Congress Has Bought the Bullshit on AM Radio in Cars.  Again.

WARNING: Radio industry geekery ahead.  Turn back now if you don’t care.

Radio Ink is reporting today that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act,” which failed to be passed in the previous Congress, is gaining momentum in this current session.  It was reintroduced in the Senate by Rafael “Ted Abandons His District at the First Sign of Snow” Cruz, Jr. of Texas and Ed “Barely Spends Any Time at Home While Manipulating Stocks” Markey of Massachusetts, and it advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this month.  The House version is backed by Gus “Who?” Bilirakis of Florida and Frank “Also Who?” Pallone of New Jersey.

Here’s the deal. The automakers want to drop AM radio reception from entertainment systems in electric vehicles. They claim that it would cost them too much money to add the cable shielding or build the electromagnetic filtering systems necessary to make AM radio listenable in EVs. That claim is asinine. Anyone who has ever worked with RF knows that these filters are not new or expensive technology, and by the manufacturers’ own admission, the most expensive methods will cost a whole $50 per vehicle, at most, adding relatively nothing to the overall sales price. It’s something the automakers should have been doing anyway.

However, the real reason for them removing AM is valid justification: nobody is listening anymore.

There are multiple factors behind that.

For one, the audio quality. Even at its best, an AM radio station’s full operational bandwidth is only 10 kilohertz, both in audio and RF. The human ear hears more than twice that much; about 22 kilohertz. The audible portion of an FM station’s signal is usually about 15 kilohertz, from about 40 Hz on the bass end to 15 kHz on the treble end. Even though you’re still missing that top 12 kilohertz in an FM signal’s audio, the addition of the sound from 10 kHz to 15 kHz sounds vastly better compared to AM.

There are also the differences in vulnerability to interference.  By the very nature of its modulation method and the mediumwave frequencies the broadcast AM band occupies, it’s highly susceptible to all kinds of interference from myriad sources: car engines (combustion and electric), LED lights (traffic lights, street lights, headlights), power lines (especially high-voltage lines and power lines carrying broadband Internet service… yes, that’s a thing), leaky copper data lines (DSL or cable TV and Internet), lightning storms anywhere within 150 miles or so, and even a complete lack of reception while going under bridges or through tunnels.  FM, for the same reasons, is immune to almost all of those problems.

But that’s all relatively unimportant.  If people really find content worth listening to, they’ll put up with all the technological disadvantages, especially in the car.  AM reception in car radios is well-known to often be superior to home and portable AM receivers specifically because they’ve been designed to reject the noise that a combustion engine introduces.  There’s even a recently-released portable radio that’s quickly become very popular with enthusiasts because it’s basically a car radio in a plastic case.  So car listening, both AM and FM, had really been the last safe haven from all the competition up until streaming and Bluetooth became ubiquitous.

But streaming and Bluetooth are ubiquitous today.  In fact, it’s been two years now since Edison Research measured that people spent more time listening to on-demand audio (like podcasts, personal music collections, or streaming individual songs) than linear audio (like live streaming, satellite radio, or traditional AM or FM radio) in the car.  Personal vehicles are no longer the safe haven that they’ve long been for for traditional radio.  So that leaves AM radio with just one last defense: the programming.  And that defense has pretty much evaporated, because the programming is shit today.

See, AM radio has already been through three lives.

First was the original, general entertainment era, from the 1920’s up through the mid-to-late 1950’s.  It’s what’s considered the “Golden Age of Radio,” home to all your favorite “old-time radio” programs.  Comedies like “Amos ‘n’ Andy”, “Fibber McGee and Molly,” “The Great Gildersleeve,” and “Our Miss Brooks.”  “The Shadow” is easily radio’s most famous superhero detective.  The original soap operas — so named because they were often sponsored by housekeeping products — were radio productions of this era.  One in particular, “Guiding Light,” started on the radio in 1944, transitioned to TV in 1968, and continued until 2007, making it the longest-running broadcast drama of all time!  “Gunsmoke” also started its production as a radio show in this era.

But when television became the dominant general entertainment medium in the 50’s, radio very nearly died.  FM was around, but barely.  AM was all anyone was listening to, and those listeners were pretty much gone.

