GRAHAM BARROWS, KETTERING
Q Why can’t I get any AM radio reception?
A Guru supposes there are two possible answers to this question. The first is that AM (or Medium Wave, if you’re old school) stations are not what they once were: transmitters now operate on lower power, many have been shut down altogether, and basically every notable AM station still running has its neck on the chopping block. In 2022 AM accounted for 2% of radio listening. It’s probably a lot less now.
AM’s slow bleeding death is completely understandable – certainly more understandable than your perverse desire to listen to AM radio – given the number of inherently superior options that we have available to us today. There are few locations you’d want to listen to the radio that you couldn’t get some DAB reception, let alone enough Wi-Fi or cellular data to stream those stations online.
The second answer to the question is that AM doesn’t play nice with the improvements we’ve made to
