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Music Transportation

CarPlay? Android Auto? Most People Still Just Listen to AM/FM Radio (9to5mac.com) 209

Posted by EditorDavid from the don't-touch-that-dial dept.
"New data suggests that what a lot of people do most often in their car is listen to AM/FM radio," writes 9to5Mac. "Yes, it's 2023, and you might think AM/FM radio is on the way out, but new data show that to not be the case for a lot of people..."

The market research company Edison Research used one-day listening diarires (for Americans older than 13) to measure the amount of time spent listening to audio — then compared results for those with and without an in-car entertainment system.

Those without an in-car entertainment system spent 67% of their time listening to AM/FM radio — with the rest listening to Sirius XM (12%), a streaming service (9%), or podcasts (4%).

But among those with an in-car entertainment system... 46% still listened to AM/FM radio. Less than a fifth listened to Sirus XM (19%), a streaming service (18%), or podcasts (7%).

The researchers' conclusion? "Even those with these systems choose AM/FM for nearly half of their in-car listening. For many people, even with so many new options, radio and the in-car environment continue to just go together."
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CarPlay? Android Auto? Most People Still Just Listen to AM/FM Radio More

CarPlay? Android Auto? Most People Still Just Listen to AM/FM Radio

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  • Not in Norway they're not (Score:5, Informative)

    by excelsior_gr ( 969383 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @03:47AM (#63944727)
    Car radio in Norway was killed by the transition to DAB. You can listen to something as long as the car is within the range of a town. Stretches between towns are radio-silent, or you can listen to whatever you have downloaded on your smartphone. Much progress, very digital, wow.

    • So, they didn't wait until the DAB coverage (or, I don't know Digital Radio Mondiale ?) was finished before switching off FM (and respectively AM) Radio?
      Weird.

      (But my views are biased: my European country is tiny (and rich) enough so upgrading the whole coverage didn't have that many hiccups. Things might be different in a country were "knocking on the neighbor's door to ask for a bit of salt" includes "walking 30km in the snow to that neighbor".)

      • To be fair, the Norwegian landscape does not favor line-of-sight communications. But that should have been really obvious. Maybe they were hoping that people would pay for satellite radio?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There's a coverage map here: https://radio.no/dekning/ [radio.no]

        That suggests that you should be able to get the NRK channels almost everywhere in a car with reasonable antenna, including in many tunnels. The situation for commercial radio is a lot worse, but those still broadcast on FM as I understand it.

        • That map certainly does not align with my experience. I don't know what kind of antenna my car has, but the signal is dropped so often that whatever patience I have is lost and I turn the damned thing off. FM would become a bit unclear with static for a minute or two, but the DAB just goes silent without any indication whether it is going to get better after the next turn.

      • This is basically introducing a use case for shortwave, which is crazy in this century.

  • Local advantage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <[ten.duagradg] [ta] [2todhsals]> on Monday October 23, 2023 @03:49AM (#63944731) Homepage
    One thing I like about FM on long road trips is that you can scan the local frequencies to sample the local radios. Drive around Europe and hear languages you've never heard, music you couldn't imagine, local news (if you can understand them), etc...
    You can't do that over Internet radio.
    And anyway, Internet Radio is a pain in the ass if you are not looking for anything in particular: plenty of apps to install, bluetooth headaches, apps to manage while driving to juggle between Live, Delayed, Library, Podcasts, etc...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dpille ( 547949 )
      You can do that over internet radio. Try the Radio Garden app. And before you presume it's a pain in the ass, it's just one app, and the sound can come out of your device directly. Though I will admit you probably don't want to try to click on each station in each city you're driving by. Or not driving anywhere near.

  • What do people use for nav in the US? (Score:5, Informative)

    by shilly ( 142940 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @03:57AM (#63944739)

    Here in the UK, the reason for CarPlay and Android Auto being popular is that they are better for navigation than the car's built-in systems. So that's the main use case. Listening to stuff is secondary.

    • Sounds like the two things are conflated. Yes I use Android Carplay, and yes I listen to DAB+ radio while navigating with Carplay. Too many ads on Spotify, too poor value to pay for a subscription.

