. An idiot, terrorist and or natural disaster can kill it in an instant, whereas the low tech widely distributed AM TX network is much, much harder to bring to a halt. We saw this on many occasions in WWII, there were many instances where cities were left in ruins but the AM broadcast from those cities were either left intact or gotten up and running again within only a few hours. Again, that's what this whole discussion is about and why AM car radios are being mandated. As I mentioned elsewhere, heaven help us come the next Carrington Event (which it will), none of that lovely media infrastructure will be left standing. Similar scenarios can result for certain emergency situations. When all communications fail then AM radio will be by far the easiest to reestablish, and with millions of cars having an AM receiver that will have services up and running much faster. I know AM is not fashionable but it works and it's easy to establish, same can be said for sewer pipes but we don't chuck them away because they're not fashionable or because they're low tech.