To give you a famous (and my favorite) example, Jack Benny had, for many years, simulcast his Sunday night show on both CBS Radio and CBS Television, but in 1957, he abandoned the radio broadcast and went TV-only.  Stan Freberg filled the CBS Radio timeslot with a new sketch comedy show, but the only companies that wanted to advertise were the tobacco and alcohol brands.  Freberg was a devout Baptist; he didn’t smoke and he didn’t drink, and he refused to take those companies’ money.  The lack of advertisers led the show to viciously mock Madison Avenue to hilarious effect, and when the show ended after only 15 episodes, he started his own ad agency.  He set a new high bar for TV commercials by, basically, beating the people who abandoned AM radio (and his show) for TV at their own game.

However, that opened the door for AM’s second lease on life: music radio.  Top 40 stations across the country became wildly successful.  The DJ’s became local celebrities — and even regional and national celebrities on the 50,000-watt “clear channel” stations that covered half of the country.  WABC in New York set the gold standard on the East Coast.  WLS and WCFL in Chicago, CKLW in Windsor, and CHUM in Toronto held down the Midwest.  The legendary KHJ in Los Angeles (whose jingles were immortalized in the Everclear song “AM Radio”) was known up and down the West Coast for their great music and “Boss Jocks.”

There were many more regional and local AM Top 40 stations that are just as legendary, like KFWB in Los Angeles, KCBQ in San Diego, KFRC in San Francisco, KLIF in Dallas, WKBW in Buffalo, WFIL in Philadelphia, WAYS in Charlotte, WMCA in New York, KQV in Pittsburgh, Jacksonville’s “Big Ape” WAPE, or my own hometown of Miami’s WFUN and “Tiger Radio” WQAM.

This is the type of station that WKRP in Cincinnati wanted so desperately to be.

In the mid-to-late 70’s, FM started to take over as the home for music formats thanks to the higher fidelity and reduced interference.  AM radio faced another crisis.

It was talk radio that gave AM its third saving breath.  Now, to be clear, there had been talk formats all along.  While AM was no longer considered suitable for music, the lower fidelity was just fine for spoken word programming, and the amount of interference at the time was still considered tolerable.  The sports talk format was developed in this time, expanding from one or two shows on a given station to a full day’s worth of programming.  It was the first talk format fully devoted to one singular topic.

The common narrative that political talk radio wasn’t possible or practical until the Fairness Doctrine was repealed is just plain incorrect.  It was being done.  New York talk host Bob “Get Off My Phone!” Grant is probably the most prominent example.  It just wasn’t as prevalent before the repeal.  The belief that stations were required to air opposing viewpoints with equal time is also incorrect.  The Fairness Doctrine required stations to offer equal airtime to those with opposing viewpoints, and if someone took them up on that offer, then the station would be required to put them on the air (subject to all the standard requirements and regulations, of course).

That alone was enough to keep politically-charged talk shows to a minimum, as stations really didn’t want to have to put on some rando who thinks themself the earthly spokesperson of Zarton, Supreme Potentate of Mrixl Prime to be the authority on city zoning reforms.  However, requests for equal time were rarely made.  One might argue that so few people requested equal time because the limited political talk didn’t cause much objection, but I would argue that it has more to do with the fact that most people just don’t care enough to make a fuss.  Most of those who disagree just won’t listen.  Which was one of the exact points made by those who advocated for the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal.

The 1987 repeal did, however, undeniably open the floodgates, and right-wing political talk radio most certainly did save AM radio, with the likes of Grant and Rush Limbaugh leading the way.  Overnight paranormal talk legend Art Bell made brilliant use of the timeslot and AM radio’s nighttime long-distance properties.  Hosts like WSB Atlanta’s Neal Boortz or WKXW Trenton’s John and Ken (later moving to KFI Los Angeles) made big names for themselves with local and state topics.  Political talk radio boomed in the late 80’s and 90’s, and was still good enough for the Aughts and even the early Teens.

But the problem that the AM band faces now is that, once again, everything that had made it successful has moved to other media.

Fox Nazi Propaganda Channel began eating into the political commentary audience in the 2000’s, particularly with coverage of the War on Middle-Easterners Terror and personalities like Bill “Ludacris’s Gangsta Rap is Poisoning the Minds of the Youth” O’Reilly and the ostensible “debate” show featuring Sean “Responsible for Convincing Trump to Run for President” Hannity and token liberal Alan Colmes (who never even attempted to be the effective foil that Jessica Tarlov is on “The Five”).  Matt Drudge became the go-to for breaking news online.

