Driving home from Burlington, VT after the eclipse. Traffic was crawling. Cell data wasn’t working. FM seemed like all automated stations from far away. Yknow what did provide information on traffic and scaled to the huge influx of people in the area? A news station on AM radio.
But that brings up a bigger problem, many many radio stations are essentially on autopilot or run from a distance without the ability to address local situations. Without support for truly local stations, AM radio may be present, but generally without significant value.
It's 100% not more "reliable" than the internet is. AM stations are down regularly, receivers are (c.f. this very article) inconsistently deployed and many users don't know how to use the ones they own.
What you're saying is that it's a useful backup for a service that remains imperfect. But if you had to pick just one emergency notification technology for the modern world, it would be mobile telephones. There's really no significant argument there.
> But if you had to pick just one emergency notification technology for the modern world, it would be mobile telephones. There's really no significant argument there.
Definitely disagree. Mobile phones have a million failure modes. The only reason I'd choose them is 2-way communication, not reliability of 1-way communication.
Was the last emergency notification you received actually on an AM radio? I was in Taiwan last week during the earthquakes and got them at 2am on my foreign phone via a temporary SIM I got for $9 at the airport.
Sorry, there is more to reliability analysis than just analyzing failure modes. Whether or not a technology is productively useful for its intended purpose is important!
They're useful for different kinds of emergencies. Nobody said one of them subsumed the other. You might as well say "when was the last time 911 helped you? I just used a first-aid kit last week and it saved me from my bleeding."
We’re one Carrington event away from coiling our own copper wire to pick up AM signals. I’m unaware of any similar mechanism for internet or cell reception. I’m pretty happy with AM being carried forward. Maybe the FCC could support that by loosening the requirements for registering and operating stations. I’d love to run my own from my house.
It’s been well over a decade since I’ve listened to AM radio, and I couldn’t tell you a single FM station and I’ve lived in this city for 12 years. AM radio is literally not even on my radar as a way to get emergency information. I don’t even think we have access to an AM radio. I’m an elder millennial, over half the country is younger than me.
This legislation is absolutely out of touch with reality, and will do nothing but allow the old guard to slow down innovation and force the past on people who have no interest in it and will receive no value from.
I hope you are aware of the failures of other emergency notification systems that have utterly failed like in the recent Maui fires in Hawaii that resulted in loss of life.
AM is the simplest mode of communication and one of the reason air traffic controllers still use AM rather than FM or digital codecs for communications.
I live in a major Bay Area suburb and during power outages I don’t have cell reception. I can walk a bit and get some reception, but only for a day or so while the cell tower generator has fuel. My handcrank radio was dirt cheap and works great. Get yourself one.
Actually i'm asserting precisely that misinformation deals in lying about trivially disprovable statements about the universe. If "reality" is open to interpretation i'm dealing with a bad-faith actor and I'm not going to waste my time.
That said, you don't have to hunt very far on vermont to find an ass flapping in the wind on some conservative christian channel.
Quite the opposite. This board should be responsible for making sure all "fringe" voices are heard, not just the alien conspiracy, ultra right-wing and religious zealotry groups. I haven't been confronted with any programs about satanism, fairy folk, living on the Sun or say... gay rights on Midwestern AM radio.
But that brings up a bigger problem, many many radio stations are essentially on autopilot or run from a distance without the ability to address local situations. Without support for truly local stations, AM radio may be present, but generally without significant value.