The conservative outrage machine blames liberals for the lack of AM radio in EVs

Mark Levin, a conservative noisemaker, spends his professional life stewing in performance anger. For three hours every weekday, he instructs the listeners of his show on 77 WABC radio, and 400 other stations, on what to be mad at. The hardest part of Levine’s job is to uncover dastardly new liberal plots to rile his listeners — while encouraging them to buy gold and pillows. To one of the ringmasters of the conservative circus, the latest liberal intrigue is an assault on AM radio

This legacy media source is absent in most electric vehicles. And Mark Levin knows why. He explained on his radio broadcast last Friday,

“Let’s talk about radios for a minute. Ford is the latest manufacturer that says, the future production of cars will not include the AM platform… BMW has said it. Others have said it because it interferes with something or other. They finally figured out how to attack conservative talk radio.”

“They” are liberals. Sean Hannity, another giant of conservative radio —  who broadcasts for three hours, five days a week, on 530 stations — concurs.

He told Fox News Digital after noting that customers are looking for more options in new vehicles, not fewer.

“It’s incomprehensible to me. It’s not complicated to put in a radio system that allows you to have AM FM, Sirius XM, or the ability to plug in your own music from your own phone.”

“This would be a direct hit politically on conservative talk radio in particular, which is what most people go to AM radio to listen to. So is there a political component to it? Certainly feels like it.”

The conservative attack MO requires no effort. Find some innocuous change and blame “them” (liberals) for it. The disappearance of AM radios from EVs has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with how technology works. Even the new conservative fanboy Elon Musk knows this. His Teslas do not offer AM radio.

As Axios reports 

Automakers say EVs' electric motors interfere with AM frequencies, creating annoying buzzing noises and faded signals.

What Levin, Hannity, and the rest of the conservative media sewer will not tell you — it contradicts their rant — is that Sen. Ed Merkley, a Massachusetts Democrat, is a champion for keeping AM radio in EVs. Hardly the act of a foe of the medium

Axios further reports

“Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, wants car companies to maintain free access to broadcast radio as a public safety measure.”

To understand the conservative angst over the AM/EV brouhaha, consider the demographics of AM radio listeners. They are older. According to Edison Research's Share of Ear,

“the median age of those listening to AM/FM Radio is 46, or 12 years older than the listener to streaming and podcasts -- which is 34. The median age by time spent listening to AM/FM Radio is 51 while streaming is 36 and podcasts is 31.”

Conservative media is available in all the same formats that liberal media is. A Republican EV driver has plenty of options for listening to the daily musings of their favorite stentorian. The problem — and the RW radio hosts know it — is their core listeners are not as likely to use these other formats.

It is a truism that conservatives cling to the way things were in an imaginary and Edenic past. Unfortunately for contemporary conservative media hosts, the soundtrack for that past is broadcast on AM radio. And those people do not handle change well. 

Hannity and Levin are not stupid people. They know that there is no future for AM radio. It will go the way of 8 tracks, VHS, and CDs. It has had a good run. The giants of the medium are merely trying to suck the last piece of value out of it before new media buries it in technology’s graveyard.