Voluntary All-Digital AM Poised Tuesday for 5-0 FCC OK

An FCC draft order on allowing voluntary all-digital AM radio service is expected to be approved unanimously at Tuesday’s open commission meeting, said FCC and industry officials in interviews. Ben Downs, vice president for early all-digital AM supporter Bryan Broadcasting, told us he’s not surprised by the broad support for the AM radio order. “This is the right thing for everyone,” he said. Items with unanimous support are sometimes voted ahead of open meetings, but that’s unlikely to happen with this, FCC officials said.

The draft order on all-digital AM will allow AM broadcasters to voluntarily transition to the technology, which allows for greater audio fidelity and features such as metadata but can be received only on HD radios. The draft doesn’t codify a specific technical standard or create new interference rules for the service.

Switching to all-digital for some individual AM stations could allow them to compete with FM stations, said Downs. Growing interference from household electronic devices has made the AM band “a hostile environment for a long time,” Downs said. Some opponents of all-digital AM have raised interference concerns, but the FCC said testing by NAB and an experimental license run by Hubbard demonstrated all-digital AM won't unduly interfere with other signals.

Bryan, which was behind the initial petition seeking FCC approval for all-digital AM, will likely convert only two of its four AM stations, Downs said. Since listeners without HD Radio receivers won’t be able to receive the AM signal of a converted station, it mostly makes sense for stations with FM translators, in markets with a great deal of HD Radios or that don’t currently have a large dedicated audience to be disrupted by the shift, he said.

Most of the AM band is talk radio because of the band’s poor audio quality, and switching could allow AM stations to change to a music format that could be more competitive in their market, he said. Downs said he couldn’t be sure when Bryan would convert, due to funding concerns exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. “If you were asking back in January, I would probably say it would happen quicker than I would now,” Downs said.

AM receiver makers "have attempted to reduce interference by using a narrower receiving bandwidth -- but at the cost of audio fidelity," said the draft. CTA said the very narrow audio bandwidths can cause a “tin can” effect, "even in the best of signal conditions," it said. "As a result, AM stations are largely confined to voice-only formats." They have "consistently lost audiences to FM radio, satellite radio, and online streaming services that offer higher sound fidelity and a broader array of programming."