      • *Android Auto. Sorry have iPhone on the mind.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Weird, I wonder if Tesla subsidizes Spotify. Because I neither pay for a subscription, nor have ads.

      • I find the combination of the ads and the DJs much more annoying than ads on Spotify. But I also just pay for a spotify subscription as I find it to be worth it.

    • Here in the UK, the reason for CarPlay and Android Auto being popular is that they are better for navigation than the car's built-in systems. So that's the main use case. Listening to stuff is secondary.

      It's the same in the US, really. I think most people who use navigation at all use either Waze or Google Maps (even iPhone owners), with a much smaller number using Apple's Maps.

      But it does seem pretty obvious those people (like me) are in the minority. What's funny is, if you're in rapidly building traffic, you can tell who the people are that are on Waze or whatever - because you'll see a handful of cars all head in a new direction at more or less the same time.

      I will say when I'm using Waze, I'm almost c

    • Google maps on the phone itself.

      When I'm streaming, or playing MP3s or podcasts, I'm using the phone itself too, via Bluetooth to the head unit.

      In just about all cases, the phone has a better UI than the dumb JBL/Toyota head unit, and Toyota wants money to update it's maps with - get this - an SD card.

      Nope.

      The head unit and sound system sound pretty OK - though it's not going to win any dipshit rap-thunderbox contests - but the 2017 UI is a pitiful design, and I'm not inclined to try and use my phone throug

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      That's not saying anything great about CarPlay and Android Auto, but rather how terrible most automakers' inbuilt nav systems are :

      Tesla's nav system is nice, but I've been in some just awful ones whose manufacturers should feel embarrassed.

      I'm really shocked by these numbers, though. Why would you prefer radio over, say, Spotify?

      • Re: What do people use for nav in the US? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @07:00AM (#63944893) Journal

        Oh, WHOLE different question. I detest Spotify, and all kinds of algo-served programming.

        1: I have 20,000 MP3s of MY tastes on my phone if I want that.
        2: I can play what I want, without ads.
        3: if I want programmed music, the human curators at Radio Paradise and KCRW do a much better job than any algorithm can.
        4: Spotify is dead, canned music (as are my MP3s, no question). If I want to know what's happening NOW, radio, left of the dial, please.

        • I was going to add something similar.

          I haven't listened to radio in the car for 25+ years. I listen to MP3. No streaming, no sat. No commercials (I can't STAND commercials, never could). No fees. Prior to that, my own CD's in a multichanger.

          So nobody does that now? Or is that the few missing percent? Or is the missing percent people who listen to nothing?

    • Re:What do people use for nav in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @06:57AM (#63944883) Homepage Journal

      Not just better, but free. You have to pay for map updates for the built in navigation in most cars, and many require a subscription service for things like like traffic information. You get all that for free on your phone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HBI ( 10338492 )

        Not even mentioning the software on the in-car nav system sucking in comparison to the stuff on the phone.

        Part of it is the liability-reducing limitations on the in-car systems. They cover the company's ass nicely but they are user-hostile.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I've noticed that some are finally getting decently responsive though. No more dragging the map and a second later it starts to move. Some manufacturers use decently high resolution displays too.

          Of course I still just want them to show Android Auto.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      I mainly drive in Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands, in all three countries I use Carplay for updated traffic info (on this Nissan by TomTom!) and hands-free calls.
      The navigator build in to my Nissan is OK but the past year I've had two occasions where I pulled out the old TomTom for more correct navigation.
      I have used streaming via the phone but because I'm a frugal phone user my cheap contract has a 10 GB limit on data, I do not consider it as a replacement for radio.
      Therefore virtually all my radio

    • Our car's implementation is so utterly terrible that I don't pair my phone with the car any more. Too often it'd pair to the car (so the phone would be silent) while the car's "media" was off, so I wouldn't hear anything at all. If you get that sorted out, then you'd find that the radio would somehow overrule the phone, so you wouldn't get maps prompts, or else the phone would override the radio so you'd get silence apart from the maps prompts. Just waaay too much hassle trying to get all that right with th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Here in the UK, the reason for CarPlay and Android Auto being popular is that they are better for navigation than the car's built-in systems. So that's the main use case. Listening to stuff is secondary.

