Maybe we need a standard AM emergency broadcast frequency akin to 121.5 on aircraft. Legislate that all fixed and car radio receivers are always tuned to it and activate automatically if there’s a broadcast. Then scrap the rest of the analogue radio broadcasting band.
> Then scrap the rest of the analogue radio broadcasting band.
Please, no. In case of disaster, I could dismantle a tool, take its motor, fix it to a fan propeller, connect it to a rectifier stage and obtain a wind/water generator, then I could take parts from low tech stuff not even remotely related to a radio and build a crude but functioning transmitter to send a SOS.
Problem is that making it work on a certain frequency would be hard without instrumentation, therefore the more ears on multiple frequencies the best chances that some of them will hear my dit dah by mistake.
As it stands, ~nobody is listening to AM radio. The only people listening are radio geeks, and I doubt that number would change if the analogue radio broadcasting band was scrapped.
Having an emergency frequency that devices auto-tune to would at least mean if you did manage to broadcast on that frequency, someone will actually hear it.
Exactly. We are on Hacker News, after all. If there's any place that should be understanding of the need for ears on amplitude modulated frequencies, it should be us.
