Franlab is great in her love of radio generously expressed through her YouTube visits with those of us who know what she's talking about. If there's one fact that makes the AM radio situation not especially hurried, it's the fact that there's no big corporate interest in taking over the band for some greedy purpose. Rather, it appears the medium wave band will be blighted, abandoned, turned vacant, and perhaps left to scroungers like the part 15 squatters who will enter the buzzes and crackles with friendly playlists like tiny candles in a disaster zone. Count me in.
Pitifully Sad indeed about the state of AM radio. All of the daytime only AM stations here are no longer on the air. There are a couple fulltime AM stations that are silent under Temporary authority from the FCC, which the license usually ends up cancelled and never return to the air.
But they all can't go to FM without widening the band to something like 85 - 108 which most receivers go to or even lower like 75 -108 as Japan and some other countries and easy enough for the radios to adopt the expanded band like the AM band when they expanded that.
In some countries in Europe the band is being turned over to low power broadcasting, around 100 watts maximum power .