It is possible to have an AM radio that's not inside a car! Many homes have portable radios that are battery operated. Especially in areas that are prone to very severe weather.

The problem is there are parts of the US where cell signals and FM cannot reach but AM comes through just fine. Particularly mountainous regions, where weather and safety reports are important. Telling people driving around these areas to keep a second radio running in their car seems kind of stupid when the functionality can be included in the head unit for pennies.

Preserving AM radio is important for a few reasons that go beyond cars. AM broadcasts have exceptionally long range with relatively little power. Transmitters and recievers are among the easiest circuits to build completely from scratch, as there is no arcane or proprietary knowledge needed to decode the signal. For these reasons, maintaining AM radio infrastructure is an important insurance policy in case of natural disasters or other major public safety events, even if it is something 99.99% of people will not interact with on a daily basis.

I'm fully on board with keeping AM radio around. I think it's immensely valuable. But considering that the FCC has already eliminated a number of very valuable things through frequency deallocation, I think we need to face up to the real possibility that AM radio is next in line for the chopping block. It's a real shame, but here we are.

I advise people to get a shortwave receiver. They're inexpensive, and are actually even better in emergency situations.

Agreed! It reminds me of the days when we had POTS for telephone service. It was great to have when there was an extended power outage.

> Fast forward to the first emergency that actually needs this and you're gonna see a bunch of asphyxiation deaths from people running their cars in the garage to listen to the last AM radio they have.

In almost every car you can run the radio off just the battery without the engine and most people have at least one radio in their home besides their car. (If you don't have one, you really should and they're only $10 on Amazon.)

> If they really want to keep AM radio viable start a public awareness campaign about its importance and make radios available for free.

Public awareness campaigns won't pay the bills for radio stations. This is about ensuring there is enough of a market for AM radio stations (since most radio listening is done in the car these days) that they can sustain themselves from ad sales so they can fulfill their public service function in the event of an emergency without (direct) government subsidies to keep the lights on.

So creating a completely artificial market via forced Government regulation?

Usually people not in cars have other convenient sources of information. (Portable radio, TV, public transit announcements, etc)

You can purchase a small AM radio that takes AA batteries, available on Amazon. Prices are in the $10 - $20 range.

https://www.amazon.com/Goodes-Transistor-Headphone-Reception...