You're listening to the On The Media Midweek podcast.

I'm Michael O'Eunger.

Car makers are taking steps to eliminate AM radio from their newest electric vehicles.

BMW, Volkswagen, Mazda, Tesla say they won't include AM radio when they're newest models.

This announcement drew so much outrage that at least one automaker Ford actually said,

forget it, they reversed their decision.

Conservative talk radio hosts helped leave the backlash against the removal of AM radios

from electric fleets, claiming the engineering change was really an act of political sabotage.

They finally figured out how to attack conservative talk radio.

Whether they're doing this intentionally or not, the consequence will be if the radio industry

does not adapt and a lot of attack on AM radio.

Sean Hannity, an appearance on Fox, said something to the effect of this is definitely going to have

political ramifications because it will quiet conservative talk radio, which is what people turn

to AM radio for.

Katie Thornton, freelance journalist and host of OTM's Peabody Award-winning mini-series, The

Divided Dial.

And that part really stuck out to me because there is this sort of widespread understanding

in the US that AM radio is the home of conservative talk and almost nothing else.

But this isn't really a simple story of conservative censorship.

Now a bipartisan group of lawmakers are trying to stop the manufacturers of electric vehicles

excluding AM radio in their new models.

In late June, Senators Ted Cruz and Ed Markey co-wrote a letter to seven major automakers

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