      Pretty much this. Google maps is far superior to any other nav system in the UK. So most people use their phones for navigation so the use case of these systems pretty much comes down to screen and audio mirroring.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Listening to the radio in the car is for me the current traffic info while commuting.

  • Because of better reception and quality - also I can then listen to my radio-stations abroad. But, yes, there's nothing wrong with analog AM/FM, no reason to scrap it or replace it with DAB.

  • All I really need is a direct, no-middleman-services access to Spotify. That's it. All other software can go F itself.

  • Indeed (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) *

    Most people don't even know how to connect their phone to the hands-free system of their car.
    That why half the drivers have one hand to their ear.

    • I suspect that's a big part of it. Even today with people who have grown up with tech a large portion of the populace just isn't very tech literate. Even if they are its often focused onto a specific component and they don't really think in a way that lends itself to thinking outside of the box.

      Think about in the 1980's how many VCR's were always blinking 12:00 because the owner didn't know how to set the time. Oh and even back then you could typically schedule a recording on VCR's . . . except almost no

  • "OK, Boomer" is appropriate here for once (Score:4, Insightful)

    by phoenix321 ( 734987 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @04:23AM (#63944757)

    In 2021, the average car owner in the USA was between 55 and 64 years old.

    https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

    The age graph looks like a slightly skewed normal distribution, so about a little less than half of car owners could even be older than that.

    It is pretty much the Boomer generation and older who are most of the car owners today. It is not surprising that they do not listen to streaming music but AM/FM radio.

    There's probably a handful of guys here clamoring for AM radio, but the "convention of American AM radio listeners under 40" is probably the smallest event ever.-

    • I'm in my 30's and there's one AM station I listen to because that's where the majority of local sports broadcasting takes place. It's not because I like AM radio vs. anything else.

      Obviously I could stream that, but then I'm using the data on phone.
    • I am not a boomer, used to listen to CD's in the car, then my own collections of music on USB sticks. Then I discovered EVs about a decade ago, and since then most of the time I prefer to drive in silence. On occasion, I want some noise in the car, I turn on FM radio, one of two stations either music or news. The car actually automatically finds the stations over the internet when FM goes out of range (when traveling out of state), so perhaps it qualifies as streaming, but honestly, FM radio is good enough

    • Re:"OK, Boomer" is appropriate here for once (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @07:53AM (#63944987)

      In 2021, the average car owner in the USA was between 55 and 64 years old.

      Given the paywall, I wasn't able to check their source (an interesting thing to make citation a premium feature). However I was able to find a number of other reports that I think show that data to not mean what you think it means:
      https://www.thezebra.com/resou... [thezebra.com]
      https://www.federalreserve.gov... [federalreserve.gov]
      https://hedgescompany.com/blog... [hedgescompany.com]

      In short, the data suggests that the average *new car buyer* was between 55 and 64. So it does not speak to ownership, but who is willing and able to pony up the cash for the average $48k new car. It does not include:
      -Used car purchasers
      -Cars passed down from older family members to younger family members

      So we have that nowadays the average 0-year car is in the hands of a 55-64 year old. But what is the average age of a car on the road? Currently about 12.5 years. So the data tells us nothing about the vast vast majority of cars on the road, so old as to make the average 12.5 years.

    • Not discounting the data completely, but remember that car owners doesn't always mean car drivers. My first 2 cars (the second of which I had until I was 25) were technically owned by my parents, even though I was the sole driver. This is pretty often the case that a young person is bought a car but the title is still technically in the name of their parents until they're old enough to purchase a car on their own.

    • It's pretty much dead on the East Coast. The amount of interference is not to be believed. I remember it working a lot better 30+ years ago. I am personally of the opinion of rail caternary towers being one of the biggest issues, but I don't doubt there are others.

