maroon barchetta said:
Breaking news doesn't come thru well on a downloaded podcast.
Does pretty well on AM radio.
Same for weather alerts.
Alerts do not come through a podcast but they do come through your phone if you set it up. I get weather alerts much faster on my phone than anywhere else. I am also setup to get both weather and breaking news alerts for my home address and also based on my location.
Most of us have our phones with us all the time. For many of us, our phones automatically sync to our cars via Bluetooth once we get in.
I get the nostalgia of AM radio. I grew up in a family of baseball fanatics. The AM radio was the king of baseball before cable and the MLB network.
We used to joke that no matter where you were in the United States at night, you could always get a country station, a Spanish radio station, and a message from the mothership in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Now I AM radio is dominated by talk radio whether it's sports, political, or otherwise.
I don't think the content that is on AM radio is going to go anywhere. It just might move to a different format such as live streaming over an app or the web. That seems much cheaper than converting to FM.
Plus, old cars came with terrible stock stereo systems. Didn't make a whole lot of difference with AM radio. Now every car comes with a decent sound system..... and power windows.
I don't think this will happen quickly. Plus some small stations are AM only and a rule change would destroy the business. I don't think anybody wants that.