Sure, there was still Limbaugh.  Hannity’s national radio show began literally the day before September 11th, and is still going as the most-listened-to talk radio show in the country (which doesn’t count for much these days).  Glenn Beck’s national radio show actually launched in January of 2002 because of the boost that the attacks gave to talk radio, and it still continues, as well.  But numerous other widely-syndicated right-wing radio shows have come and gone, including Drudge’s own show, Michael “Savage” Weiner, Dennis “Babe” Miller, O’Reilly’s short-lived attempt at radio (which he was terrible at, by the way), and this just in: Rush Limbaugh is still dead (read my thoughts about that here).

Nowadays, online video and podcasting has taken the lead, with outlets like The Daily Wire (Ben “Dry Wife” Shapiro, Matt “Diaper Fetish” Walsh, Michael “Women Icky” Knowles, and Jeremy “Anything I Don’t Like is Woke” Boreing), Real America’s Voice (Charlie “Shrinkface” Kirk, Steve “Two Shirts” Bannon), The Blaze (Glenn “Chalkboard” Beck, Mark “Master Shake” Levin, Dave “One of the Good Gays” Rubin, Jason “Supposedly a Sports Guy” Whitlock; and Steve “Ballbusting Fetish” Deace), Rumble (where Media Matters found last year that 57% of the most-watched videos were from right-wing media outlets, personalities, or politicians), and various independent efforts from the likes of Joe “Roid Rage” Rogan, Patrick “Multi-Level Marketer” Bet-David, Tim “Beanie Boy” Pool, Brett “Ben Shapiro’s Female Clone” Cooper, Candace “Unironcally Uses Lenny Kravitz’s ‘American Woman’ as Her Entrance Music” Owens, and the pathetically-flailing Steven “Watch It” Crowder.

It’s the same story for sports.  Commentary and debate audiences (especially in ESPN’s “Embrace Debate” era) moved solidly to the TV sports networks.  Each major sport and each level of those sports has their own spaces online.  The legalization of online sports gambling in multiple states has led to a proliferation of podcasts, video shows, and online publications on that topic, and has even taken over all pregame discussion on the Detroit Lions radio pregame show to the point that my mother won’t even listen to it until the game actually starts.

Now even FM radio is starting to face a crisis.  Edison Research reported last year that while 70% of those age 18 or older listen to AM or FM radio in their primary vehicle, 55% also listen to online audio of some sort (paid or ad-supported), 32% listen to podcasts, 25% listen to CDs, 22% listen to satellite radio (paid or ad-supported), and 16% listen to their own digital audio collection (downloaded music files).  In other words, the time spent listening to AM or FM radio (literally noted in radio ratings by the term “TSL”) is constantly and consistently decreasing.

Even more to the point, Edison also recorded last year that Spotify has surpassed both traditional radio and YouTube as the most popular platform for discovering new music.  The one thing music radio formats still could have going for them hasn’t been solely their own domain for some time, but the majority of music discovery is now done online without their involvement whatsoever.  Additionally, AM and FM only account for 35% of all audio listening.  It’s a plurality, but certainly not a majority.

As a result, the radio industry is shrinking.  Literally.  Radio Ink reported in early January that 61 AM radio stations went off the air in 2024.  They weren’t sold, they didn’t change call letters, frequencies, names, or formats.  They shut off their transmitters and turned their licenses in to the FCC to be deleted.  They are gone.  And while, in that same article, the publication touts the recent $80 Million sale of Salem Media Group’s contemporary Christian music stations to Educational Media Foundation (you’d know them as K-LOVE) as “terrestrial radio growth,” it’s nothing of the sort.  It’s consolidation.  It’s one less company operating in an entire format.  People lost their jobs.  My own cousin, “Big Wave” Dave, moved from Salem’s Los Angeles CCM station KFSH to Salem’s Christian talk station KPRZ in San Diego.

Traditional AM and FM radio is literally dying off, first in terms of the listeners it appeals to, followed by the advertisers willing to pay for airtime, followed by the ownership groups and companies that actually run the stations.  And as I’ve noted before, I’ve been bearish on the whole radio industry for over 20 years now, but even I did not expect the bottom to drop out this quickly.

