Comment Re:AM radio is nothing in terms of volts. (Score 2) 311
I suspect it's more about selling satellite radio subscriptions. They push that hard with newer cars
Who is "they"? My last three cars had satellite radio capability but aside from a few e-mail/snail mail nags, nobody ever tried to push it on me, wasn't even mentioned by the salesperson that sought every other opportunity (extended warranty, dealership financing, blah, blah, blah) to make himself some extra bank.
I'm sure the automobile makers don't mind the tiny bit of revenue sharing they get from satellite radio but how serious of a market is it these days? I would imagine that satellite radio isn't competing against AM/FM, it's competing against streaming music served via Bluetooth/CarPlay/Android Auto. How many people do you know who DON'T have a smartphone and some sort of streaming music service? If you can endure ads, they're free, and if you want to pay, well, pick your platform, they're all cheaper than Sirius XM.
About the only argument in favor of Sirius is it doesn't need Internet connectivity. Of course, neither do offline playlists with the popular music apps, but I suppose if you frequently drive through cellular dead zones Sirius might have some appeal. I drive through them rarely enough that I just go to an offline playlist and/or find the nearest NPR affiliate on AM/FM.