Originally Posted by Vectorsum:
“There may be a niche for lower power AM stations, tightly focussed on local travel to/from work audiences? It's nearly the reverse of the DAB situation; AM can't be pronounced dead until it's not on car radio dials.”
5 Live, which can only be received on MW unless you have a DAB radio, has 5 million listeners a week, so I can't see it going for a long time, same as Talksport has a healthy following on MW as well. I think a lot has to do with cars, only a small minority have DAB and until all cars have DAB fitted and the older generation of cars die out, AM will live on.
That said it is definitely the poor relation of FM and DAB now, and it only has about 7 per cent of the audience, probably mostly people who listen to 5 Live, Absolute and Talksport.