3-minute read
You’re driving to the George Washington Bridge and worried about rush hour traffic into the city. What do you do?
Tune your radio to the up-to-the-minute traffic report on an AM station like WCBS or WINS.
You’re driving through the cold rain on the New York State Thruway and worried about it changing to snow or ice as you head north. What do you do?
Tune your radio to the up-to-the-minute weather report on one of those AM stations.
Or maybe you just want to forget all of the nasty news outside your car. You know what I do?
Tune my AM radio to the place where a new Jets quarterback seems to matter more than war, politics or grisly crime – sports talk radio, on the station that virtually invented it, WFAN.
But pretty soon, AM radio — which introduced the Beatles to America, gave us provocative talk show hosts like Don Imus and sports announcers like John “the …… Yankees win” Sterling — may be history.
New electric cars made by BMW, Porsche, Audi and Volvo, along with the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck and a Volkswagen SUV have already dropped AM radio because of what they say is electromagnetic interference of the frequency. Don’t be surprised if other carmakers follow.
After all, even though 47 million Americans listen to AM radio, that’s only about 20% of all radio listeners, according to a Nielsen Company media survey. And of those AM listeners, about one third are like me, over 65. That’s much older than most FM listeners, whose median age is 46, according to Edison Research. (FM apparently isn’t affected by the electro-magnetic interference of electric engines).
You don’t have to a math genius to know that as America’s population ages, and the number of electric vehicles increases — at a rate of 185% since 2020 in Orange County and about 170% in Putnam and Rockland, according to the Atlas Public Policy research firm — AM radio in cars could soon go the way of two other things that once were staples of many new cars, like our Subarus — cassette and compact disc players.
And one more human connection — a voice to inform, soothe or warn — may vanish in this increasingly impersonal world, where handwritten letters, cursive writing and a real person who answers the phone seem like ancient history.
Sure, some AM stations, like WFAN, are simulcast on FM. But FM broadcast range is tiny — about 30-40 miles — compared to an AM station, which can be heard hundreds of miles away, depending on signal strength and terrain. And yes, you can stream AM stations on your smartphone. But that means doing something that’s downright dangerous while you’re driving — fiddling with your phone, which causes some 1.5 million accidents per year, according to the National Safety Council, including about 400 deaths per year from texting and driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
And besides, using a smart phone (without your hands, of course) just isn’t the same as simply pressing a button and hearing another real person who seems like a knowledgeable companion telling you about an alternate route to avoid traffic or when — and where — that rain will change to snow.
Surely, the same car makers who can create cars that don’t need gas — or even drivers — can figure out how to keep static free AM radio on our dashboards to turn to for traffic, weather, the Yankees or Mets and for that disappearing human connection we all crave.
Steve Israel, a longtime editor and columnist at the Times Herald-Record in Orange County, New York, can be reached at steveisrael53@outlook.com.
