Senator Ted Cruz and House Speaker Mike Johnson join progressives in a lobbying battle to force car makers to keep AM radio.
Ted Cruz and Mike Johnson Join Progressives to Save AM Radio
Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz, who supposedly want little government regulation, show their true colors in an Effort to Save AM Radio.
Tesla, Volvo, and BMW are among the companies that have already stopped providing AM tuners in some models. Last year Ford said it would join them—until CEO Jim Farley reversed course “after speaking with policy leaders.”
The legislation has united lawmakers who ordinarily want nothing to do with one another. Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Ed Markey (D., Mass.) are leading the Senate effort, and on the House side, Speaker Mike Johnson—himself a former conservative talk radio host in Louisiana—and progressive “squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are among about 200 co-sponsors.
“I would challenge anyone to find any issue where Bernie Sanders and heavy hitters on the right are co-sponsors. It doesn’t exist,” said Curtis LeGeyt, president of the National Association of Broadcasters.
A spring 2023 Nielsen survey, the most recent one available, showed that AM radio reaches about 78 million Americans every month. That is down from nearly 107 million in the spring of 2016, one of the earliest periods for which Nielsen has data.
The medium has long been in decline. FM radio audiences surpassed those on AM in the late 1970s, and consumers now have even more choices with satellite radio and internet podcasts.
Automakers say the rise of electric vehicles is driving the shift away from AM, because onboard electronics create interference with AM radio signals—a phenomenon that “makes the already fuzzy analog AM radio frequency basically unlistenable,” according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a car-industry trade group. Shielding cables and components to reduce interference would cost carmakers $3.8 billion over seven years, the group estimates.
Uni-Party Strikes Again
The Uni-party bashers will be laughing their heads off over this. Supposedly AM radio is a safety feature, but who is listening?
OK 78 million, mostly boomers. How many of them have cell phones capable of receiving an alert? About 100 percent?
If this ridiculous bill passes, it will be nearly impossible to kill it.
Limited Government Irony
Hoot of the Day
Senator Ted Cruz and House Speaker Mike Johnson, the latter a former conservative talk radio host, join forces with progressive “squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan on more forced government mandates.
I Stand With Rand
I stand with Rand although I am a big beneficiary of AM radio.
I am on Coast-to-Coast AM syndicated Radio in every major market in the country, live every Wednesday, shortly after Midnight Central for a brief economic update with George Noory. If you are interested hearing me, click on the above link and find a station.
I have been doing Wednesdays for years and have been a regular guest several times a month since 2006. Once or twice a year, I am on for several hours taking live questions on the economy for 2-3 hours.
I enjoy being on Coast-to-Coast with Noory as his go-to economic straight guy,
But the free market, not government should decide this issue. If enough customers demand AM radio, car makers will provide it or lose customers to a competitor who does.
That is the correct stance.
Reflections on Limited Government
Debt Blasts Past $34 Trillion
National debt is over $34 trillion because we don’t have limited government. Republicans show their true colors every yean in budget negotiations.
I have written about this frequently. House Speaker Mike Johnson has caved in time and time again, as expected in this corner. Johnson is worse than Kevin McCarthy.
Mike Johnson Is the New Kevin McCarthy
For discussion, please see Mike Johnson Is the New (But Not Improved) Kevin McCarthy
The McCarthy proposal would have extended government funding through Oct. 31, but at a $1.471 trillion annual rate, down from $1.6 trillion in fiscal 2023. And it included funds for the border.
We are now up to $1.6+++ trillion under Speaker Mike Johnson and that does not include Ukraine, Israel, or the border.
Nor does it include the full ramifications of child tax credits that now appear to cost an average of $150 billion a year. The estimate yesterday was $78 billion a year for the entire deal.
How the hell is it that Democrats can continually run circles around and run ramrod over the Republicans in every budget negotiation?
“More of This for More of That” no longer suffices as an explanation. Republicans bargain for “Bits of This in Return for Tons of That“.
It’s fitting that Johnson is now fighting for more government regulation to save AM radio. Please wake me up when he does something right.
It’s bound to happen sooner or later and I don’t want to miss it.
All electric vehicle electronics interfere with AM radio?
Another reason an all electric vehicle is not on my shopping list.
They also totally negate the buggy whip.
Radio on all bands was crap when I stopped listening to it 20 years ago. It will die with the boomers.