  • Who are these people? (Score:3)

    by vistic ( 556838 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @05:23AM (#63944775)

    I listened to CDs in my car from 1999 to 2009... then iPod/iPhone from then on (first with aux cable, then via stereo that could read the iPod/iPhone library, then CarPlay). And of all the friends Ive had in my cars over the years, Ive had people want to hook up their iPod or iPhone... but never once has anyone ever wanted to turn on the radio.
    Why would I want to listen to music thats been chosen for me? The music on the radio has been awful on any available station for as long as I can remember.

    • Re:Who are these people? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @08:01AM (#63945011)

      Well, you have:
      -Talk radio. Half the time I'm taking my drive to let NPR catch me up on some information. It's right there, easy, and the sponsorship is hardly intrusive (well, apart from their funding drives). Sure I *could* use an app to stream NPR stories, but it's not any better and the NPR station tends to mix in more locally relevant stories into the feed without me having to peruse. Sometimes at a key time a local news station takes over a radio station and that's pretty good too.
      -I don't *care* but I want some music. Particularly with passengers, a radio station is neutral territory where we don't have to discuss my particular taste in music, it just is some inoffensive 'muzak' station to fill the air. I'm not choosing the songs or anything, and that's some decent laziness.
      -New music discovery. Ok, this one is like finding a needle in a haystack, but all my music collection and the streaming services tend to play for me what I've already heard. Streaming services *can* do some music discovery, but the algorithms seem to want to me re-listen to stuff I've heard rather than expose me to new stuff. However the radio rarely plays something I'd really want to revisit, and it often replays the same stuff too, but I hear unfamiliar songs a bit more often on radio than I do otherwise (the bar is very low, *nothing* seems particularly geared toward new songs).

      If I've hopped through the presets and am tired of what's happening, then it's off to my music collection.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Why would I want to listen to music thats been chosen for me?

      That's funny, this is one of the reasons I like radio. I listen to music a lot at home and in the car and while I listen to my own play lists at home in the car I prefer radio as it bring variety. By choosing the station I choose the theme and I get fed a raft of artists and subgenres I don't regularly listen to. That does mean that I sometimes get stuff I don't like but changing stations is easy.

  • It all boils down to convenience. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sique ( 173459 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @05:42AM (#63944799) Homepage
    Your AM/FM radio just starts when starting the car, and it requires minimal operation. And if you are driving locally, long ago you found a station which does not suck too much, and this station is forever playing in your car, making AM/FM a zero interaction facility, which is just there.

    Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are much more hassle compared to that. You have too many things to set, to many playlists to choose from, to much fiddling and tuning until it actually runs. And for that, you have to be actually interested in what plays in your car, you have your attention diverted from actually driving your car, which is not a good thing to begin with.

    If I am driving through places where my preferred stations are not available, I just switch the car entertainment off. No reason to invest brainpower into something which is just there to play over the car noises.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      On Android most apps allow you to resume playback when connected to a Bluetooth device, so you can queue up some playlists in advance and they just start playing where you left off next time you get into the car

      You can also set Google Maps to automatically open and show your saved destinations, so with one or two taps before setting off you can have live traffic info on your commute. Even if you don't use that, if Google Now has access to your work address saved in Google Maps, it will notify you before you

    • "Your AM/FM radio just starts when starting the car, "

      I've noticed that bug on my Chevy. The radio sometimes turns on when starting the car even if it turned off when you parked.

      It's right up there with don't look at the screen while you are driving warning that comes on while you are driving.

    • I think BMW must have a superior apple CarPlay implementation. Everyone I know has all these issues with it. Mine just works. I get in the car it shows up, resumes playing whatever it was last playing.

      I use voice controls to change tracks/stations/etc. Calls, texts, navigation are all flawless and show up on my windshield HUD. It's the perfect system for me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Roogna ( 9643 )

      Even my previous car (so, ten years ago now) would automatically reconnect to the bluetooth phone it was last connected with on start if that phone was available. My current car is just slightly quicker on the audio starting playing.

  • measure the amount of time spent listening to audio

    And what proportion chose not to listen to anything at all?

