You’re driving to the George Washington Bridge and worried about rush hour traffic in the city. What are you doing?
Tune your radio to the updated traffic report on an AM station like WCBS or WINS.
You’re driving through the cold rain on the New York State Highway and you’re worried it will turn to snow or ice as you head north. What are you doing?
Tune your radio to the updated weather report on one of these AM stations.
Or maybe you just want to forget all the unpleasant news outside your car. do you know what i do
Tune into my AM radio at the place where a new Jets quarterback seems to matter more than war, politics or gruesome crime: sports talk radio, on the station that practically invented it, WFAN.
But before long, AM radio, which introduced the Beatles to America, gave us provocative talk show hosts like Don Imus and sportscasters like John “the … Yankees win” Sterling – it 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 ditched AM radio for what they say is electromagnetic frequency interference. Don’t be surprised if other automakers follow suit.
After all, while 47 million Americans listen to AM radio, that’s only about 20 percent of all radio listeners, according to a Nielsen Company media survey. And of those AM listeners, about a third are like me, over 65. That’s much older than most FM listeners, whose average age is 46, according to Edison Research. (FM is apparently unaffected by electromagnetic interference from electric motors.)
It doesn’t take a math genius to figure that out as America’s population ages and the number of electric vehicles increases, at a rate of 185% from 2020 in Orange County and about 170% in Putnam and Rockland, according to the Public Atlas. Policy Research Firm: AM radio in cars could soon go the way of two other things that used to be staples of many new cars, like our Subarus: cassette players and compact discs.
And one more human connection, a voice to inform, calm or warn, can disappear in this increasingly impersonal world, where handwritten letters, cursive writing and a real person answering the phone seem like ancient history.
Of course, some AM stations, like WFAN, simulcast on FM. But the broadcast range of FM is small (30 to 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 to your smartphone. But that means doing something that’s downright dangerous while driving: fiddling with your phone, which causes about 1.5 million crashes a year, according to the National Safety Council, including about 400 deaths a year from texting of text and driving, according to the National. Road safety administration.
And besides, using a smartphone (hands-free, of course) is not the same as pressing a button and listening to another real person who looks like a well-informed colleague tell you about an alternative route to avoid the traffic or when, and where — that rain will turn to snow.
Surely the same automakers that can create cars that don’t need gas, or even drivers, can figure out how to keep AM radio static-free on our dashboards to check traffic, weather, the Yankees, or the Mets and to disappear. human connection we all crave.
Steve Israel, longtime editor and columnist for the Times Herald-Record in Orange County, New York, can be reached at steveisrael53@outlook.com.