Long wave is superior for long distance signal. I suspect an emergency broadcast is better on AM. But in reality, the US Government has given up any semblance of citizen safety anyway. Their disaster response times are laughable. They rely too much on bloated agencies like Red Cross. FEMA is always out of money in a hot second. Look a Katrina. That is an impeachable offense and neoCons still think Bush 2 is a great moderate President.
Keeping am radio is very cheap, at most a few dollars
AM radio is the most “RADIO FREE AMERICA” there is; and that is not saying much. If it were not for Coast to Coast radio on AM I would have never heard of Mish. My introduction to Miish was right before the great recession and his analysis was helpful.
What if most are fighting the wrong fight? The fight, or ask, perhaps should be: Why the heck is the Government dictating anything, involving free choice and from free markets, to any American Citizen or Corporation?
Bonus Question: Why is our Government, freely spending our money via taxation, with zero expectation of any consent of the taxpayers who will be asked to pay for it later?
I thought some of the Government’s main and primary objective’s, were to protect (using basic public rule of law), serve (using public service through police and judicial), and educate (using a public school system)?
Did the law and rules change recently? Last I knew, if it doesn’t work, people don’t buy it. If it’s forced upon you, people resist it. If it’s not ready to be widely used in the marketplace, then people won’t want it. If it gets too complicated, people won’t even look at it.
Last I heard, it was called the free market…
link to democrats-appropriations.house.gov
It was all about state’s rights, until suddenly it wasn’t.
Modern conservatism is authoritarianism wrapped in evangelicalism. They’ll tell you what to do, and if you don’t like it, you’re the devil.
The A.M. radio subject is something I wake up to and think about – – every 50 years. THIS is what they find important while the USA falls apart at the seams?
It’s just more overt tampering with the free market and overriding customer demand. Congress’ fuel economy standards already eliminated sedans and caused the entire auto manufacturing industry to switch over to SUVs and crossover vehicles to circumvent those regulations.
I suppose it could be referred to as, throwing the dogs off of the stench, but I don’t want to judge…
I guess they will do whatever they want with new cars. I don’t buy or use them anyway. A lot of them have so much RF noise in them that AM won’t work.
I like AM and will always have mine with me. AM is good for travelers because you can get local traffic and weather conditions as you go. I guess many folks don’t know or care about that either. Big gov and cartels don’t like AM and SW anyway.
I use my Cell phone for weather alerts. I listened the last time to A.M. in 1962.
You can get weather and traffic instantly on your phone. I don’t understand why all the stations still do traffic, the reports are useless.
It’s illegal to use your phone while driving. You are supposed to be driving, not fiddling with a phone.
EVERY legal radio station is part of the emergency broadcast system. There is no absolute to reason to mandate car radios have AM receivers when FM receivers are still in cars to receive emergency messages. And just because a car has AM/FM radio doe not mean the driver is listening to them. The argument AM is needed for emergencies falls flat.
In a real disaster AM radio could reach the whole country at night with only 4 or 5 transmitters. It could save the US.
Who gives a shit about saving America…from what: A STORM FRONT? An ICE storm. HOT WEATHER. COLD weather? WET CONDITIONS? The Government cannot save us with Warnings.
C’mon Doug, the Government saved us with the warning that cigarettes would caus, er wait a sec, I meant the warning about using a condom because you could get, um… seriously that message, um commercial, no serious warning about driving and drinking and the penalties and all, yeah didn’t that wor… oh, never mind.
Or:
Emergency use? Why not require everyone over some age to carry an old fashion pager? To be fair, government should provide the pagers and pay for the transmitters. For free!
Or:
At the same time as requiring car “entertainment” systems to include AM, how about requiring that they include an open connector that can be used to provide audio and to control the entertainment system functions? Heck, even require the car to provide a “standard” physical location for 3rd party add-ons.
Let’s all add a dedicated device we may never use instead of adding the functionality to something that already exists. That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Emergency use? Forget cars. Why not mandate that all cell phones receive AM? (Congressional mandates don’t need to bother with electronic reality any more than they need to bother with economic reality, do they?)
I believe cell phones have an emergency warning feature.
Yes they do.
Let’s mandate that every BICYCLE in America have an A.M. Radio!
Cell phones and FM are line of sight. They are largely useless in the mountains. AM does much better in the mountains and at night travels hundreds of mile by skipping off the ionosphere.
what we have here is cheapskate EV makers who want a free hand to spew EM interference about the place from their cheesy motor controllers and not shield it even though FCC rules say otherwise.
