REGINA - Those who know me well know that I am not only a heavy media consumer in general, but also a very heavy radio listener.
Because of my heavy preference for information and news, and especially sports, I have been a particular devotee of AM radio. That’s been the way it is for years — you tuned in to FM for the music, and AM for the spoken word stuff.
So imagine my horror when I read the stories a couple of weeks ago about how car manufacturers are planning to phase out AM from the car radios in their new models, and in particular their electric vehicle lines.
The excuse we are getting is that the electricity interferes with the AM. Right. From what I gather, what manufacturers really want to offer more “proprietary” services where they own the technology and can force you to pay to listen to the radio.
As a consumer, I’m obviously outraged by this prospect.
If you take a step back, however, and look at the landscape, the reality is that this potential move by the car manufacturers is reflective of a larger situation going on. The reality is AM radio looks like it finally might be on its way out.
I am sad to say this, because for years I have loved to tune in late at night to the signals of radio stations from far distant places, whose local signals in Chicago or San Antonio or San Francisco or wherever would bounce off the atmosphere and land on my radio dial here in frozen Canada. That was part of the excitement. Here’s some station in Denver or Salt Lake City or wherever, with the local weather and traffic report, and you’re picking up the same signal the locals are getting. And if the conditions were just right, you might even pick up signals from Mexico, or even Cuba.
It was awesome back in the old days. During baseball season, you could just turn the AM dial at night and hear the networks of countless Major League Baseball teams like the Twins, the Cubs, the Mariners, the Rockies or the Royals, among others. In fact, you can still do that; you don’t need a Sirius XM subscription. If you want to save money on satellite radio, just tune in to AM.
You could also listen to all-news stations like WBBM which boomed in from Chicago, or KNX from Los Angeles, or a multitude of talk stations. Late at night, I used to tune into Larry King when he had his Mutual radio show — there were plenty of stations carrying that show in those days.
These were the days before the internet, so if you wanted to tune in to radio stations from outside your local market, you had to tune in to AM because the FM signals didn’t travel as far. And if you wanted to tune in to countries around the world, you would tune in shortwave radio and signals such as the BBC World Service, Radio Nederland, Deutsche Welle and other services.
But times have changed, and in many ways things have gotten better. Thanks to the internet and your apps on your tablets, you can now tune into radio stations streaming online from anywhere in the world. You could get far more and far better programming than what your shortwave radio could ever offer.
That was what finally put the shortwave stations out to pasture. One by one, those stations disappeared from the shortwave dial, with some including the BBC shifting their efforts to online.
The way I see it, AM radio is heading to the same cliff that shortwave radio fell off of about a decade or so ago.
In other parts of the world, it’s already happening. Here’s an example: back in the mid-80s on a family trip to the United Kingdom, I turned the AM dial at night and found an American radio station with American sports programming.
It was Armed Forces Radio from a transmitter in West Germany, airing the U.S. college football bowl games. As someone who missed seeing American football on the local UK TV stations, this was a godsend.
Fast forward to 2023 and that same Armed Forces AM station is now gone. Kaput. They’ve shifted their signals entirely to FM and digital/online. And that’s happened to AM radio pretty much throughout continental Europe and even many parts of Asia.
Almost all the major European broadcasters have shifted to FM or to something called DAB - digital audio broadcasting. There are still holdouts like the UK and elsewhere where “medium-wave” is still going, but in general it's a dying medium.
I guess the real question to ask is why the shift away from AM hasn’t accelerated in North America the same way. Maybe it’s because large swaths of North America aren’t densely populated, so the powerful AM signals could get to those areas when FM couldn’t.
But the decline clearly is now on and you notice it any time you pull in a distant signal on the AM dial. Whenever my car radio picks up WBBM on 780 AM now from Chicago, I notice they no longer refer to themselves as “Newsradio 780.” Now, they call themselves “105.9 FM!”
If you tune in to the powerful 1160 signal from KSL in Salt Lake City, they now call themselves “Newsradio 102.7 FM,” If you manage to get the signal on 1070 from KNX Los Angeles, they're "97.1 FM."
That’s right, a lot of powerful AM stations have switched to FM signals. They seem to be keeping their AM transmitters on just for laughs.
For how much longer, you have to wonder. There are more and more stories about AM signals going silent. Just this year, down in my favourite city of Las Vegas, Audacy Radio sold off their AM transmitter site and shut down their powerful KDWN transmitter on 720 and their all-sports signal on 1140.
Those stations have now gone FM-only, not to mention available online. That’s the other thing: people can still tune in these distant stations online, anyway. So what good is an AM transmitter when the signal is clearer hooking up to the Wifi?
I shudder to think of the future, because AM is still my go-to on my car radio. Yes, the medium still has a lot of listeners -- for now. So maybe these powerful signals will stick around for a while. But if enough car companies give up on AM, it will speed up the decline and I'll be forced to listen to FM or pay for Sirius XM whether I want to or not.
As it stands, the decline of AM is starting to get noticeable in the programming, especially from the United States. Cost-cutting rules the roost, and local programming is getting shoved out so AM stations can air syndicated stuff like Coast to Coast AM late at night, or Dave Ramsey with his financial advice, not to mention a multitude of syndicated conservative talk shows.
I know folks like the late Rush Limbaugh liked to brag that conservative talk was what saved AM radio. The problem is there is now so much conservative talk on American AM stations that even the conservatives are sick of it.
You also have syndicated all-sports talk where the hosts beat the same topics into the ground over and over again. ("Who's better - LeBron or Michael?!") With legalization, there are even syndicated all-sports betting formats. (They killed an entire AM talk radio station in San Francisco to make room for this.)
Now in a sure sign the end times are coming, you have a ton of all-religious stations on AM. And there are now a ton of "all-Mexican" formats on AM -- IN THE UNITED STATES.
Seriously, what's next down there? "All-Canadian?"
Don’t get me started with what’s happening in Canada, where we saw entire all-sports AM radio stations blown out and closed, not to mention layoffs and programming cuts at other places. Many of the same folks who got thrown out of their AM radio jobs are now doing podcasts or live-steaming on internet platforms, helping bleed even more listeners away from AM.
You even have AM stations here in Canada that are mailing it in with all-comedy 24-7. I kid you not, this joke of a format is for real in Canada’s major cities like Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg, consisting of comedians’ standup routines replayed all day and night. It's a total waste of 50,000 watts of power that could be better used in your Tesla.
These are more than enough grievances to fill up an entire hour of “Bugs Day - The Hour of Rage.” Maybe even a second hour.
Anyway, put me down as an unhappy AM radio listener. Times are changing, but from this listener’s standpoint you have to wonder if it’s really for the better.
