This info as of July 2025.
I'm all for it (obviously) but there ought to be some campaign to improve the AM programming so people would be more inclined to tune in.
... Which in turn would incite better advertising sponsors, thus strengthen the stations.
@richpowers Why does younger generations all listen to FM? Because FM programming caters to millennials and gen Z. Put synthesized pop or hip hop on AM and they will listen.
But the car makers don't want you to have free over the air radio when they can make you pay for the other stuff like streaming apps, pod casts(don't even know what that is) or HD which doesn't have the range like analog over the air. Everyone driving Teslas don't seem to care. Their excuse of noise from the electric motor is BS, Kia and Hyundai for example have regular AM in their electric cars and they work fine. We should have access to freedom of the airwaves. I hope it passes and Trump does one good thing....signs it.
The biggest myth surround AM is the claim that it's for talk only, and that music doesn't sound great.
I used to listen to a sports talk station on AM (mainly for their morning show hosts), but they would occasionally play music, and it sounded great, almost as good as FM. They obviously had great sound engineering.
The other sports talk station in the area even sounded bad with speech, never mind music. Their sound engineering...meh.
My Talking House, which isn't the greatest sounding transmitter around (the Rangemaster and ProCaster, both of which I've owned, blow it away), sounds pretty decent on a good GE Super Radio clone I own.
AM radio, even for music, can sound good, on good radios, and with decent sound processing (and a good transmitter). There's no excuse to let it go just because of how it sounds.
People don't consider that prior to the 1990s and back to it's heyday in the golden age of radio, the swing era, and rock and roll, AM was music, great DJs, and sounded good because the receivers unlike today were much better and didn't constrict the bandwidth. Only a few now, a few Sangeans, Ccrane EP pro, GE super and a Carver tuner, actually make AM performance a priority. They could make car radios sound much better too as they also suffer from the same thing.
It's the corporations that own the stations that say it's not for music and back to my beginning of this post, it always was before.
If Kia and Hyundai do it and I was at the dealer and asked for a demo in one of the electric cars so I could hear how the AM sounded, why can't the others?
But even if they played music it would be geared to younger generations, not me anymore.
The only commercial station that plays music for me sometimes at least is Zoomer 740 here in Toronto with Ziggy's show 11pm to 1am where they play more obscure stuff like blues from the 1930s to 50s and Sunday night swing/big band, and OTR's from 10 to 11pm weekdays. The rest of the time they sound like an FM pop station but even though they still play music on AM they constantly say get us on HD, smart speaker(don't know what that is)
or streams. They encourage you to not listen on AM radio and get paid subscriptions. The car makers say you can listen to AM radio via streams.
Last year there was some guy planning on buying a new car and the discussion is about which ones have best AM reception. https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/new-car-radios-for-am-dxing.769746/
In my memories, AM reception was always excellent when played in the car.. back when I was growing up.
@richpowers Car radios have always been better than any home or portables AM or FM for reception of week signals.
Presumably due to their outdoor reception antenna
Plus sensitivities and selectivity much better. Tuned RF amps and the like. The car could be anywhere but you still want reception. That's why with part 15 the car is the best measure of your range.
I wonder what Canada will do if the USA brings in the AM for all cars? Maybe we will just get that as a bonus as the auto makers will just include it for both countries.
Plus sensitivities and selectivity much better. Tuned RF amps and the like. The car could be anywhere but you still want reception. That's why with part 15 the car is the best measure of your range.
I wonder what Canada will do if the USA brings in the AM for all cars? Maybe we will just get that as a bonus as the auto makers will just include it for both countries.
But is AM sensitivity and selectivity really much better in today's cars? I can understand how it probably was once upon a time, but now? Obviously auto manufactured dont care anymore
As for Canada, the proposition alone had already affected Ford's decision to keep AM years ago, otherwise all recent Ford's in both Canada and the U.S. would already have no AM radios in them today:
https://radioinfo.com.au/news/the-am-for-every-vehicle-act-changes-fords-mind /
26 May 2023 · News
"Ford has backtracked on the decision to remove AM from all 2024 American and Canadian-made vehicles this week, being swayed by the introduction of the AM for Every Vehicle Act in America .."
On a related matter, and more recent; is the 25 per cent tariffs on "certain automobile parts".. I wonder if that includes radios?!? And something about loopholes relating only "to the value of the non-U.S. content in automobiles and auto parts". I have no idea what "non-U.S. content" in a car supposed to signify (nor care) but just figured it's worth mention:
Canada announces entry into force of countermeasures against auto imports from the United States
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/04/canad85a-announces-entry-into-force-of-countermeasures-against-auto-imports-from-the-united-states.html
• On April 3, U.S. tariffs of 25 per cent on Canadian automobiles came into effect, targeting the auto industry and the more than 500,000 Canadians this industry supports across the country.• The U.S. also intends to apply 25 per cent tariffs on certain automobile parts on May 3. Under the U.S. tariffs certain exclusions linked to U.S. content may be available, specifically the application of the 25 per cent tariff only to the value of the non-U.S. content in automobiles and auto parts that qualify for preferential tariff treatment under CUSMA.