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jschell wrote: In the US people that listen to the radio, the majority of those, do not consider digital worth it to switch. So they continue to listen to the non-digital signal.
I think you are right. In Norway, it means that people 50+ years old listen as much to radio as they always did, those below 30 never listen to radio as they never did. We went digital when those 50yo were 30, and cared about sound quality, (lack of) distortion, a variety of programs. So digital technology arrived in time to be essential to those who listen to radio.
I believe radio listening in Norway was a far more essential element in everyday culture than in most other countries. In the 1950s, the Saturday Night Children's Hour was heard by 75% of the entire population, regardless of age! It was jokingly said that when some of most popular mystery radio plays was broadcast, an invading force could occupy Norway without any use of weapons at all 
When we (finally) got FM, people did consider it worth switching (similar to the DAB switch 30 years later). There was this concern about elderly, poor people who couldn't afford a new radio set, so when the AM transmission towers in my town were torn down in the early 1980s, there was a lengthy debate in the newspapers, people were concerned about those poor elders who could no longer listen to their favorite programs. The radio company let the debate go on for a while; then they entered, telling that they had had similar worries. So to test how important AM still was, half a year earlier they had turned off the transmitters, ready to count the complaints. They hadn't received a single request, no reactions whatsoever, not from anyone at all, about the AM signals being gone. After half a year they decided that they could safely dismantle the transmission towers. Then lots of debaters raised their concern - not because the AM transmissions disappeared, but the visual signs did.
If you want a switch, you can have it. The US of A did make a quite rapid shift from analog to digital TV, didn't you? TV was (/is?) essential to American culture, in a way that radio isn't; radio is mostly background music, which can be provided in lots of other ways. So I guess your are right: Radio is so inessential that going digital is a waste of money, both for broadcasters and listeners.
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There are a lot of talk and Christian stations on AM. Still some sports call-in shows too. Anything that's cheap to produce. The Christian ones around here seem to exceed their FCC power limit, because their signal often stomps other local stations on nearby frequencies.
Probably a lot of the listenership is from people driving. In remote areas the signal covers a wider area and isn't dependent on line-of-sight. With the new and used car market being what it is, a lot of people with older cars can't / won't trade them in. You can still buy those car cassette adaptors from bargain stores.
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I have yet to see a DAB radio over here that doesn't also provide an FM tuner. All car DAB radios provide both FM and AM (some even long-wave AM!). So of you trade in your old car for a new one, you won't loose your favorite FM / AM stations (if there are any left ... In this country, AM has been dead for 30+ years, all there is left on FM are some small community radios with limited coverage).
One good thing about DAB is that you pick up several transmitters simultaneously. While you are driving away from one transmitter, that signal weakening, you will probably come closer to others, for increased signal strength from those. Even if you are not in line of sight to any of them, reflections from mountains, hillsides, or in rural areas: concrete buildings, will strengthen, rather than corrupt the signals. If signals are too weak, e.g. down in some deep valley, you can add another small-size transmitter - on exactly the same frequency - to strengthen the signals, add what is missing to reach sufficient signal strength. You don't need a huge high power transmitter that will alone provide a good enough signal. You don't need to allocate another channel. Listeners do not have to re-tune their receivers. The entire country is covered by a signal 'blanket' at an even, moderate radiation level, but strong enough for any receiver.
The trick to obtain this is to send long-lasting digital bits - they are approximately 74 km (46 miles) long (followed by an equally long guard interval), and transmitters are synchronized. If you pick up signals from transmitters 25 and 50 km away, the more remote one will start its bit one third into the same bit from the closer transmitter. The receiver will see the sum of them for the remaining two thirds of the bit period. DAB favors many small transmitters, so one that is more than 74 km away (or rather: 74 km further away than the closest one), unable to contribute to the bit received, the signal is also so weak that it won't disturb the next bit.
That is what OFDM modulation is for. You split the channel into a huge number of narrow sub-channels, each carrying 74 km long bits. For DAB, 1536 sub-channels are used. I believe that for DVB, the European digital TV system, the number is 2048. I don't know how long the DVB bits are, but the principle is the same: As long as the difference in distance to two transmitters is less than the bit length, the two transmitters will enforce each other.