There’s a huge installed base of short range traffic warning AM radios all over the country. The cost and time necessary to replace them is part of what’s driving the issue.
Tough choice but I’ll trust the government over car manufacturers in doing good things while naive fools like Mish still shovel out free market silliness which is as real as Linus’s Great Bumpkin
Radio: I read an article in the 1970s that FM radio was going nowhere as a business until Congress passed a law requiring every car to have an FM receiver. My how the situation has evolved since then!
Last year I made two trips from TX to FL and back. At least once each trip I tried to find an AM station to listen to while driving, and failed. There was nothing I could pick up. I know in two big cities that there is at least one ‘blowtorch’ AM station. How long that lasts I don’t know.
The National Budget: I am reaching the conclusion that the Executive and Congress will never be fiscally responsible, unless compelled to by the market. See Liz Truss 2022 as maybe an example. And even then, maybe not. Argentina can tell us a lot about how long a nation can have foul finances and keep going.
You must have not looked hard, wwl-870am covers the Gulf south from east Texas to the panhandle of Florida and has for over a hundred years.
The new GOP isn’t about small government anymore. It’s about legislating conservative Christian values. The old GOP died when Trump took over. Now it’s about pro-life, anti-lgbtq, and anti-immigration accept from European Christians.
Damn, skippy, Jon! The old RINOs are dead. Most of your other dribble is garbage.
Every real conservative respects the separation of church & state. Roe vs Wade was flawed and should have never been put into law. Abortion is a state’s right health issue. Christians are not anti-LGBTQ, but we’re against pushing the indoctrination of kids in K-12. Moreover, we’re against trans men trampling all over the rights of biological women, especially in sports. And isn’t it funny how 99% of all European Christians who immigrate to the US do so legally? What’s happening at the southern border is a flat-out invasion. It’s that simple. No other explanation is valid.
Nice attempt at a very lame troll post.
How many “real conservatives” are there, though? Maybe you aren’t as far from agreeing with him as you suspect.
We’ve now got dead Americans at the hands of Iran. We’ve got 100s of thousands dying each year from drugs pouring across the border along with millions of illegals. And, Congress is dickering about whether or not to ditch AM radios from cars.
Once again, it’s a clown show in DC.
Talk about apples and oranges. No one asked Americans to be in MENA killing the locals and no one forces Americans to consume drugs.
Mish, I agree that’s a last vestige of the old boomers. Pretty soon the kids will be flying on their I-phones like George Jetson on a flying carpet having virtual sex with Taylor S.
LMAO!! God that was funny..
What they really should be fighting is the draconian and byzantine mileage standards that are forcing carmakers to put in stupid stuff like ASS (Automatic Stop Start that shuts your car off when you stop). And I say byzantine as the larger the wheelbase, the lower the mileage requirements, which is why we can’t have small trucks anymore.
I flipping hate that feature. It’s awful for your car. Most engine wear occurs on start-up so this feature increases engine wear. It’s also hard on the starter (more cycles), the battery, and charging system. The increase in fuel economy from this feature for the average person is negligible. I turn it off each time I start up my car. I hate that it can’t be permanently disabled.
Does this help you?
link to autostopeliminator.com
I havent listened to AM for a really long time even though my Tesla has it available. There is a time old technology to go.
Added Tweet to my post
link to x.com
My faith in politics has been restored.
This seems to me somebody important wants the AM band width.
Right leaning talk radio?
This sounds like lawmakers don’t want to eliminate choices and some security considerations/redundance/resiliency for customers on the RF spectrum that technology and the free market have already decided aren’t worth it. Saving Amtrak hasn’t really benefited the nation either; we should probably sunset this.
We have war, we have an open border, we’re potentially facing civil disunion, we have a dysfunctional system of public education, and bizarre efforts to redefine gender — and now ‘our’ Congress critters are wringing their hands over the fate of AM radios in cars?
I give up….
“…until CEO Jim Farley reversed course “after speaking with policy leaders.”
”
Yep: That’s how corporate decision are made in full-throttle totalitarian dystopias.
He at least understands who is backstopping his paycheck. Which is more than can be said for 99.99% of the leeching classes by now.
AM radio has much more range than FM which is why it is used by the National Public Warning System that is there to warn you if nuclear war breaks out. Honestly, that is why it was set up. AM radio has much more range than FM which is why it is used by the National Public Warning System. Is it still worthwhile? That is not for the market to decide. If the market was the decider, atomic bombs would be sold in stores.
