Radio in the United States

American radio broadcasts in two bands: FM and AM. Some stations are only talk radio- featuring interviews and discussions- while music radio stations broadcast one particular type of music: Top 40, hip-hop, country, etc. Radio broadcast companies have become increasingly consolidated in recent years. National Public Radio is the nation's primary public radio network, but most radio stations are commercial and profit-oriented. Talk radio as a political medium has also exploded in popularity during the 1990s, due to the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which meant that stations no longer had to "balance" their day by programming alternative points of view. The FCC has recently approved a transition to digital radio technology which allows both FM and AM stations to"piggyback" digital data on top of their existing analog broadcast. When the transition is complete at some point in the far future, the analog broadcast. will be replaced with true high-quality digital broadcasts. See IBOC and HD Radio. A new form of radio that is gaining popularity is satellite radio. The two biggest subscriptions based radio services are Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, which have recently both merged together to form Sirius XM RAdio. Unlike terrestrial radio music channels are commercial free and other channels feature very minimal commercials. Satellite radio also is not regulated by the FCC.