Automakers threaten to cut off AM radio — and with it, rural Minnesota

ALBANY, Minn. — Mild-mannered Joe Gill is the early morning DJ on KASM Radio, a farm station with a tall tower and tiny mobile home for an office on the side of Interstate 94, smack dab in the middle of central Minnesota's dairy and cow country.

Sitting underneath a portrait of country music legend Johnny Cash, Gill reaches for a bovine metaphor to explain his campaign to keep AM radio in his town's pick-up trucks next year and beyond.

"The cows are out of the barn already," Gill said, leaning on his dairy-farm upbringing. "We're trying to keep them in the pasture."

Earlier this year, a handful of car manufacturers — including Tesla — announced they'd no longer carry the AM radio dial on new electric vehicles. Manufacturers blamed interference from electric motors for causing static on AM transmissions. The iconic American brand Ford went even further and announced plans to drop AM radio altogether from new cars.

Just a few weeks ago, with congressional pressure mounting, Ford's CEO reversed course, announcing a software upgrade for 2023 vehicles that came off the line without AM radio that would reinstate the frequency.

Back in Albany — a town of about 3,000 that's 30 minutes west of St. Cloud — Gill isn't resting completely easy after Ford's about-face.

His mug of gas station coffee sits on his desk, a suspended microphone hangs in front of his face. He's one of the voices of farm country — 1150 on the AM dial — that spans from the Dakotas' state-lines to the Twin Cities suburbs.

"If AM is on the chopping block, is FM next?" Gill asked. "Radio has always been free to the people."

Voice of a region

AM radio — the land of conservative commentators and fuzzy broadcasts of football games 1,000 miles away — might feel like a relic of the past to 2023 listeners, who have on-demand music and podcasts right on their phones. But should anyone wonder just what the world might lose if trucks don't carry AM radio any longer, they need only to tune into Gill's morning show.

On a recent Tuesday from 6 to 8:15 a.m., Gill read off the milk futures and gave a folksy pitch for Farm Credit cooperative Compeer Financial, all with the station doors thrown open.

"Talk to Russ or Shannon, they can help you out with all your farm financial needs," Gill said, referencing local lenders.

Later, Gill opened up a call-in contest, giving away a ticket to a pork dinner at the firefighters' fundraiser in Freeport.

"We'll do lucky-ducky caller two," Gill said, sounding like an auctioneer.

Almost immediately, he was on-air with Edna Goebel, who admitted to watering her plants just before dialing in to the show.

"If you were cutting grass, I'd say you were lying," Gill said, lamenting the ongoing drought.

Since 1949, KASM Radio has dispatched the region's local news — from neighboring Melrose's obituaries to Sauk Centre's baseball scores — to listeners milking cows in barns and jotting down orders in small-town cafes. For the farm station, Gill reads the corn prices out of Chicago and knows Minnesota agriculture officials on a first-name basis.

"You've got markets: dairy, beef, milk, beans, corn, turkeys," said Darrel Maus, a dairy farmer who raises corn, oats and alfalfa south of Freeport. "If you want a specific number, Joe will have it."

KASM's studios along the highway share a wall with a better-known FM radio cousin. Down the narrow hallway, past the thank-you notices and fridge filled with Dilly Bars, sits the DJ booth for Bob Total Country, which plays classics like Dolly Parton's "Here You Come Again."

But for locals, the AM station has carried a more eclectic caucus of radio programs. Behind Gill's broadcast booth stands a CD shelf stuffed with colorful polka albums, including an array from bands with "Dutchmen" in their names.

"We, for a while, were called the 'Polka Station of the Nation,''' said Randy Rothstein, a station manager and sports director who picks up the morning shift after Gill is done. Years ago, Rothstein added a Sunday night baseball show. "Brings in, you know, a younger audience."

A strong connection

In a rural media landscape, in which newspapers operate on fumes and television studios don't exist, KASM Radio is a flourishing exception. Gill interviews local school leaders. He broadcasts updates from community sale barns.

That's why Gill — and others in the National Association of Farm Broadcasters — fear extinction, especially after the car manufacturers' announcements.

The car companies say drivers can still stream AM radio stations on their wireless devices, but Gill noted many parts of his region lack dependable broadband connectivity. Moreover for Gill, it's the principle of upending a standard feature that could diminish programming that has found a home on AM radio, which more than 80 million Americans listen to monthly.

Others see something more nefarious.

In a hearing earlier on Capitol Hill, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Energy and Commerce Committee chair and a Washington Republican, blamed Democrats in Congress for passing incentives to bring down the cost of electric vehicles.

"This is, in part, a result of the Biden administration's rush to a green agenda as they push for electric vehicles because electric vehicle batteries cause interference to AM frequencies, resulting in bad reception," Rodgers said.

Fox News host Sean Hannity similarly called the phasing-out of AM radio a "direct hit politically on conservative talk radio," which he called the biggest driver of listeners to the radio band.

But it turns out AM radio has fans on both sides of the aisle. A bill to create a federal regulation requiring car manufacturers to carry AM radio at no additional charge drew the sponsorship of both Texas conservative Ted Cruz and Massachusetts liberal Ed Markey in the U.S. Senate. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar is also a sponsor of the legislation.

In Albany, the radio station sees the problem in pragmatic — not partisan — terms.

KASM, a softball toss away from what is known today as the Lake Wobegon Trail, doesn't span a massive territory like WNAX in Yankton, S.D., or Bismarck's KFYR. But on a clear day, Gill said the station reaches the Dakotas.

And that's extra important because in addition to providing a call-in show offering doughnuts and chocolate milk, KASM also carries the emergency-alert system, which tips off listeners to tornadoes and floods.

In a region where cellphones can't always find you, AM radio can.

Small-town feel

For now, it's that vital emergency communications node that has galvanized much of the campaign for preserving the AM dial as something as standard in vehicles as air conditioning or anti-lock brakes.

But as rural broadband improves, more stations are turning to online streaming. A statement from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety even noted AM radio is but one of a host of avenues for alerting the public to emergencies. In the end, it might be local programming that is the most persuasive argument for preserving AM radio.

One week after winning that pork dinner, the caller Goebel later said she listens to KASM every morning.

"A lot of the farmers count on Joe," Goebel said, adding she also listens to a Catholic radio station while her husband tunes into Twins games. "It's so local. A lot of the bigger stations, they miss out on the little stuff."

And they probably don't have a DJ who knows you on a first-name basis, either.