AM radio listeners set to be permanently tuned out in Japan
Since February, some commercial radio broadcasters have begun a trial suspension of AM radio, with a real possibility the pause will extend to a permanent discontinuation across the country as broadcasters look to cut costs.
Thirteen of the 47 commercial operators in Japan have shut off their transmitters to see what effect the temporary end of AM broadcasts will have. AM was launched in 1925, bringing Japan into the radio broadcast age, but may not last long enough to see its 100th anniversary next year.
"Radio was at the center of the home, a medium enjoyed by the entire family," said Tadanobu Okabe, curator of the Japan Radio Museum in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.
The museum in central Japan displays a wide collection of radios and documents, mainly covering the "golden era" of Japanese radio from the 1930s through the 1950s, organized in a way that lays out the chronological history of broadcasting in Japan which emerged five years after the world's first radio broadcast in the United States.
It brought to the people such historic events as the "Jewel Voice Broadcast" on Aug. 15, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito announced that the Japanese government had accepted unconditional surrender at the end of World War II, among other major news events.
