Quote:
Originally Posted by nodrogd
When you consider costs only go down through mass production. No other countries in Europe were testing it, let alone promoting it. Who would pay a premium to upgrade their car stereo when a far superior transmission method (FM) was already available & fitted to the cars already. The system was also never tested on national AM network, where phasing between adjacent transmitters on the same frequency could have been a problem. The BBC have always synchronised their transmissions across their AM networks so that audio sync & carrier interference was kept to a minimum. The national commercials have never done this, which is very noticeable in fringe areas. Indeed if you listen to TalkSport at night, even turning a directional radio away from the good signal, you will usually hear out of sync audio coming from adjacent transmitters. It was even more noticeable with Virgin & then Absolute.
Also with more expensive kit going in at transmission sites, there would have been inevitable increases to the IBA rental charges & therefore operating costs for the stations involved.
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I think AM stereo in cars would have been rolled out gradually initially for high end vehicles.
However your point about out of synch audio is one of the reasons why MW was always not an easy listen, especially after dark. Maybe this was less of an issue in the USA which is why AM stereo got off the ground.