Nigel Holmes of Radio Australia has a great piece on the MediaUK site about the value of MW/AM broadcast band during disasters.
"It turns out that smartphones aren't a good bet
for the future of radio transmission; and there are particular benefits
to AM radio."
He doesn't talk about going digital, but he got me thinking...
What if we could make that band media-rich, just what smartphone users are already used to? DRM would do that nicely, especially at the 18kHz or 20kHz bandwidth being used in Australia and other places!
Nigel does mention the low current requirement of his venerable GE Super Radio. We will need to work with DRM equipment manufacturers to improve some things like power consumption. I can certainly imagine a new line of Newstar pocket DRM receivers with multimedia capability and high sensitivity on MW.