So the automakers are literally just following market demands and trends.  AM is irrelevant.  FM is almost there, too.  New vehicle buyers want other in-dash entertainment options whether they’re buying an EV or a CV.

But here come the National Association of Broadcasters, the corporate radio Big Boys™ bribing bullying lobbying group, insisting that AM radio be included in EVs anyway.  And because they can’t just come right out and admit that they want to hold audiences hostage and milk the cow until it’s not only dry, but until it’s dead, they have to lie to justify their demand.

Their first lie is that listeners will lose access to alerts from the Emergency Alert System if they can’t listen to AM radio in their vehicles.  This lie is just plain absurd, and the NAB knows it because their member stations were intimately involved with designing the system.

To understand this fully, we need a history lesson.

In 1951, early in the Cold War, we established a completely different system called CONELRAD.  Using a control system over telephone lines, regional Air Defense Control Centers would send an alert or warning signal to specific AM radio stations designated as “Basic Key Stations,” which would then relay the message to any “Relay Key Stations” (also AM) that might be under their authority.  The listeners to a Key Station and all other downstream stations (AM, FM, and TV) were alerted by the Key Station turning its transmitter off for five seconds, back on for five seconds, off again for five seconds, and then back on with a 15-second, 1 kilohertz alert tone.

At that point, all regular broadcast stations (and, later, amateur radio operators) would be required to go off the air entirely, while the local Key Station would begin transmitting for several minutes on either 640 AM or 1240 AM.  After those few minutes, one of the other stations in the area would take over the same frequency for their own period of several minutes, then another, then another, and so on.  The idea behind this was to confuse any enemy aircraft who might use radio direction finding to target an American city.  The Allies had successfully done exactly that in Germany during World War II, and since the USSR was one of the Allies, it wasn’t a far-fetched idea that they might use the same method against us.

All radios made for sale in the United States were required by law to indicate the CONELRAD frequencies on the dial, like the one shown below.  So if you’ve ever seen a radio from that time and wondered what was up with those markings, now you know.

But there were two big problems with CONELRAD.

The worst of them was that people would turn on their radio or TV expecting to find the station they tuned in to, only to get nothing but static, and they wouldn’t know what the hell was going on.  The system required everyone to realize that they should turn their radio on to either 640 or 1240 AM, and then actively do so, instead of just shrugging and turning their sets off.  The latter is what, at best, most people would have ended up doing.  Even worse, many would have called up the station in question to ask what was going on, tying up telephone network capacity in a time of emergency.

Only slightly less problematic was that the off-on-off-on sequence was hell on the transmitters.  Many would simply fail during tests.  On top of that, remember that I mentioned lightning causing interference to AM radio signals?  Well, because all of the downstream stations were monitoring an AM “Key Station,” lightning would frequently trigger false alarms by making the downstream stations think that the Key Station they were monitoring was cycling on and off.

Due to compatibility reasons during the changeover period starting in 1963, the off-on cycling was also a problem with its successor, the Emergency Broadcast System, to the point that radio folks started calling it “the EBS Stress Test.”  That sequence was made unnecessary once all downstream stations had upgraded from CONELRAD receivers to EBS receivers.

As for how the EBS itself worked, it was the start of the modern era.  This time, all broadcast stations would stay on the air.  There were more advanced methods for enemy aircraft to target cities by, RDF had become irrelevant, and most areas didn’t have all of their transmitters clustered in the heart of a city, so it wouldn’t have posed much of a risk anyway.  Instead of a local “Key Station” each area was assigned a “Common Program Control Station,” or CPCS-1, commonly known as the “Primary,” which was still generally an AM station.  All local broadcast stations — radio and television — had to monitor the primary, but they could mostly pick and choose which alerts they decided to rebroadcast.

In conjunction with the Local Access Alert system, that included local weather and disaster alerts, which were allowed on the new EBS.  CONELRAD was not used for local weather or disaster alerts, it was strictly for civil defense.  Thanks to weather alerts on the EBS, in addition to the weekly tests, the public quickly became familiar with the now-famous two-tone Attention Signal (yes, that’s it’s proper, official name).  The local Primary was required to issue those alerts as necessary, but everyone else could choose not to rebroadcast them, instead opting to disseminate the information themselves.

