Say goodbye to AM radio

Excerpts from a longread at The Washington Post:
Automakers, such as BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda and Tesla, are removing AM radios from new electric vehicles because electric engines can interfere with the sound of AM stations. And Ford, one of the nation’s top-three auto sellers, is taking a bigger step, eliminating AM from all of its vehicles, electric or gas-operated.
Some station owners and advertisers contend that losing access to the car dashboard will indeed be a death blow to many of the nation’s 4,185 AM stations — the possible demise of a core element of the nation’s delivery system for news, political talk (especially on the right), coverage of weather emergencies and foreign language programming.
“This is a tone-deaf display of complete ignorance about what AM radio means to Americans,” said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade journal covering the talk radio industry. “It’s not the end of the world for radio, but it is the loss of an iconic piece of American culture.”..
Now, although 82 million Americans still listen to AM stations each month, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, the AM audience has been aging for decades. Ford says its data, pulled from internet-connected vehicles, shows that less than 5 percent of in-car listening is to AM stations..
Some Democrats are fighting to save stations that often are the only live source of local information during extreme weather, as well as outlets that target immigrant audiences. Some wingnuts, meanwhile, claim the elimination of AM radio is aimed at diminishing the reach of wingnut hate talk radio, an AM mainstay from Sean Handjob to Glenn Blech to dozens of acolytes of the late Lush Dimbulb. Eight of the country’s 10 most popular radio talk shows are wingnut...
“The automobile is essential to liberty,” wingnut hate talk show hack Mark Levin told his listeners last month. “It’s freedom. So, the control of the automobile is about the control of your freedom. They finally figured out how to attack wingnut hate talk radio.”