I’ve long wondered about something that’s been perplexing me as a consumer, for which I have been unable to find an answer. Ever since my teens, I’ve usually owned a portable AM/FM radio/cassette player. I liked having the option of searching for live music, and occasionally discovering new songs when they were first broadcast, and if I couldn’t find any I liked, listening to a mix tape of my favorite tunes, as well as listening to the news on the AM station. In more recent years, the units I’ve owned have also had a TV tuner that could pick up the audio of Channels 2 – 13, which provided an addition option, though I could admittedly give that up if necessary.

But then it seemed that electronics companies started phasing out radios for some reason. Portable CD players became popular, and I found that they typically did not include radios. I’m not positive that none of them did (I recently saw one that does), but regardless of all the hype about the superior sound quality of CD’s, I didn’t feel like lugging around such a larger item that I could not fit in my pocket, and I was quite content with the comparatively lower sound quality of cassettes.

Then came the MP3 revolution. Despite all these ridiculous Swiss army knife-type functions that they could fit into an iPhone and an iPod Touch, no one apparently thought having live radio would be something that a consumer would want. Some non-Apple companies like Sony do make digital radio walkmen, as well as combination MP3 player/radios, but because I have an Apple computer, I was told that it would not be able to download music to them because Apple and non-Apple electronics are not compatible. In addition, these Sony players have FM, but not AM, and I don’t want to give up the ability to listen to 1010WINS, the New York-area 24-hour news station, which I relied on during the 2003 Northeast Blackout, for example, which first hit when I was out and about listening to my walkman.

This meant that I had to stick with a primitive cassette player/radio, even after the mix tape I had in it broke, and even despite some embarrassing reactions from people who looked at me like I was a dinosaur. When that broke, I got a handheld radio unit from Best Buy in late 2006 or so. It didn’t include a cassette player, and so was much smaller, but I was told that it would cease function upon the February 2007 digital conversion. I tried contacting Apple to inquire as to why they won’t put an AM/FM tuner in their iPhones and iPods, or if they were planning to, and amazingly, I was told that they do not discuss such product information with customers.

So why won’t MP3 player makers put full FM/AM tuners in their handheld audio products? Is it because fitting the analog technology with the completely different digital technology in the same unit is burdensome? I’m now wondering if, in anticipation of the digital conversion, the companies figured it would be pointless to include a soon-to-be obsolete technology? But if that’s true, why can’t they put digital radio tuners in the units, and do so for both FM and AM? Are they planning on announcing that they have done so after the conversion, in order to exploit the conversion more dramatically? Now I understand that companies respond to market demands, and having worked myself in market research for 10 years, I know that companies like Apple utilize focus groups to research these things. Am I the only consumer who first discovers new songs on the radio? Am I the only one who recognizes the convenience of having live 24-hour radio news for weather, traffic and for emergencies? I should disclaim that I don’t drive, and can speculate that drivers rely on car radios for that, but that still doesn’t answer the question of all those pedestrians, especially in pedestrian and subway-dominated areas like New York City, who carry MP3 players on foot. Did the companies discover in the course of their market research that consumers would buy a product that included, in addition to an MP3 player, a calculator, a web browser, a camera, a phone, etc., but that no one wanted live radio??? This doesn’t make sense to me! Is someone eventually going to make an MP3 player with AM/FM that I can use with my Apple Mac?

Radio competes with their moneymaking model.

Look at Apple, for example.

Apple sells music via iTunes for the iPhone. Music competes.

Apple sells (has?) podcasts of talk radio. Radio competes.

AT&T sells GPS/traffic service for the iPhone. Traffic reports on the radio compete.

AT&T sells internet access. News radio competes.

How does Internet access compete with news radio? I read the news on the Net, but only when I'm at home. When I'm walking about, I don't, nor do I want to. I don't even use the Net function on my cell, because they would cost more anyway. Does Apple not think no one else feels this way? Do they think that anyone who wants news has to read? Besides, websites cannot be updated as quickly as audio news broadcasts.

And as for iTunes, who the heck buys songs before they've already heard them? How can I buy--why would I pay--for a song if I haven't already heard it and decided that I like it? Where does everyone else first hear a song that they realize that they want?

And lastly (sorry I didn't think of all three of these posts when composing the first post), why do the Sony MP3 players that have FM not also have AM?

Also, there are no plans to phase out analog AM or FM in the US, only analog broadcast tv.