Comment by patrakov
I don't buy this "narrowcast mediums like mobile phones" argument. Please watch any video of any Debconf 24 session. You'll hear how the mobile phones of all participants at the same time start reading emergency alerts (about the heat waves) aloud. So the mobile phone network was, in fact, designed with a broadcast use case in mind, and this gets regularly tested and does not overload the network.
I do agree that AM radio receivers are cheap to build and not a burden to require.
> I do agree that AM radio receivers are cheap to build and not a burden to require.
The actual burden of AM isn't the hardware it takes up, but rather the frequencies it hogs. Keeping AM indefinitely alive means we are reserving prime low frequency bandwidth for a dated tech for no real good reason.
Heck, I'd even agree that keeping the AM bandwidth dedicated to audio broadcasts is a desirable thing. However, I'd argue that it should be converted to a modern broadcasting format that can handle more than sermons and talk radio. Change it into a QAM digital broadcast with a fair bit of error correction and a modern codec and you suddenly can stuff a lot more stations into the same bandwidth, with a long range, and a crystal clear output.