The Right Tunes into Mandates for AM Car Radios

Right Wing Biz Watch

By David Lieberman, June 8, 2023

Right wing lawmakers and commentators often rail against government regulations. But here’s one they like: a proposed mandate requiring automakers to equip new cars with AM radios.

“AM radio continues to be a key outlet for talk radio shows to connect with audiences across the country,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said in a Tuesday hearing about the matter. “Rush Limbaugh, for instance, had around 15 million listeners tuning in each week to his show, which was broadcast across 650 stations at its peak.”

That’s one of the arguments driving the “AM for Every Vehicle Act,” introduced in both the House and Senate in mid-May with support from both sides of the aisle, including Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). The bill would require manufacturers to install AM radios in all new cars at no extra cost.

Defenders say that AM is valuable in emergencies in part because its signals travel long distances – making them especially useful in rural areas.

“It’s as important as having seat belts,” Evan Masyr, CFO of the right wing radio company Salem Media Group, told an investor gathering in late May.

Opponents of the legislation, including the Consumer Technology Association and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said in a letter to lawmakers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Wireless Emergency Alerts to cellphones reach more people and do so more effectively. They don’t need to have a radio on and transmissions are “duplicated across several signals to ensure maximum coverage.”

Broadcasters and lawmakers became concerned about AM radios after manufacturers of electric cars including Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen, and Mazda stopped installing them. They said that electromagnetic impulses from their engines disturbed the radio signals.

Ford shifted the debate into high gear last year when it said that it would take AM out of most of its cars including the 2024 Mustang. It found that AM accounted for less than 5 percent of in-car listening, and much of its programming also was available on FM stations or digitally.

Even so, some right-wing commentators framed automakers’ moves to ditch AM as a politically-motivated attack.

It’s “aimed at people like me, to prevent people like you from just turning on your radio as you drive in your own local area or general area and listen to the station,” Cumulus Media’s Mark Levin said in April. “That’s what that’s all about.”

Sean Hannity, whose radio show airs on more than 700 AM and FM stations, said in April that removal of AM would be “a direct hit politically on conservative talk radio in particular, which is what most people go to AM radio to listen to.”

He added that it’s “part of what I call the Biden New Green Deal, climate alarmist religious cult” that is “going to force electric vehicles that cost dramatically more on the American people” who really “want gas-powered cars.”

That’s debatable. Although electric vehicles “are often associated with liberal coastal types who speak of saving the planet,” The Washington Post recently reported, Republicans are also tired of rising fuel costs and are “deciding that driving an [electric vehicle] is just common sense.”

The AM radio mandate continues to move forward in Congress even though Ford recently slammed the brakes on its change and said it would install AM in all 2024 Ford and Lincoln vehicles.

“The tide has turned,” Masyr said. Still, a law “is going to help radio. AM will have to be even in electric vehicles.”

SALEM MEDIA PARTNERS WITH THE EPOCH TIMES TO BOOST STREAMING PLATFORM

The radio and publishing home for right-wing stars including Dinesh D’Souza and Dennis Praeger announced this week that it will fuel its SalemNow streaming platform with feature-length films from The Epoch Times’ Epoch TV.

First up in the alliance is “Leaving California: The Untold Story,” a 70-minute film from Epoch Times: Southern California editor Siyamak Khorrami that claims the state’s regulations, taxes, corruption, crime, and homelessness are driving hundreds of thousands of people from the state.

In December, accuracy monitoring firm NewsGuard ranked The Epoch Times No. 3 – behind Newsmax and The Gateway Pundit — in its list of “The 2022 10 Most Influential Misinformers.”

Masyr told investors that producers of Christian and right-wing movies are “coming to us” to take advantage of SalemNow’s revenue-sharing deals and ability to cross-promote releases.

“We’ll continue to invest in films that we just think will resonate with our audience and would allow us the ability to move people from radio to this

service,” he said.

A NEW DEADLINE FOR TRUTH SOCIAL MERGER DEAL

Digital World Acquisition Corp. just gave itself three more months to persuade its shareholders to approve its merger deal with the parent of Donald Trump’s Truth Social – and remain a viable, publicly traded company.

On Wednesday the company exercised the last of its four options to postpone the date when it has to close a deal with Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), it said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If it can’t persuade shareholders to approve the pact by September 8 – the new deadline from the previous one of June 8 – then the Special Purpose Acquisition Corp. (SPAC) might have to return to investors about $300 million it raised from them.

Most seem to prefer having cash as opposed to shares in a Trump-run social media company.

The SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority are investigating DWAC for possible irregularities with the Trump deal. In addition, DWAC disclosed that TMTG has been subpoenaed by the SEC and a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York.

The investigations “could materially delay, materially impede, or prevent,” the deal with Trump, DWAC said.

DWAC chief Eric Swider should be fine with any outcome. The company said in its filing on Wednesday that it gave his Puerto Rico-based company, Retanus Advisors, $12 million in promissory notes to cover its costs if a Trump deal is approved or DWAC has to liquidate. If DWAC has to file for bankruptcy protection then Swider still must be paid immediately “without presentment, demand, protest or other notice of any kind.”

The agreement also gives him the option of converting the notes into DWAC stock at $10.00 a share. Shares closed Wednesday at $12.88.

DWAC already pays Swider $15,000 a month for administrative support and office space at his beach front resort. The company said in April that it has no full-time employees and three officers who “devote as much of their time as they deem necessary.”

That might explain why DWAC is having so much trouble getting its finances straight. It told the SEC in late May that it found an undisclosed “material weakness” in its accounting which means the 2022 annual report it filed in April “should no longer be relied upon.”

It’s also late with its financial report for the first three months of 2023, it said, leading NASDAQ to threaten to delist the company’s shares. DWAC called this “expected” adding that it will have “no immediate impact” – as long as the company shows by July 24 that it can address the problem.

Right Wing Biz Watch is a ongoing series of articles examining the business and finances of right wing media. Its author, David Lieberman, covered the media business full time for 30 years at USA Today and other publications before joining The New School as an Associate Professor in its  graduate Media Management program.

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