See subject.
A Quest to Save AM Before It’s Lost in the Static
I trust the NYTimes as far as I can throw a 1970’s Sunday edition.
What exactly do you want vetted, and why exactly is this article untrustworthy?
It’s basically a policy statement from the lone Republican on the FCC, devoid of much supporting fact. The article doesn’t even corroborate Mr. Pai’s claims.
One possibility is the obvious one: an R is trying to boost support, funding and (probably) licensing loopholes for the primary “voice” of the extreme and isolated right.
Another: Mr. Pai doesn’t have enough to do because he doesn’t know jack about any modern communication technologies.
Another: He is stumping around building name and political capital for his own purposes.
Another: He is stumping around building support for a revamp of AM radio licensing and operation that benefit Clear Channel, Gannett or some other huge comm consortium who bought him lunch, hookers and a beach house in the Vineyard.
Or it’s just the dull season and the minor musings of a minor official on a secondary federal agency was good enough to fill a few column inches.
Missed the edit: I don’t think, nor do I have any reason to think that AM radio is in any technological crisis or genuine functional problem. The stations might be in various kinds of financial trouble… which is why I focused on topics as above.
I was asking about the tech content only, not politics.
Your last sentence is rather disingenuous.
The Internet is well known as a medium for the extreme radical Left. I always remember that whenever I read appeals for its support and funding, for which I am of course absolutely opposed due to my moral and political wisdom. But I try to keep that out of my assessment of the technology when asked.
The printing press was a warning to us all.
http://dixienet.org/rights/2012/index.php
http://www.kukluxklan.info/presents/americanknights/index.htm
http://www.kkk.com/
Really?
There’s nothing particularly untrustworthy in there, at least in the descriptions of technology. The few technical points are broad generalizations. There’s nothing controversial there.
And as others have noted above, the rest involve opinions/quotes from individuals or are matters of policy by federal agencies and are not subject to the same scrutiny on journalistic accuracy.
Is there a particular sentence that set off any bells?
It’s not controversial nor inaccurate that the proliferation of electronic devices means more interference. It’s true that digital signals can help correct for analog noise (but your effective range may be shorter). And tall buildings do indeed impede access to radio waves.
Poisoned your own well, eh?
I don’t see any glaring technical errors in the article. It’s mostly opinion and a plea to preserve an obsolete and declining medium for nostalgic reasons.
Don’t know much about the Silly Season, do you?
AM radio can be heard at a greater distance, so that part is true, though the reasons for this are more complex than just the “longer wavelength” as stated in the article.
The AM radio band, as it is currently set up, has some inherent problems, though. As it is currently allocated, the bandwidth per channel is very limited, which reduces the sound quality and leaves it monophonic only. The sound quality is further reduced by the amplitude modulation that the radio band is named for. The way AM works, any noise coupled onto the signal can’t be distinguished from the signal, so there’s no way to separate out noise. FM, by comparison, tracks a frequency change. While noise can still get coupled onto FM signals, the noise level is small compared to the actual signal you want, so all the receiver has to do is track the strongest frequency and the noise gets filtered off.
FM’s noise immunity combined with its stereo channels with wider bandwidth for better sound quality made it the obvious choice for music. I can remember in the early 1970s, music was still fairly common on AM because the sound quality of your typical home radio wasn’t very good and it didn’t matter much. As home stereos got better in quality, the AM stations switched over to FM because it sounded better.
By the 1980s, AM was pretty much dead. There was some news and religious talk and that was about it. The FCC was entertaining the idea of revamping AM all the way back then. There were talks about making it stereo, doing different things to increase the sound quality, etc. But then came talk radio, and since talk radio didn’t need the high quality of FM, they were quite content to use the AM band. By the 1990s talk radio had taken off and the FCC stopped talking about making changes to the AM band. The article does mention that talk radio has helped keep the AM band alive. That is definitely true. The article only mentions Rush Limbaugh, though, and there’s a lot more to it than that.
Digital radio and internet streaming have cut into the AM band’s popularity, but comparing the current market to what it was in the 1970s isn’t really fair. That’s excluding the big jump from AM to FM that really hurt the AM market. The FCC has been content with AM radio since the 1990s, so if you want to make the case that it needs to be revamped you need to look only at how much the digital era has cut into it, which isn’t quite as dramatic as comparing AM now to what it was in 1970.
As for AM radio always being there, that’s not true at all. And for proof of that all you need to do is look back to the 1980s when folks started thinking AM was dead the first time around. Manufacturers started putting out radios that were FM only. The AM band got revived before this trend completely took over the industry, but it was well on its way for a while. If AM radio really does take a nose dive, you can bet that car radios and consumer radios will stop including it.
