If they can take away AM radios, what’s next?
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- June 10, 2023
- 905
Ironically, I heard the news as I drove home from work.
Seems a number of car manufacturers including Audi, BMW and Volvo have decided to eliminate AM radios from their new models, mostly electric vehicles, commonly known as EVs.
Their reasoning varies, but most reports cite static interference from the newfangled engines as the biggest culprit, though others refer vaguely to as-yet-to-be-offered streaming services, which, of course, will add yet another expense to consumers’ growing lists.
I don’t think it really matters as to the why; the fact is yet another important aspect of everyday life is being taken away, and as EVs become more and more commonplace, all one can do is remember how it used to be, when cars and their AM radios were a perfect marriage, right up there with mashed potatoes and gravy, stars and stripes, hot dogs and stadium mustard and, of course, Simon and Garfunkel, not to mention Lennon and McCartney.
Phasing them out — AM radios, not the Beatles — won’t be a big deal to most folks, the young ones who grew up with their brains attached to computers and their eyes never far from their phones.
This is the way of the world … always has been.
As Dylan once observed, “Your old road is rapidly agin’,” to which he added this cautionary warning, an admonition to be heeded:
“Please get out of the new one
if you can’t lend your hand,
for the times they a-changin’.”
Bob’s in his 80s now, and we’re lucky to have him still around and vital, but I have a feeling his freewheeling days are long behind and that it’s been a while since he set off on a long drive.
What’s the farthest distance you ever drove by yourself at one time?
Mine’s a rather pedestrian 600 miles from the Virginia coast to my Ohio hometown, a journey that would have been virtually impossible without the AM radio in my gold 1969 Chevy Impala.
I had planned to leave my girlfriend’s house early that summer Sunday afternoon, but, well, when you’re young and you think you’re in love, real life slips away and you lose track of time.
The sun was setting directly in front of me, blinding me as I hurtled west, but before long, it was dark and the interstate was pretty quiet and all I had for companionship was the AM radio.
And that was more than enough; actually, it was a blessing.
I stopped once for gas in Breezewood, that strange Pennsylvania crossroads town famous for its truck stops, diners and the four or five turnpikes that collide there, as if drawn by unseen magnets. After that, it was bugs hitting the windshield and the sound of tires rolling as the miles disappeared and I got the news and listened to songs that to this day still remind me of being young and so alive.
By the time I pulled into town, I still had a few minutes to report to the school where I’d begin my summer job as a playground counselor, put in charge of a dozen or two impressionable minds, a prospect that in retrospect still fills me with dread/wonder.
That fall, after I’d landed a part-time gig as a sportswriter covering high school football games played in stadiums carved out of cornfields, I invested a small sum into something called an FM converter. It was a black plastic device that, if you had even a little bit of experience hooking up stereo systems, enabled you to listen to the other bandwidth, the one with underground rock stations.
How things have come full circle. Back then AM was the major artery with an FM tributary. Now it’s headed for irrelevance.
But before AM radio is relegated to the dustbin of obsolescence, I think it’s important to point out there’s been some pushback, particularly among those folks who live in rural areas of America, places that rely on the local airwaves to keep them informed, especially in times of weather warnings and other emergencies.
A good AM signal can travel for hundreds of miles, especially at night, whereas its FM brethren rarely reach beyond the county line.
And who hasn’t sat in the car, listening to a ballgame, unwilling to leave the play-by-play for fear of missing the play that decides it all?
Without AM radio I’d have been denied so much, most of it music. I cannot imagine my driving life without CKLW, “The Big 8” as it was known, that powerhouse station out of the Motor City. To cite just a single example, being a teenager without having “American Pie” blasting out of the car radio is like being denied life’s very air.
I had a friend back then who used to keep a ledger of the AM stations he could pull in evenings, using his father’s sophisticated stereo setup that he was strictly prohibited from even looking at, let alone employ in that kind of tomfoolery. Yet he persisted, and I relished the moments when he’d tell one of us that last night he’d picked up a station out of New Orleans, an hour devoted to jazz.
Yes, I understand everything changes, and I’m not one of those get-off-my-lawn old guys who’ll never adjust to the way things are, but I’m also smart enough to know that if they succeed in taking AM radios out of EVs, someone’s going to have to explain why, exactly and persuasively, an institution that has offered so much for so long has, all of a sudden, gone quiet in a cloud of static.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where whip antennas are still in vogue and if you listen late enough, you’ll hear music that still matters.