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Liberals won’t kill the AM radio star, inattention will.
Although roughly eight in 10 people older than 12 reports listening to terrestrial radio each week, according to Pew Research, most of those listeners are for FM bands. Just one in five dial into AM radio, according to Inside Radio. Those aren’t promising prospects for people who make a living on AM talk radio.
Pundits such as Sean Hannity are speculating that automakers leaving AM radios out of new cars—particularly EVs—is a politically motivated move to silence conservative talk radio, which predominately airs across AM bands.
“I think people want more options, not less options. And this would be a direct hit politically on conservative talk radio in particular, which is what most people go to AM radio to listen to,” the host said on Fox News. “So is there a political component to it? Certainly feels like it.”
Feels is the operative word there because facts won’t work, grammatically or logically. Everything from poorer audio quality, dwindling listeners, electromagnetic interference, changing formats in Europe from AM to DAB, available satellite internet and radio, smartphone-compatible infotainment systems, and rising Bluetooth popularity—they’re all facts with substantiated data to attribute to AM radio’s decline. Nefarious conspiracy by Democrats to silence a voting bloc? Not so much.
EVs from Audi, Porsche, Tesla, and Volvo have already dropped the band and did so before or during the Trump administration. The 2024 Ford Mustang will skip AM band in its radio, but not because Ford is in on the leftist takeover of our airwaves. They just acknowledged that “countries and automakers globally are modernizing radio by offering internet streaming through mobile apps, FM, or digital.”
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Dropping AM radio bands could make emergency broadcasts more difficult to reach rural listeners, as AM’s radio waves travel longer and more easily through the weather. That was an issue raised by Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, who may not have gotten the lib cabal’s memo “AM Radio = Bad” yet.
Nonetheless, radio show hosts Hannity as well as Clay Travis and Buck Sexton are calling for reinforcements to fight back against the progressive agenda of banning AM radio. Of course, Hannity also syndicates his daily show to several hundred AM radio stations around the country, so I’m sure this has nothing to do with holding on to a job and everything to do with fighting for free speech.
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