Dr. Don Rose.

Wolfman Jack.

Crossroads of the West.

Joey Mitchell.

They are all so yesterday.

And so is AM radio, which is what they have in common.

By the way, if you weren’t onboard earth — and in Northern California — when the likes of Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson were the influencers of their day, here’s who and what I’m referring to:

Dr. Don Rose of KFRC San Francisco fame, the No. 1 morning drive jock in the north state.

Wolfman Jack, “can you dig it”, whose signal from a radio station just south of the border was so strong you could hear him across most of the United States.

Crossroads of the West, the intro to the Sunday evening broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from Salt Lake City, that you could pick up on the high Sierra when everything else on the AM band was nothing but static.

Joey Mitchell, the morning jock on KRAK radio in Sacramento, the No. 1 country station in the United States at the time.

Wolfman Jack and Joey Mitchell were both from Brooklyn.

But I digress.

Not just the rundown of the four aforementioned but the purpose of the column.

It’s about AM radio.

A little bit of background.

Ford has a better idea.

They want to call it quits when it comes to AM radio.

Because of that the Federal Emergency Management Agency believes there ought to be a law.

And they want Congress to pass it.

“It” is mandating auto manufacturers to keep AM radios as standard equipment on new vehicles they sell.

The FEMA indicates there are 75 radio stations in the country equipped to continue operating during and after an emergency.

The signals they are able to transmit reach 90 percent of the nation’s population.

Even though AM radio reached its “Zenith” — a warning for those infatuated with archaic brands such as the RCA Victor with the dog’s head cocked toward the phonograph, this is an intended pun — when portable transistor radios were big, it is still alive.

That said, let’s be serious.

The most universal communication device today isn’t radios. It’s smartphones.

In case no one at the FEMA hasn’t noticed, smartphones are a bit more mobile in terms of where you can take them compared to a radio installed in the dashboard of a 4,000-pound car.

There is also a little detail that Ford et al can tell you about.

The onboard electronics needed for electric vehicles increases the static that AM frequency has to deal with.

The cost to reduce interference via shielding so the signal comes through will cost carmakers close to $3.8 billion over seven years, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

One might think since the government is spending billions to get Internet access into every nook and cranny in rural America, that they might want to toss in a couple more dollars and make it work with the emergency broadcast network.

Better yet, maybe FEMA can follow accessible data.

A study by the Consumer Technology Association indicates that the FEMA emergency alert system’s nationwide test on Oct. 4 was received by most Americans on their smartphones.

The percentage of Americans who said they received the alert via AM radio was about one percent.

The reason is simple.

Most of the time we aren’t in our cars.

But most of the time we are either glued to our phones or else in extremely close proximity to them.

I admit that I’m not a big fan of AM.

Or FM, any longer, for that matter.

Don’t get me wrong.

Occasionally, I’ll indulge in listening to the Tom Sullivan talk show on KFBK.

And when I’m driving in the eastern Sierra in Inyo and Mono counties, it’s a treat to listen to local AM broadcasts.

But that is the extent of the time I spend tuned to traditional radio, AM or FM.

And I blame it on a car salesman from Manteca Ford.

Before I test drove cars and ended up with the 2017 Ford Focus, the salesman asked what my favorite music was.

I said anything by Frank Sinatra.

He made sure the radios in the cars were on Sirius XM Channel 70, the Sinatra Channel.

It’s the perfect complement to the 25 Sinatra CDs I own.

I do listen to other channels and CDs, but the go to is the Sinatra Channel.

I’m clearly old enough to have gotten caught up in Old Blue Eyes.

And that means I’m clearly old enough to know to tune into an AM station in my area for the latest and most up to date information regarding whatever emergency is going on.

As for those under 40 or so, the odds are that’s not the case.

Congress mandating Ford — or Tesla for that matter — to stay wedded to old technology and what is now second tier communication for the masses, demonstrates just how government bureaucracies move at the speed of paper work in triplicate.

It makes about as much sense as if Congress had mandated the Post Office to retain the Pony Express for emergency communications after telegraph lines were completed between Missouri and California in 1861.

Of course, the real reason why more than a few politicians are lining up behind the FEMA regarding the AM radio mandate in new vehicles has nothing to do with the emergency broadcast system.

It is because, for the most part, traditional radio (both AM and FM) is listened to primarily when people are driving.

FM radio frequency doesn’t have the static issues AM does.

As such, customer demand will likely keep radios in new cars for a long time to come.

And to be honest, radios per se in vehicles are unlikely to go away.

That is because Detroit’s next revenue frontier is subscription based services, of which SiriusXM provides a big foot in the door.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the day is coming when GM et al will rip a page from the Apple playbook and install radios that companies like SiriusXM will have to pay them ongoing royalties to access so they can sell their monthly subscriptions.

Perhaps the real national emergency is the fact both bureaucracies and Congress are driving government while suffering from tunnel vision.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com