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Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars

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On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 11:44:27PM -0400, Michael Trew wrote:
> On 5/18/2023 11:13, Bill Horne wrote:
>>  On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 12:48:36PM +0000, danny burstein wrote:
>>  > Background: Electric cars, thanks to their motors
>>  > and circuitry, cause lots of radio frequency interference.
>>  > 
>>  > If done cheaply, this badly crashes any attempt to
>>  > listen to an AM radio.  Hence many car manufacturers
>>  > are choosing the skinflint option of simply not including
>>  > AM radios in their vehicles.
>>  
>>  As should be their right. AM radios in motor vehicles have always been
>>  subject to interference from a variety of sources, including spark
>>  plugs in converntional engines, electric windshield motors, and the
>>  display panels used to replace old-fashioned speedometers, and oil
>>  pressure and temperature gauges.
> 
> As Marco said, in many new cars, you can’t install an after-market radio.
> One part of me wants to agree with you, that it’s the manufacturer’s right
> to not include an AM radio... but setting that precedent will be the death
> of broadcast AM.  Most people only listen to broadcast radio in their cars,
> and it seems that manufactures want to shut the dial down.  I listen to AM
> radio on a daily basis.

Car makers don’t want to shut down AM, or any other type of signal:
they know that car buyers usually expect a new car to have a radio
that receives both AM and FM stations, and many new cars come equipped
with satellite receivers and free trials of a satellite-based servics.

The question is whether Congress can demand that automakers include
the AM band in their cars’ radios, even if it costs them a lot more to
do so: to make AM reception possible in an RF-noise filled environment
like an electric vehicle, the automakers would have to shield their
motors, their control systems, their computers, and their charging
systems to lower the noise level to something that AM listeners will
accept. That costs money, in an industry where saving $10 on each
vehicle coming off the assembly line can make an engineer’s career.

We've been through this debate before, although in another context:
when FM broadcasts were becoming popular, many motorists were offered
discounts on “FM Converter” units which could be mounted under the
dashboard, The converters were built with an antenna connector where
the car owner could plug in the same antenna cable that had been in
use by the AM radio, and they came with a short extension that
connected the AM radio to the converter, so that the motorist could
swith between AM and FM bands quickly.

The company that owned the patent on the special type of connector
used in automobiles sued to stop the converters from being sold, but I
don't know how the case was resolved. No matter; either the radio
manufacturers got some extra income, or the courts decided that having
access to more signals - and, therefore, more opinions - was too
important to let the patent stand.

That's where this current debate is focused: the Congress is claiming
that car buyers will suffer by not being able to listen to Rush
Limbaugh or Donald Trump or DIane Feinstein or Marjorie Taylor Greene
or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez telling them what to think. Car buyers who
think for themselves, and decide that the added cost of having AM
radios available in electric vehicles isn't worth it, are being denied
a place at the table.

>>  The point is that those whom profit from existing methods of
>>  distributing a nation's propaganda always fight tooth and nail to hang
>>  on to their privileged positions and profit model when new
>>  technologies such as FM threaten them, and our leaders have always let
>>  them get away with it.
> 
> I'm aware that most of AM radio has become talk-radio.  I don't care for Mr.
> Limbaugh, or his programming, but he sure did save the AM band. Now, I still
> listen to a number of music stations on the AM dial, including many oldies
> and polkas on Sundays.  I still tune into News radio 1020 KDKA in Pittsburgh
> (first commercial radio station).
> 
>>  The Congress doesn't give a tinker's damn about "public safety:"
> 
> Perhaps they are talking about in the case of a flood, fire, or wide-spread
> power outage, where some might only be able to receive broadcast radio in
> battery-power units?  I've been on plenty of highways with signs "Tune into
> 1680 (or whatever) AM radio for an important safety message from DOT".

No competent public-safety officer ever relies on battery-powered
radios. The dismal results which followed the introduction of small,
battery-powered AM radios have been known for decades: such sets
inevitably wound up on closet shelves when their owners realized that,
in the first place, the devices were bulky and heavy and inconvenient,
and in the second, that other people didn't like being forced to
listen to someone else’s choice of music or news. It wasn’t until the
introduction of battery-powered "Boom Boxes," with their cheap
chrome-plated "minimum parts count" designs and badly distorted sound,
that the public was, once again, able to choose portable vs. AC- or
Car-powered receivers. The public chose to shun the children whom were
sporting the Boom Boxes on their shoulders, and the fad died down as
soon as the Boom Box owners decided that their money was better spent
on things other than batteries.

Battery technology has advanced tremendously in the past few decades,
due to Cellular Phones: probably the only battery-powered devices
which owners feel have justified their bulk and expense in the long
term. The companies which make the phones have been leveraging their
product's ubiquity since they were first widely adopted, adding
cameras, larger amounts of memory, and now even Internet-supplied
information services which bypass the broadcast networks and thus,
those networks’ hold on the body politic’s sources of information.

AM Radio is a known quantity in Washington, D.C.: our public servants
have been serving us plate after plate of rancid tripe for all our
lives, using the broadcast stations which depend on Congressional
approval for their very existence. This proposed law isn't about AM or
FM: it concerns who gets to use the information paths and who
doesn’t. There's an election coming.

Bill Horne

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address for direct replies)

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[telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "danny burstein" <dannyb@panix.com> - 2023-05-18 12:48 +0000
  Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com> - 2023-05-18 11:13 -0400
    Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Marco Moock" <mo01@posteo.de> - 2023-05-19 08:41 +0200
      Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com> - 2023-05-19 18:22 -0400
    Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Michael Trew" <michael.trew@att.net> - 2023-05-19 23:44 -0400
      Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com> - 2023-05-20 09:52 -0400
        Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> - 2023-05-20 16:51 +0000
      Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> - 2023-05-20 16:18 +0000
        Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> - 2023-05-21 16:45 -0400
          Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson@mishmash.com> - 2023-05-23 05:31 +0000
            Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <digest-replies@telecomdigest.net> - 2023-05-23 10:25 -0400
            Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> - 2023-05-23 20:07 +0000
              Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson@mishmash.com> - 2023-05-24 22:30 +0000
                Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> - 2023-05-25 21:25 +0000
                Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Fred Atkinson" <fatkinson@mishmash.com> - 2023-05-26 20:31 +0000
                Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Garrett Wollman" <wollman@bimajority.org> - 2023-05-27 21:17 +0000
                Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <digest-replies@telecomdigest.net> - 2023-05-28 18:28 -0400
                Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Fred Goldstein" <invalid@see-sig.invalid> - 2023-05-30 11:24 -0400
                Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <digest-replies@telecomdigest.net> - 2023-05-30 13:13 -0400
                RE: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Patton Turner" <address-withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> - 2023-05-31 02:06 +0000
          Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <digest-replies@telecomdigest.net> - 2023-05-23 08:39 -0400
          Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Fred Goldstein" <invalid@see-sig.invalid> - 2023-05-23 11:30 -0400
        Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Michael Trew" <michael.trew@att.net> - 2023-05-30 15:57 -0400
          Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Bill Horne" <digest-replies@telecomdigest.net> - 2023-05-31 09:07 -0400
            Re: [telecom] Congress moves to preserve AM radio in cars "Marco Moock" <mo01@posteo.de> - 2023-05-31 16:54 +0200

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