As you might guess: Even though I am a computer guy, not a radio guy, I am fascinated by the transmission technology in DAB / DVB. Like: Why didn't we think of that earlier? (Answer: Because transmitters must be synchronized down to sub-microsecond level, and the technology for doing that was not readily available that many years before the first regular DAB broadcasts in 1995.)
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The car issue isn't related to radio- it's that the cost of new and used cars have skyrocketed, and the manufacturers have cut less-expensive and 'starter' vehicles out of their lineup. If you look at new cars it's either expensive electrics or huge expensive SUV's.
People who need a car, but can't afford or want one of those right now have to go to the used market, which has driven up prices.
It's also effecting repairs, because spending a couple thousand dollars on a car repair seems more attractive than scrapping it and getting a replacement. The repair shops are so busy that the ones that'll work on an import are scheduling repairs in April.
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We're sidetracking now ...
I spent a year in the US of A 1975-76 going to high school, living in an American family. At that time, we still considered USA a 'rich' country, compared to Europa. I was shocked to hear my host family 'sister' argue that it now was the time for Europe to give USA the same kind of economical support to keep up the US standard of living as USA had given Europe through the Marshall Plan after WW2.
Later, especially the last few years, I have realized that USA is not as rich a country as I once believed. One US citizen, having lived in Norway for quite a few years, created a 6-part series of TV reports from his homeland shortly before the 2020 presidental election. Last year, he followed up with another 4 parts. The web side claims that they are available word wide - I assume that is true: Thomas Setzer: UXA[^]. All his commentaries are in Norwegian, but of course all the interviews are in English, and they are to some degree less judgmental than his comments - he doesn't try to hide that he is disappointed by his homeland. (If you want me to, I'll gladly provide an unauthorized translation of his Norwegian comments!)
I have fully realized that the US of A is no longer any 'rich' country. You have some very rich individuals / families, some oligarchs, but for the nation as a whole, richness has been sharply declining since my 1975-76 visit. The decline may have started that early. When I bought the 1978 book by the Danish writer/photographer Jacob Holdt: America Pictures, I was shocked to see how much of it I easily recognized.
We could go on from here, but we would soon bump into Lounge restrictions on commentaries related to society and social conditions, known as 'politics'. So I will stop here, after remarking that your comments that lots of people forced to maintain their old wrecks for economical reasons fit well into the overall picture.
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this morning my wife is doing some landscaping work and prune the bushes in front yard. I am doing my programming work at that time.
later on she told me she cut the power cord connected to the electric saw, then she stopped working.
I just feel unbelievable...
diligent hands rule....
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Well in her defense, manually cutting something with an electric saw is probably fairly difficult. 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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My father once cut through the cord of the circular saw he was using.
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I've mowed it's mains cable myself.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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On purpose?
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available!
JaxCoder.com
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Southmountain wrote: I just feel unbelievable...
What's so unbelievable? Aside from my son (when he was a teenager), I heard the same story at least 3 or 4 times. The funniest one was when husband and wife were gardening, he with an electric hedge trimmer, she with the shears... 
Mircea
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Optimist: 1/2 full.
Pessimist: 1/2 empty.
Excel: 01 Feb 2023
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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ChatGPT: As an AI language model, I don't have personal opinions. The answer to whether the glass is half empty or half full depends on one's perspective and outlook. Some people might see the glass as half empty, indicating a negative or pessimistic outlook, while others might see it as half full, indicating a positive or optimistic outlook. The answer also depends on the actual amount of liquid in the glass and one's interpretation of what constitutes "half."
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I am old. My glass isn't big enough.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Me too. Sometimes I can't find the glass.
ed
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I had the opposite problem trying to put a short date in Libre Office Calc (spreadsheet). A column with no special formatting, I'm used to typing d/m and letting it turn it into dd/mm/yy. Took me several goes to get 1 Feb in as 1/02/23. Kept morphing into ½.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Engineer: the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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Obligatory xkcd (What If): Glass Half Empty
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Wordle 602 4/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Should be good for some smart comments....
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Wordle 602 3/6
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
🟨⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
very lucky guess.
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 602 4/6
⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟨🟩⬛⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Being part of this community, should have got it sooner :P
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Wordle 602 4/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Oh, I should have got that quicker!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wordle 602 4/6
⬜⬜⬜🟦⬜
⬜⬜🟦⬜🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
After my 3rd try, I was staring at the screen, thinking Wordle is lying! I was convinced there was no other way those letters could be arranged. And then... 
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