There’s a long list of things that used to be part of and even important in my life that are not any longer. Ask kids today to make a call on a rotary telephone and try not to laugh when they push their finger down on the numbers in the holes and nothing happens or try not to cringe when after putting a record on a turntable they press the phonograph needle into it. I’ve witnessed both of these.
Heraclitus figured out over two-and-a-half millennia ago that “the only constant in life is change” but that doesn’t mean we accept it. Jo asks me why I insist on keeping the several hundred CDs we have when they’ve all been embedded in our computers. I tell her I worry that someday we might need to use them again even though the last couple of Macs we’ve bought no longer have a slot to insert CDs nor do our cars.
VHS tapes? I’ve got a shelf of them. And DVDs? Three shelves!
Once a year I find a phone book in our mailbox. I throw out the one from the year before and keep the new one. I can’t remember the last time I used any of them.
VHS tapes and CDs and DVDs collect dust on their shelves and unlike books, they become indicators of one’s age more than one’s interests. Time marches on and we either get in line and march with it or we stop and wave goodbye and let the parade move on without us.
And then there’s radio. When our younger grandson turned six I bought him a pocket size transistor radio. We were both born on St. Patrick’s Day but 69 years apart. He was fascinated by mine— I have three which I keep in case of emergency — and how you could pull out its antenna and turn its dials to instantly and randomly listen to oldies music, talk of sports, politics and the gospel.
A couple months later Harvey heard a commercial on his radio…
Harvey: “Mom, there’s a store in Rockland that has everything you need for Father’s Day!”
And yes, Mom and Harvey went there and I don’t know what they got but was told it was everything they needed for Father’s Day.
I grew up in the 1950s listening to AM radio. I had a Zenith Royal 700 All Transistor model that had a leather case and used 6 C cell batteries. It must have been a birthday present and a very special one. I’ve discovered that adjusting for inflation the $70 it cost in 1959 is equivalent to about $750 today.
I didn’t have any awareness at the time that commercial radio broadcasting in America was barely 30 years old and had dramatically changed the way we received information and entertainment. I knew the call letters of AM stations near: WHUM, WEEU, WRAW —and far: WMEX, WKBW, KMOX —as well as the names of the disc jockeys: Dick Biondi, Hy Lit and Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg.
When I went off to prep school I couldn’t have a radio but figured out that if I always scheduled my mandatory monthly haircut for 8 p.m., I would be able to hear the Theme from Studio X on WOR, the station the school’s barber always listened to. I still love that melody.
In college I had a clock radio and used its alarm function set to radio until one morning it woke me up with an announcement that the temperature in Hanover, New Hampshire was below zero. I switched to the buzzer alarm after that and tried not to schedule any of my classes to begin before 10 a.m.
Maybe you’ve figured out the cartoon by now and are asking yourself why I’m apparently writing an obituary to AM radio. It’s because AM radio, particularly in cars, may be well on the way to be buried for eternity. Not completely yet, after all there are nearly 4,500 AM radio stations in the United States and they serve an important and constant role for others unlike me who merely wax nostalgic.
In rural parts of America and especially areas with an older demographic AM radio can provide a life saving service. It’s the source for warnings and information about severe weather and natural disaster. In fact the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Public Warning System —through which FEMA delivers critical safety alerts to the public —operates through broadcast AM radio stations.
I’ve driven across our country several times and by doing so I learned that AM radio has niche audiences for whom it is vital— farmers get crop reports, indigenous people and ethnic minorities get to hear their own voices. With the ongoing demise of local newspapers AM radio stations are now often a crucial remaining binding keeping communities together.
So, why is the National Association of Broadcasters raising an alarm?
Turns out there is a problem. As EVs are increasingly becoming the cars we are encouraged to buy, automakers want to say bye bye to the AM radio band being provided in them. Electric vehicles produce electromagnetic interference that distorts an AM signal in EVs causing it to hum and be unpleasant to listen to. Providing a decent AM band with more shielding from the rest of an EV’s electronics could solve the problem but would increase the production cost of the vehicle. So, the quick fix is no fix; jettison the AM band and problem solved .
Last year a number of carmakers— BMW, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen, Volvo, Porsche and Mercedes —decided that an AM radio band will no longer be a standard feature of the radios they install in their cars. Ford was going to join this group but changed its mind for now. There’s a bipartisan bill actually before Congress to stop this from happening but even when support comes from both sides of the aisle, there apparently isn’t enough of it to get a bill passed.
For sure cars will still have FM reception but as you may already be aware the FM signal, which is of considerably better quality than AM, only travels about 40 miles. I remember while driving one night in Tucson picking up WCAU, an AM station in Philadelphia 2300 miles away.
Jo and I bought a new car a year ago. We don’t listen to AM and probably won’t unless there is an emergency and it becomes our only option— hence my emergency transistor radio stash —but we do listen to FM and now we also have something called Apple CarPlay. It allows us to access radio stations that stream their broadcasts over the internet by connecting our iPhones to a good cell phone signal— if it’s a bad one we hear nothing.
CarPlay hasn’t been that easy to learn. I brought our car to the dealership from which I bought it twice for tutorials and still don’t have the effortless hang of using it.
Yes, time marches on and I am not a Luddite but I confess that I like knobs and dials. I miss them! And I guess what I really miss is the simplicity they represented. Can’t turn back the clock and I’m not able to as easily as I used to anyway. All mine are digital.