Want It, Need It, Gotta Have It

Can you force people to buy something they don't care about enough to demand on their own?

Maybe that's an unfair way to frame the issue, but it comes to mind when I see radio people lobbying car makers and Congress to stop the auto industry from dropping AM radio from their entertainment (I'm not going to call them "infotainment," sorry) systems. The anxiety broadcasters felt from electric vehicles dropping AM turned to something more intense when Ford announced that the new Mustang wouldn't have AM and to minor panic when it was noted that other Ford models may not have AM moving forward. Let's face it, it's quite possible that the cars of the near future may not even offer radio, period. They'll offer streaming, they'll have all the radio streaming apps you'd want, there WILL be audio available, but broadcast radio of the FCC-licensed-transmitter variety is not guaranteed a spot on the dashboard.

Nobody's guaranteed anything, of course. Any app could be dropped in a heartbeat if there's a business dispute, and if you don't think so, ask TV station owners who have been embroiled in retransmission consent entanglements with cable and satellite operators. AM/FM radio has enjoyed the benefit of being standard in cars for years, and Ford notwithstanding, most car makers will probably at least offer FM for the foreseeable future. But, again, nothing's guaranteed.

The lobbying, the push for a law or Congressional pressure, reminds me, however, of the ill-fated efforts to require cell phone makers and carriers to activate FM chips in smartphones. Like the AM lobbying efforts, the industry argued that FM was critical in emergencies, that there was an overriding public interest in putting broadcast radio in the phones. And like the AM lobbying efforts, there was one fatal flaw in the argument: The public itself was not clamoring for it. Industries go to Congress to get stuff all the time, of course, but it really does help matters if elected officials see that their constituents want what the industry wants, too. Things get done if there are votes attached to them (along with money, that is).

That's the missing element to the Save-AM movement, just as it was with the AM Revitalization process: The audience isn't all that motivated to demand it. Nobody other than radio geeks is refusing to buy a particular car model if it doesn't have AM radio. Nobody refused to buy an iPhone because it didn't have an FM chip. If the public is demanding something, the market more often than not will respond. If car buyers say that not having AM on the dash is a dealbreaker, AM will be back in the game. Otherwise, I wouldn't count on it.

Which is to say that if the radio industry wants to guarantee that AM -- especially an improved, less interference-prone AM -- is offered in cars, it's lobbying the wrong people. Give the listening audience, the consumers, a reason to demand AM/FM radio, and they will demand it. If the public feels like streaming will cover their needs, car makers won't feel the need to offer broadcast radio, and politicians won't feel the need to legislate it, just as they passed on legislation to turn on those phone chips. Give them programming that isn't what they want, and... well, how many people own radios in their homes anymore? Yeah, that. You can't force people to buy table radios, either.

I'll offer my own personal experience. I've been living without AM in my car for several years, not because I don't want AM or that the car doesn't have an AM tuner, but because there's a particular flaw in Volvo car radios that causes severe electrical interference that mechanics and dealers don't know how to fix. When I got my car, I tried to get someone to address the issue, and nobody could. After a while, I gave up. And it's been years of a high-pitched buzz on the AM dial, and I gotta admit, it's not a big deal for me. Granted, I don't commute, but even so, if I want what's on AM, I can stream it through my phone. But I don't want what's on AM here, because most of it is stuff in which I'm not interested, and what I DO want to hear (okay, sports, mostly) is either streaming or on FM HD2 and HD3 channels (when they're not dropping out). I don't think I've hit the AM button more than once or twice since I moved to South Florida; electrical buzz sounds the same here as it did in California.

And if I'm REALLY going to be honest, if FM went away, too, I'd stream what I want to hear. I like having FM in the car; I'm not planning to go to war to preserve it if I want to buy a new car and it doesn't have a radio in it. That's not saying I don't want radio, but it IS saying that I have plenty of options to hear what I want to hear in the car if AM/FM isn't there.

I suspect a large percentage of the listening public would agree. That's why I think the radio industry needs to make a better case for ensuring that AM, and radio in general, remains on the dashboard. Pleading with Congress to do something or pushing the car makers to comply because of emergency utility (which FM also serves and which I suspect the car makers have their own plans to offer) is less likely to work than giving the public a reason to demand it. Make AM/FM radio programming indispensable and the public will insist on it. Offer them the same stuff they can get elsewhere, or AI-generated rip-and-read, or worse, and they won't care. If there was ever a time to give the public better programming, it's now.

This is not hard. Give everyone a reason to want your product and they'll do the lobbying work for you. Create a demand.

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Coupla things: Another reminder that we'll be talking about talk radio with Jon Grayson of KMBZ/Kansas City and Todd Hollst of WHIO/Dayton, and about where podcasting is going with Professor Steve Goldstein, at the All Access Audio Summit April 26-28, and you can see the agenda and register for the all-streaming event here. Also, I had wanted to credit Elizabeth Grattan for prompting my comments about the First Amendment last week, since she's been doing the Lord's work correcting people on Twitter who just don't understand what the First Amendment actually means, but I forgot to do so, so here you go and thanks.

Perry Michael Simon
Senior Vice President/Editor-in-Chief and News-Talk-Sports-Podcasting Editor
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
Twitter @pmsimon
Mastodon @pmsimon@c.im