The only alerts all downstream stations were required to carry were “Emergency Action Notifications,” the national EBS alerts issued by the White House.  The White House Communications Office duty officer would initiate such an alert by signaling either Aerospace Defense Command or the Federal Preparedness Agency.  The relevant agency would then relay the alert to common carriers (telephone companies and the like), radio and television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, Mutual, etc.), the Associated Press, and United Press International.  An exclusive teletype network was built for the purpose, and those receiving the EAN would then verify its authenticity and activation with a code phrase that changed daily.

A similar process was established for the phone companies, networks, and press orgs to send the EAN out to their customers, clients, and affiliates.  When the local Primary radio station received an EAN, they were to authenticate it by checking against that day’s code phrase, then, if it was verified, interrupt their regular broadcast and initiate the Attention Signal, followed by an announcement about what kind of alert is in effect. 

Despite the purpose and urgency of an Emergency Action Notification, participation in the EBS was actually voluntary. Non-participating stations were still required to monitor the local Primary, but in the event of an EAN being issued, they were to inform their listeners of the EAN and instruct them to tune to another station to receive emergency information.  The non-participating station would then go off the air until the EAN was terminated.

It was a more elaborate and elegant system than CONELRAD, and thankfully it was never necessary to put it into use at the national level.  Though there was at least one terrifying false alarm involving at least Fort Wayne’s WOWO and Minneapolis’s WCCO in 1971.

That incident and many other factors contributed to the understanding that the EBS itself, despite being less than a decade into service, needed an overhaul.  I personally started working in radio at the very tail end of the EBS era in 1993, and by then, everyone was already preparing for the 1994 approval of what we have today, the Emergency Alert System, or EAS, which officially launched in full form in 1997 (though testing had been taking place since FCC approval).

The way I like to put it is that the EAS is 80’s digital technology slapped onto 60’s analog technology.  Which is essentially correct.  The first iteration was using early-90’s computer technology — mostly developed in the 80’s — on an expanded tree-chain similar to what the EBS had pioneered, which itself was based on a statewide system built in Hawaii in the 60’s.  It was going to be prone to all of the same problems that both of those technologies were inherently prone to.

Which has proven to be true.  None of the national-level EAS tests have ever fully worked.  The first national test was an absolute disaster.  The most recent national test still had numerous failures.  I don’t think my local commercial station, WCSR in Hillsdale, Michigan, has ever received a successful national test message.  They’ve received the digital header, but the audio portion has never come through properly that I can recall.  Through no fault of theirs, mind you.  It’s just the system itself.  It’s fantastic at the state, regional, and local levels, but the top level has never functioned correctly.

It’s probably a good thing that it wasn’t activated on 9/11, because if it had been, all of the live coverage of that days events would have been interrupted by garbled noise that would have merely confused the hell out of everyone even moreso than we already were, and we were absolutely out of our minds in shock already.

But, that being said, the top-down, branch-out nature of the Emergency Alert System is smart.  It’s also smart to require all broadcast stations (AM, FM, and TV) and TV providers (cable, satellite, IPTV, etc.) to participate, and not just with receivers, but with full-fledged two-way codecs so that every station can send a received message out to the rest of the stations in the area in case they missed the original. 

Which, yes, can cause problems itself if the system isn’t set up properly.  One night, when I was working at Spring Arbor University’s WSAE, a big derecho blew through the Lower Peninsula, and our EAS box was going off like crazy with the same alert because every single time we activated, someone would activate in response, which would cause us to activate again.  By the time my shift was over, the storm had passed, but the EAS was still going.  Thankfully it had stopped cutting into our broadcast by then (something I had no control over), but I was told the morning show DJ had come in to find miles of thermal printer paper spilling out of the box, detailing every ping that happened back and forth overnight.

Needless to say, the station engineer had some phone calls and changes to make.

But when set up properly, the structure is pretty sound.  FEMA operates the national Primary Entry Point at their operations center in Virginia, where the President or their designated representative can initiate a National Emergency Message (the equivalent of the EBS’s Emergency Action Notification).  From there, the system splits out to the designated regional or state-level Primary Entry Point radio stations (some states have more than one PEP, and some PEPs serve more than one state).  Then the tree branches out to the local Primary Entry Points, of which there are must be at least two for each local area.  Every other station in that local area must set their codec to monitor at least two of those local PEPs (some codecs can monitor three or even four PEP stations).  For redundancy, any station can additionally monitor non-PEP stations.

