Kansas broadcasters are advocating for Congress to pass a bill that would mandate automakers continue to put analog AM radio technology into new vehicles.

Allison Mazzei, president and executive director for the Kansas Association of Broadcasters, said keeping AM radio in vehicles is one of the organization’s top legislative priorities.

“It would be extremely detrimental not just to the industry, but also to the public as the backbone to the Emergency Alert System across the United States,” Mazzei said.

Congress introduced the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2023 in both the House and the Senate, although it hasn’t gone to a full floor vote.

U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and U.S. Reps. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., Ron Estes, R-Kan., and Tracey Mann, R-Kan., are the members of the Kansas delegation who’ve co-sponsored the bill.

Mazzei said a delegation of Kansas broadcasters have visited Washington, D.C. She said she’s pleased the Kansas delegation recognizes the value of AM radio.

“Obviously, we hope very strongly that it does [pass], but we’re up against some pretty big opponents,” Mazzei said.

Why are AM radios going away?

Automakers say the way modern vehicles — mainly electric — are made has created compatibility issues with AM radio signals. Electromagnetic interference from the vehicle distorts radio frequencies, making them unreliable.

BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda and Tesla are among the automakers that have stopped including AM radios in their new vehicles. Ford announced it planned to remove AM radios from its 2024 vehicles before reversing course.

Fixing the issue to make AM radios compatible with electric vehicles could cost automakers an estimated $3.8 billion by 2030, according to an October report from the Center for Automotive Research.

The expense has led automakers to push back against the proposed mandate. John Bozzella, president and CEO of Alliance for Automotive Innovation, cited the report in a blog post, saying reducing the interference is an expensive fix for something that people aren’t using.

What are broadcasters fighting to save?

Despite Bozzella’s statement about the lack of use, broadcasters say AM radio is important, particularly in an agricultural state like Kansas.

Mazzei said farm broadcasters are important to those in rural communities.

“When we speak with members of Congress, we make it a point to say how much our rural communities and farm communities specifically rely on AM radio,” Mazzei said. “Especially because of news deserts across rural areas of the nation are prevalent. AM radio providing local news is sometimes the only local news they’re receiving. The newspaper has gone, but the broadcasters are still there.”

Kyle Bauer, who owns two stations in Clay Center, said his AM station — KFRM — covers 149 counties in Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska.

“Across that area, there are a number of places that just don’t have reliable cell signals,” Bauer said. “We have offered streaming of our station going on 12 years now, and we seldom have more than 70 people that are listening to the stream at one time.”

By comparison, the station’s average listenership is more than 7,000, Bauer said. “They obviously prefer to get it on their AM radio, or they would have switched over by now.”

AM radio is also important for emergency management purposes in rural areas, Bauer said.

“There are almost a hundred entry points for the Emergency Alert System across the nation,” he said. “Over 60 of those are AM stations because they reach so far.”

A big focus for Kansas is the agricultural and rural impact, but AM radio stations, which focus on talking rather than music, serve a lot of communities.

“I have come to realize over the last year that many AM stations represent small subsets of society from Black ownership to Latino ownership to religious broadcasters to farmers,” he said. “Those small niches are important for the diversity of the dial.”

The cost of trying to transition AM station to FM or digital would mean many of those stations would go dark, Bauer said.

“Most of the time, AM is a talk format,” he said. “Talk has a lot of different sources of the information, so it represents a lot of different subsets of society. Music is very, very diverse. But talk radio is very, very diverse as well.”

Bauer and Mazzei said they felt good about the momentum based on their meetings.

“Certainly I have come to realize how diverse AM listeners all the way from urban areas to very rural areas, and I think a lot of Congressmen have realized how diverse it is, too,” Bauer said.

The state association plans to have the Kansas Legislature provide its own input on the situation.

“KAB is hoping to introduce a concurrent resolution into the state Legislature in the 2024 session just to give our local leaders a chance to concur and show their support for this vital medium,” Mazzei said.