The bit about new devices all interfering with AM isn’t anything new. As I said above, that’s one of the inherent disadvantages of amplitude modulation. There probably is a bit more noise on the AM band these days. There is a valid point to be made there, but I think the article is exaggerating a bit.
Okay, tech you want, tech you get.
AM radio was a fully mature technology before most of us were born. The propagation issues have not changed since Marconi. The last significant change was getting rid of the Mexican “border boomer” stations that ran at 100-200kW and could cover the entire US, interfering with US stations. The last significant innovation was stereo AM, which AFAIK is obsolete because it reduced broadcast range and never found much of an audience.
AM radio broadcast technology has undoubtedly been improved for power efficiency and close digital control of the signal in the last 25 years, and AFAIK has no unsolved issues pending.
In other words, from a technical viewpoint, there is absolutely no news about AM and hasn’t been since the last stereo AM radio receiver was shipped.
Everything else that could be of interest about the status and future of AM radio falls into those non-technical categories you’ve dismissed, so I guess we’re done here.
/close thread
Uh.
I think you just drove your thread into off-topic heaven. If you actually wanted a serious answer to your question, that isn’t going to help.
There’s a paragraph saying that devices like smartphones and TVs “may” interfere with AM signals, which is a “duh” and has been true for decades. (Note: there’s no claim that they do interfere, just that they may.)
There’s also a claim that tall buildings can block AM signals, again: duh. And again: this has been true for as long as tall buildings have existed.
The point of confusion for me is that he doesn’t seem to want to save AM radio, but he wants to save the type of content typically broadcast on AM radio. The fact that it’s using AM frequencies seems entirely secondary-- in fact early in the article he brings up HD Radio (which is not AM) as a possible fix. Yet he’s also talking about all these technical issues relating to AM specifically, instead of focusing on his actual concern.
(He mentions that AM has to be turned down at night causing the loss of listeners, but somehow fails to realize that’s an argument against keeping AM radio around-- if everybody converted to FM, they wouldn’t lose listeners at night!)
So my conclusion: it’s a confused article written from a no-doubt also-confused press release from a politician who is confused.
There’s nothing technically inaccurate with the article.
AM radio signals can travel farther than FM signals.
AM radio is far more prone to static than FM.
Most AM stations have to reduce power or sign off after sundown to reduce interference.
AM reception is worse in cities than in rural areas, and is subject to interference by any number of electrical/electronic devices.
There is a push by AM stations to gain use of low-power FM translators. HD radio is currently not very popular on either FM or AM. It is less popular on AM, for reasons requiring a long explanation that aren’t relevant to the thrust of the story.
As for Mr. Pai’s motives, I haven’t a clue. According to his biography, he was appointed by Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate, and his previous experience in communications seems to be more connected with cellular phones than broadcasting.
This was regarding how newspaper journalists cover technology. It has been discussed here in GQ many many times. My topic was obviously on the technology. It’s in the hed.
Don’t read politics into places where there is none.
This is ass-hattery. I responded to it.
It is equally ass-hattery to overlook, while engaging in knee-jerk, aggressive, ignore-whatever-someone-else-is-saying “dialogue,” the fact that someone might be engaging in sarcasm.
And then you wind up with ass-hattery such as this:
See above. (Thanks for your post, though.)
::sigh::
::sigh::
But at least someone got to link Republican commentators with the KKK, irrelevantly and logically untenable, but it,s worth it, right?
I’m sure it’s ass-hattery to someone who assumed this article was about technology and wants to dismiss every other facet. As the technology can fairly be described as somewhere between mature and moribund, and has been for most of our adult lives, I suggest the good commissioner had other points on his agenda. I will stand behind every suggestion I made above and if I had to put $10 on the layout, it would go in the square “Serving Communications Megacorps,” because that’s what drives most political officials, elected or appointed, these days.
Wanna talk about vacuum tubes now?
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention two other problems; that there is no built-in AM radio capability for IPods and similar devices the way they have FM capability, and that many claim HD digital radio causes significant interference to existing analog AM stations.
Lets cool down.
This is all I needed to hear, or, what I think very strongly, for the future what should be the bulk of any post on tech in GQ.
And civilization has gone downhill ever since, right?
My biggest complaint about the loss of AM stations is that eventually it will be no longer be possible to receive a radio broadcast with a crystal set. The sheer magic inherent in a device where you can see every component’s internal makeup, and that operates with no external power, and yet plays music out of the ether is hard to beat.
How the heck do you explain a digital radio receiver to an 8 year old? Let alone have them build one? AM stations should be preserved as a critical educational resource 
Making a set with a galena crystal and cat’s whisker is the ultimate - no hidden magic.