New Law for Old Tech: Congress Pushes Law Requiring New Cars to Receive AM Radio

In mid-2023, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.), 77, sponsored a bill called the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act. He just revealed that some 60 senators support the law, and that it has 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passing, as news site Ars Technica puts it, “an almost sure thing.” 

If it’s passed, the law would require every new car sold in the U.S. to include, free of charge, the ability to pick up AM radio signals. That once ubiquitous AM technology, for “amplitude modulation,” is solidly rooted in the cutting of early to mid-20th century communications–it powered the famous “golden age” of radio through and after the Second World War.

So what gives with this proposed law? Technology frequently moves ahead of legislation, or the ideas of aging legislators (the average age of a U.S. senator is 64), but this kerfuffle about a technologically ancient format is all about the nation’s emergency alert system, another artifact of postwar communications.

Read more – Inc.: https://bit.ly/3JLUtt9