politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
No, AM radio is part of the infrastructure governments can reliably use to inform citizens of danger etc. so it should not easily be removed. And if it's so cheap it can easily be included.
That only works if people actively tune into AM radio. The person you're replying to, I think, is implying that the number of people that would be affected by an emergency communication not going over AM radio... while tragic, costs less than losing the ability to have folks like Alex Jones get tiny pockets of crazy scattered all over funneled into one convenient silo.
They should add a rider that reinstates the broadcast ownership rules eliminated in the 1997 Telecommunications Act.
Yeah, after listening to NPR’s “divided dial” it feels like a lot of how the US ended up where it is was when we he fairness doctrine was dropped or ignored.
And now citizens United has magnified and worsened it all.
There are a lot of parks that have AM station signs for weather and emergency info. We've used it when we were camping during storms.
Ability for AM radios to interrupt other playback for announcements has been around at least since the 90s. Back then it was commonly used to pause cassette playback when traffic announcements were made.
This just requires for the device to monitor radio when on, and to be on - and with how integrated it is in modern days cars functionality I'd say the chance for them to be on is higher than it was in the 90s. So having that functionality is a pretty good way to reach a lot of car drivers.
That is straight up not true.
AM radio cannot, has not ever, and will not ever be able to pause a cassette.
Wtf are you smoking?
I believe they are simply smoking facts. Maybe you should look stuff up before being so adamantly incorrect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_announcement_(radio_data_systems)
RDS and related protocols like TMC have specifications for both FM and AM transmitters. Those are used to stop playback if an urgent message comes. I'm assuming you have AM stations with such signals in the US (I don't think we have in the EU) - otherwise the AM radio mandate would indeed be stupid.
edit: did some digging (it's been almost 30 years since I cared about that stuff) - seems the US was pretty late to the party for radio data channels, and side channels for AM (which wasn't of that much interest here due to the FM heavy radio landscape in Europe) only was discussed in the early 90s for the US specific variants. I couldn't find any details if that actually ever got implemented. Given that most documentation available on that topic is heavily focusing on EU I'd guess it never got that much use in the US.
I agree with you. I just think the reason the discussion is so loud is because of right wing AM radio and the people who would love for it to go away - people I don't even disagree with, but it is important and so cheap that any argument over cost is entirely misplaced. You can get AM radio on an IC for $0.41 in quantity. It feels disingenuous to argue against that on a basis of cost or "muh freedoms". Hence, my suspicion of a more political basis.
Oh I'll bet you are right on the money with the motivations.
But also don't discount the possibility that car manufacturers are in on the long game.. just remove radio all together so you can offer optional packages only. The reason their entertainment systems need to be reasonably priced is because else the customer will stick to just radio then.
If they remove the alternative.. sky is the limit for the options... Cause no entertainment in a car is not an option for most. Peak Enshittification