It’s actually a very robust system that has served us well in everything but its key, stated purpose as a national emergency notification mechanism, and that’s good justification to keep it on the air and keep fixing things until the national alerts do work… whenever that might eventually happen.

SO… now that we know the history of the Emergency Alert System and understand how it works, we’re prepared to understand exactly what the National Association of Broadcasters is lying about and how.  We’re all clear on this, right?  The entire purpose of making the EBS and EAS spread out across multiple stations was because making people tune in to just one station wasn’t working.  The modern EAS is a distributed alert structure that will have a message find all listeners and viewers in the targeted area because all stations and pay-to-view TV operators must carry it under threat of FCC fines.  We’ve got that, right?

Good.

Now someone please explain to me how removing the AM radio tuner from a Ford F-150 Lightning will prevent anyone from getting an EAS alert.  I’ll wait.

Anyone?

Anyone?

The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act.

No, seriously, it won’t prevent anyone from getting an EAS alert, because EAS alerts are broadcast on every single station in the affected area.

The National Association of Broadcasters knows this fact because their own member stations are required to participate in it. Many of those stations were key in developing it. The NAB itself pushed the FCC to adopt it for reasons including the fact that it creates redundancies that even the EBS didn’t have.

Their other lie is that rural areas can only be reached by AM stations.

Now, this may take some time, but I challenge you to find any portion of this country that is not reached by either FM or TV stations via over-the-air signals, cable, satellite, or the Internet; be that over copper, fiber-optic cable, cellular service, or WiFi.

Trick question: there’s only one such area in the entire country.  It’s called the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, and even it has a few low-powered, directional AM and FM radio stations within its protected area.

Are there areas that are primarily served by AM radio stations?  Sure.  But you know how we can solve that problem?  Delete the Low-VHF TV band (channels 2 through 6) and reassign those frequencies to the FM band so that AM stations can move to them.  Low-VHF altogether sucks for the ATSC digital television technology.  That’s why most stations abandoned everything below RF channel 7 in the transition.  You might be seeing a digital “channel 4” on your screen, but it’s most likely broadcasting on the old analog channel 23 or something.

We expanded the top end of the AM band from 1610 kHz up to 1710 kHz back in 1997.  There’s no reason we can’t expand the bottom end of the FM band from 87.5 MHz down to at least 76.1 MHz.  Brazil already did it.  We were talking about doing it during the DTV transition, but nothing ever came of it.  And hell, why stop there?  If we delete TV channels 2 through 6, we could expand the FM band all the way down to 54.1 MHz!  We already know the properties of FM radio on those frequencies because analog TV audio was just FM radio.  So given that Congress and the FCC and the NAB are now suddenly so concerned about rural areas losing AM reception for emergency information, now would be the perfect time to do it!

But no.  Here in reality, flying in the face of all good sense, we have the NAB, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, the AARP (that says great things about radio’s age demographics, huh?), a “coalition of former NYPD Chiefs,” Markey, Cruz, Bilirakis, Pallone, Senators Tammy Baldwin, Kevin Kramer, Chuck Grassley, and Katie Britt, as well as Representative Dan Meuser, all noted in today’s RI piece for giving their support to a bill that will require automakers to include AM radio in electric vehicles; all repeating some form of the NAB’s lies about the EAS or talking points about rural coverage.

And why?

Well, for the Congresscritters, it could be because someone’s promising them better kickbacks than the automakers are willing to give them.  But it’s mostly because they’re uninformed and unwilling to become informed.

For the NAB, it’s because they’re so greedy that they’re too stupid to understand that their greed is literally killing them.

For the AARP, it’s because old people are the only ones still listening to the radio in any real numbers anymore.

For Carr, it’s because he’s a not an engineer but a Drumpf-appointed telecom lawyer who doesn’t belong anywhere near the FCC.

For the coalition of former New York police chiefs?  No idea.

One thing is for certain, though: old, out-of-touch legislators have never met a con job they wouldn’t fall for.  This is just the latest example.