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Congress wants to force AM into every new car for emergency alerts.
The fight over the future of AM radio got a little more heated this week as organizations representing the auto and technology industries told Congress that its plan to mandate this mode of radio wave reception is poorly conceived and will hinder progress.
AM radio has seen almost every other in-car entertainment option come and go—vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs—and it might predate just about everything other than playing "I Spy," but time is catching up with this old broadcast technology. It is starting to get left behind as new models—many of which are electric vehicles—drive off into the sunset, streaming their audio instead of modulating its amplitude.
[...] "As more and more Americans adopt electric vehicles, we must ensure that they are equipped with AM radio. AM radio is—and will remain—an essential communications channel for emergency alerts and for disseminating news and other important information to residents of our district and communities across our country. I am proud to co-lead this bipartisan legislation which would ensure that EVs continue to be equipped with this basic but critical capability," said Rep. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), another co-sponsor.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 24 2023, @01:16PM (3 children)
When he says:
What he technically means can be found at this link:
https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/travelers-information-stations-search [fcc.gov]
which amounts to governments (mostly parks and DOT but technically any govt) can get cheap and easy licenses for 10 watt AM broadcast stations for short range stuff. Perhaps some of you have seen signs like "tune to 1710 to hear detour instructions" or whatever.
What he means in practice is AM broadcast licenses sell for "a million bucks" it varies widely check out radiotvdeals.com if you're bored. So you invest "a million bucks" then pay it off "somewhat over $100/hr" to people willing to rent it. A church service, perhaps. Or sell ad space on your own programs or ad inserts into syndicated programs. The numbers are assuming about "a million residents" and it scales pretty linear. Yes this does mean you can easily buy a "farm country" station for about the cost of a house but that's a risky business because the numbers involved are so low.
All the AM broadcasters have some level of daydream about covering their secured exposure limited transmitter footprint with solar panels; I'm pretty sure smaller market transmitters can be net electrical producers during the day and MAYBE run a net electrical profit depending on location, legal stuff, etc. Of course the best think financially to do with 10 KW of solar power laying around might be to sell it to the grid or might be to transmit it, depends entirely on interconnection agreements and how much you can demand from ad sales.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Wednesday May 24 2023, @01:18PM (2 children)
Oh well for fucks sakes
All I can say is it used to work when I made the bookmark a long time ago.
But, yeah, the service still exists even if the FCC webservers are inop.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 24 2023, @02:46PM (1 child)
https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/General_Menu_Reports/engineering_search.cfm?accessible=NO&wild_select=on [fcc.gov]
?
Flaky servers seem to be the order of the day for me. My primary focus at work is on a server that went inoperative 48 hours ago, no word from anyone on when it will be back. And I'm supposed to be developing an app that depends on this server for our people to get access in the field, around the world...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 24 2023, @10:37PM
Is your flaky server behind an Asus router?