{"id":242,"date":"2013-09-09T13:03:42","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T13:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave0.nfshost.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/09\/09\/destroying-am-radio-to-save-it\/"},"modified":"2013-09-09T13:03:42","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T13:03:42","slug":"destroying-am-radio-to-save-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2013\/09\/destroying-am-radio-to-save-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Destroying AM Radio to Save It"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Quest to Save AM Before It\u2019s Lost in the Static – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\nThe digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasem\u2019s Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series. Long surpassed by FM and more recently cast aside by satellite radio and Pandora, AM is now under siege from a new threat: rising interference from smartphones and consumer electronics that reduce many AM stations to little more than static. Its audience has sunk to historical lows.
\nBut at least one man in Washington is tuning in.
\nAjit Pai, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, is on a personal if quixotic quest to save AM. After a little more than a year in the job, he is urging the F.C.C. to undertake an overhaul of AM radio, which he calls \u201cthe audible core of our national culture.\u201d He sees AM \u2014 largely the realm of local news, sports, conservative talk and religious broadcasters \u2014 as vital in emergencies and in rural areas.
\n\u201cAM radio is localism, it is community,\u201d Mr. Pai, 40, said in an interview.
\nAM\u2019s longer wavelength means it can be heard at far greater distances and so in crises, he said, \u201cAM radio is always going to be there.\u201d As an example, he cited Fort Yukon, Alaska, where the AM station KZPA broadcasts inquiries about missing hunters and transmits flood alerts during the annual spring ice breakup.
\n\u201cWhen the power goes out, when you can\u2019t get a good cell signal, when the Internet goes down, people turn to battery-powered AM radios to get the information they need,\u201d Mr. Pai said. . . . <\/div>\n

Sadly, the changes that are being suggested to save AM–including moving it to all-digital broadcast–are so fundamental that they obliterate some of the utility of the AM system. The article implies that really the only useful aspect of all-analog AM is that it’s powerful (and thus has really long transmission distances, esp. at night). That’s true, and awesome, but what makes AM extra special is that the scheme is so bone *simple*[*]
\nHeck, in this two paragraph snippet from my book<\/a>, I teach you to make an AM receiver in about three seconds:
\n
\n
\nBuilding a receiver from scratch isn’t much harder, and AM transmitters are likewise within the grasp of novice electronics hobbyists. In a deep-down insane zombiepocalypse disaster scenario, we kinda *want* to have an all analog AM system blanketing the country, giving out instructions, don’t we? The greatest asset of the network isn’t just signal strength, but the ubiquity and simplicity of the gear you need to decade that signal back to human voices giving you decent advice for what to do when the Zombie Dolly Parton and Rush Limbaugh coming banging on your door.<\/p>\n


\n[*] My very first electronics kit was an AM radio; I believe I was 7 when I received it from a party guest. While the adults got drunk downstairs, I built the radio, hung its arial out my window, hooked the ground to the plumbing underneath the bathroom sink, and listened to Dolly Parton. It was magic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Quest to Save AM Before It\u2019s Lost in the Static – NYTimes.com The digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasem\u2019s Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series. Long surpassed by FM and more recently cast aside by satellite radio and Pandora, AM … Continue reading “Destroying AM Radio to Save It”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}