This weekend the Washington Post updated the current status of AM radio: 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... Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia and Jaguar Land Rover — said they have no plans to eliminate AM. The case for removing AM radio: [A]lthough 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. Ford spokesman Alan Hall said that because most AM stations also offer their programming online or on FM sister stations, the automaker will continue to "offer these alternatives for customers to hear their favorite AM radio music and news as we remove [AM] from most new and updated models." The 2024 Mustang is Ford's first internal combustion model to be marketed without AM... As Ford did, BMW eliminated AM from electric models in part because "technological innovation has afforded consumers many additional options to receive the same or similar information," Adam McNeill, the company's U.S. vice president of engineering, said in a letter to Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.)... For the automakers, eliminating AM is a simple matter of numbers and progress. The AM audience keeps getting smaller and older, and the growth of alternative forms of in-car audio has been explosive. But the Post adds this this happening "despite protests from Station owners, listeners, first-responders and politicians from both major parties." and they point out that half of all AM-radio listening takes place in cars: Many AM stations don't offer alternative ways to listen to their shows. Even those that do say their audience, much of which is older, tends not to be adept at the technologies that let drivers stream anything they choose from their smartphones into their car's audio system. And despite the growing popularity of podcasts and streaming audio, a large majority of in-car listening remains old-fashioned broadcast radio, according to industry studies. [S]ome of the country's most lucrative radio stations are still on AM, mostly all-news or news and talk stations in big cities such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.ome of the country's most lucrative radio stations are still on AM, mostly all-news or news and talk stations in big cities such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles. The Post also points out that AM and FM radio combined account for 60 percent of all in-car listening, according to a new study by Edison Research. "SiriusXM satellite radio makes up 16 percent of in-car audio use, followed by drivers' own music from their phones at 7 percent and podcasts and YouTube music videos at 4 percent each."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.