Millions of AT&T and Verizon customers were left without use of their mobile devices due to widespread outages Thursday morning. 1210 WPHT morning host Nick Kayal believes it highlights the need for AM Radio.
While discussing the outages on Kayal & Company Friday morning, Nick Kayal argued that both the lack of cell phone coverage and the convergence of members from both sides of the political aisle coming to AM Radio’s defense shows the need for the medium to continue.
“Yes, we look at it selfishly. First and foremost, I think from a career standpoint, because of free speech and stations like Talk Radio 1210, that might never be on FM. Yes, you can get us on the Audacy app. Yes, you could watch us on YouTube. But we might always just be on AM, specifically, when we talk about am and FM.
“Now imagine it’s 2042. You’re driving a Tesla. And we have one of these communication failures where the grid goes down, so to speak, and you can’t use your phone. And you also compounded the issue with not having an AM radio. We speculated earlier this morning, if in fact this was a hack job. And you know, China does something like this or Russia…Now imagine throwing into the equation not having AM radio from a safety standpoint, you’d want to tune into 1210 in the in the event of a disaster or an emergency, or our sister station, KYW 1060.”
Kayal continued by noting that the message needs to continue to be shared not simply with those inside the industry, but to the general public.
“I really think, as we continue to pay attention to this story, it’s something that we need to continue to highlight and re-emphasize not just for this audience, but I think it’s also important to reach people beyond the little box that we live in, in talk radio,” he concluded.
Nick Kayal also gave kudos to The Atlantic, which had shared a story with the headline “Your Phone Has Nothing on AM Radio,” noting that it’s no longer just right-wing publications sounding the alarm on the issue at hand.