Unfortunately the longer range doesn’t make it financially viable to stay on the air in non-emergency times. This bill from Congress will accomplish nothing.
I don’t think this is to save the AM market per sei. I think it is to make sure that broadcasting is still possible in an emergency to reach the maximum number of people especially if the internet is not available. An AM transmitter doesn’t cost much and there are plenty in storage so the benefits outweigh the drawbacks if an emergency occurs. Having a backup that doesn’t rely on the internet reminds me of Terminator 3. (Just kidding AI Sir)
Few people have AM radios at home. If they depend on their cars in a nuclear war, then that is going to go south as soon as the electricity and/or gas run out.
I think it depends on where you live.
In remote cottage country an AM radio is often the only way you get music (yes, Sirius is possible but not everyone wants paid radio) and more importantly any emergency updates. Same in Florida during hurricane season, people always tend to have a radio (or old Ghetto blaster) around in case the power goes out and you need to hear emergency broadcasting.
If they’d stop integrating the operations of the climate control with the radio, we could go back to installing our own radios! But I think this is just another revenue stream for the manufactures. Now, if your radio bonks out, a $200 replacement from Amazon won’t do, you need to buy the $1200 stock radio.
The radio in my daughter’s 2009 Corolla bonked out. We put in a $200 stereo from Amazon and not only did it look better, have a full touch screen, navigation, wireless Apple and Google car play, hands free calling, but it also came with a backup camera! The only wire I had to splice was to get power to the backup camera. But sadly it did not have AM. But do you think my daughter ever listens to AM? She doesn’t even use the FM! You can’t do that today, although I suppose eventually aftermarket radios will do climate control too.
But I think AM radio is going away. There is no reason not to move the current AM license holders to FM (other than they would need new transmitters). The only advantage to AM is that it carries further, but most AM stations have digital streams now anyway, with much higher sound quality than their AM transmissions. It’s the same sort of thing as how CD’s killed the LP, MP3 killed the CD, and the internet killed Ham.
They can mandate AM receivers in cars, but if no one is tuning in, how long will the transmitters last? What are they going to do, mandate those too? And then follow up by mandating we listen?
Other than for weather and traffic, I can’t remember the last time I tuned into AM. It’s inferior for music, and I’m paying for ad free Spotify, so why wouldn’t I just listen to that? I have 2 cars with Sirius, and I never signed up once the free trial ended because again why would I? I have Spotify already. I’m not even sure why I still have cable other than it bundles cheap with the internet. I’ve already converted the dumb TV’s I still have with FireTV.
This is just another political handout to a dying industry. The money could be better spent elsewhere.
The problem with killing the AM band is that the FM band in large cities is pretty saturated so there won’t be enough bands free to absorb all the AM bands.
I do agree with you 100% that car manufacturers SHOULD NOT be allowed to integrate the climate control into the radio etc. The radio should be a separate item that can be replaced like on your daughters 2009 Corolla. I’d like to replace the one my car because I still like to listen to my CD’s and new cars no longer have CD players but I can’t because it’s so wired into the infotainment system.
Q1. Is Government forcing car Manufacturers to abandon GV’s?
A1. Yes
Case Closed!
This article goes into the debate between the two sides.
One pro argument is that AM is better in emergencies as it can reach larger areas including ones that dont have a lot of infrastructure.
One against argument is that the large batteries in EVs interfere with AM radio
The Crucial Role of AM Radio in Emergency Communication and the Debate Surrounding its Inclusion in Electric Vehicles (substack.com)
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I don’t understand what kind of emergency this would work for. Alien invasion? Nuclear attack?
And who is going to be listening if few have an AM radio?
Requiring it on the car radio doesn’t make the AM band or its stations financially viable. I started my career on AM in 1980, still at it in 2024. We decommissioned and took my AM station off the air permanently in October ’23. (Moved to full FM and streaming online) Many challenges here – 1) Environmental electrical noise from all the switching power supplies and computers left unfiltered by the FCC. 2) Changing demographics…few under the age of 50 even know about AM radio, Congress is pissing up a rope on this issue. There are some financially viable AM stations but it’s been dying since I was a kid in high school in the 1970’s. You’ll see a huge exiting of AM stations in the coming years as economic realities take hold. I’m nostalgic for the band but nostalgia doesn’t pay the bills.