No. People will complain that the AM radio sounds worse than the AM radio did in their last car, therefore it must be broken. Or they will complain that they can’t pull in station WXZY from the other side of the state like they could in their last car, the radio must be broken.
No, of course not (to both questions). But if you are already out in your car, perhaps driving someplace without FM or cell reception, having the ability to get the emergency information you need might be helpful, no?
Ford is awfully fickle:
Fickle? Or responsive to consumer feedback and Federal pressure?
Probably this, especially considering that the F-series pickup truck is the top-selling vehicle in the U.S., particularly in rural America.
Yeah really. Gotta know your market.
These days, it’s more like WWJD 1160. I never listen to AM radio, so don’t care, though it seems an easy thing to keep including for those who do.
Amen! (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
I remember driving outside of major metro areas in Ohio and losing my FM radio signals. Scanning the FM dial you’d get lots of static, weak signals, etc. Like a dummy, I’d switch over to AM and scan for something to occupy my mind. Jesus Radio or Right Wing Radio. That’s it, nothing else. And frankly, there is almost no difference between the two anymore. I would not weep or feel a moments regret if AM radio went away entirely.
Of cousre I’ve had SiriusXM for several years now so this isn’t a problem anymore.
Around here AM is mostly non-English radio, plus Reactionary Wacko, with a smidgen of Jeebus. One can hear an amazing variety of languages running across the whole AM spectrum. Obviously Spanish predominates, but multiple accents are on offer.
Indeed, I’ve noted French and Arabic.
Leaving aside the fact that I can name at least a half-dozen AM radio stations that are neither right-wing nor Jesus oriented, I suspect that even the most hardcore progressives among us would listen to any station we could receive when we’re in the middle of tornado warnings or the floods mean all the bridges will be closed until further notice.
They’d just move to FM. Main reason RW Talk is in AM was that the News/Talk format was already big in AM as a better bang-for-the-buck use of the bandwidth before Limbaugh et al broke big so it was the the place they took over.
Are there lots of available FM slots there for the taking?
@JRDelirious two above …
I’m not sure that’s the only reason. RW talk has a 90+% audience share in ruralia and around a 50% audience share in suburbia / cities. Or at least that’s the political leanings of the populace whether they tune into radio or not.
AM coverage is both geographically deeper and far more cost-effective in ruralia than is FM. Said another way, if AM broadcasting was to shut down entirely, a hefty chunk of RW radio’s audience could not switch to FM unless a lot of new FM transmitters were installed out there. Which is probably not going to happen.
To be sure, nobody I know of is talking about stopping AM transmission, as opposed to losing AM reception in post ~2024 model year cars, and not even that many of those percentagewise. But as and when AM radio receivers start disappearing from cars in quantity that will have a disproportionate impact on the rural listening audience. Which in turn will have a disproportionate impact on the RW radio listening audience.
There is at least one FM talk radio station in the Kansas City area which used to be a music station of some sort.
Holy crap, in the early 90’s, I drove an 85 Chevette with AM radio. My first car. I installed a new radio and a couple of rear speakers to make my commute more bearable. Damn, that car sucked. Such low power, it was dangerous. I knew the longest on-ramps to the local highways and went out of my way to use them. This thing taught me the true meaning of defensive driving and situational awareness. If the brakes couldn’t get me out of a bad situation, I wasn’t getting out. Such a bad car - but it was cheap, and I had great times because of it.
Sorry. You brought back memories 
You describe my experience with that car exactly. Was yours baby blue, too? I described that cars acceleration as 0-60 maybe off of a cliff. It literally took like 30 seconds to get up to speed, and could barely even hit 60. The specs say that it should be 15 seconds, but it was longer than that for me, and I, too, would avoid certain highway ramps if they didn’t have what I felt was a safe distance to get up to speed. It was as if that car was always in the highest gear. (Looking back, I did wonder if there was an issue with the transmission, but it was that way from new.) No power steering as I remember it, too (it became de facto my car from 1991-1993.) Mileage was crazy good, though. I remember getting around 40mpg in that thing.
In large areas of the US West there are no (non-relay) FM stations at all. I’m sure with the right political clout and a bunch of money to burn you could get a station license to serve some decently populated areas.
Take Ontario, OR. The largest city in far Eastern Oregon (which covers a lot of territory). It doesn’t have radio station at all, let alone FM. (It used to have an AM station but that’s another sad story.) Well, there are a couple of relays for far off stations and there is an FM station licensed to Ontario but that’s in Nampa ID and actually targets the Boise area. (The FCC used to be really hard core about preventing such license-location tricks, but not so much anymore.)
So it’s ripe for it’s own FM station that would serve a reasonably well populated area of the western Treasure Valley.
And it be idiotic to try. The FCC considers whether a new station has a chance at getting an audience and being viable. So probably will never happen.
Also keep in mind that many decent sized cities have just a few FM stations. Basically no variety. Just because there’s an FM station or two doesn’t mean you want to listen to them.
This is a traditional niche for pirate radio stations, basically micropower transmitters sitting on top of a building playing underground club music or whatever it is people actually want to listen to. Does not help large areas in the middle of nowhere, of course.
Ultimately, the public doesn’t want to listen to radio. They want to listen to entertainment. Which might be music or sports or yakyak. Radio is just a delivery vehicle. A obsolete delivery vehicle getting more so every day.
Between streaming on phones via cellular networks and audio stuff already downloaded to phones that spend time away from cellular networks, all of us carry a complete universe of entertainment in our pocket every day. Or could if we wanted.
Radio transmitters are not coming to small town America. Rather the opposite. Neither are newspapers and for the exact same economic reasons: compared to modern delivery systems, the economics don’t work.