    Personally, I find that far more relaxing than the constant jabber of presenters, advertisers and "guests". On the rare occasions I do want some music - whether in the car or elsewhere - I listen to a station / stream that has just that: music.

  • Tried Sirius XM, but they were no better than my local stations for Rock - Classic Rock and not worth not paying for it. One country station to listen to college football games if on the road. Local stations usually have news/events/etc to let you know what's going on locally. I still enjoy my main station for a mix of songs - they do an excellent job. Truly miss 96 Rock out of Atlanta GA which changed format to something crap. They played a large mix of all Rock and had stuff I never heard before. My wif

  • AM radio doesn't really exist outside USA.
    I remember my dad showing that we can listen to BBC from UK using an ancient receiver with AM, that was 35 years ago but BBC stopped that broadcast in 2008.

    • It was SW (short wave), not AM. In Europe SW was pretty cool in the 80s, you could listen to a lot of countries! Now SW is about dead. In USA thereM's only christian SW radio

  • Am I the only one loading up a flash drive and plugging it in to the USB port?

    • My iPod nano still works. I use it on longer trips, FM radio on shorter trips, at least until I'm out of range.

  • All my cars have Sirius XM. Sirius is crap and I'd rather listen to FM. If they were smart they'd switch to the Opus audio codec. It sounds much better at low bitrates.

    • Sirius XM never really took off outside the USA ...

      • It's normal, even in Canada I know no one listening to XM radio. I tried it when I had a new car, for like 6 months, multiple time, there's sports, politic talk radio, christian stuff, music targeted to specific "american" group of people, and that's it... even for free, I'd not listening to XM radio.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Particularly with HD-Radio being a thing.

      The Sirius-XM codec has terrible artifacts. I'm even a person that doesn't see problems with 128kpbs mp3, and even used to listen to 64kpbs mp3 without *much* complaint. But the Sirius-XM codec drives me up the wall at times.

  • I have tried both CarPlay and AndroidAuto just about once each - Honestly doesn't give me anything I want so I just use my built in nav system which I like better (I live in an area with sketchy cell data reception ... where you want fully on board maps in your GPS ... and I just use the bluetooth audo and play from my phone ...

    I know some like those car apps so they aren't fiddling with phones but I generally set my phone on a playlist or podcast and go without fussing with it.

    I find both CarPlay and Andro

  • DAB Radio has better coverage than FM, I think there are still FM Stations... and might be other analog but haven't needed to find out for so long ...

  • That's the best way to have google maps I just change my car and I didn't get a Tesla Y but à Ford Mach-e just for that

  • Android Auto is super useful for maps, and reading text like SMS. But having android auto or not changes nothing about listening to Spotify or aux in your car?!?
  • WTOP (FM) was what played in the carpool, regardless of driver.

  • I don't get it. I have eschewed broadcast radio since the aux port came out on most cars. How can these people tolerate all the advertising?

    • The secret is to have presets and skip to the next one when something comes up you don't like, be that commercials or a song. Older cars even had a big row of buttons for this.

  • I never could stand all the obnoxious advertisements on AM/FM radio. Following closely behind is "personalities" -- disc jockeys who think they have to be funny or inject themselves over the music. Just STFU and play the music!

    I just loaded my phone up with music -- 64128 Gb of storage is a LOT of audio -- and let the Bluetooth connection resume playing. On long trips I'll load up on podcasts and switch between them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      I never could stand all the obnoxious advertisements on AM/FM radio.

      I listen to local NPR stations and classical music stations on FM when in the car. They have few ads (except when doing a pledge drive to raise money), and the ads they do have are low key, so I don't have that problem. Even the old album rock station I occasionally listen to has few ads than most stations, though those still can be obnoxious.

  • Radio broadcaster funded researcher shows that.. (Score:3)

    by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @08:15AM (#63945055)
    Most People Still Just Listen to AM/FM Radio. Fixed the title of the BS article

  • My head unit actually runs Android native. So, while I have my phone on in the car and sharing its mobile data connection, I don't use Android Auto at all. I run all of my Android apps natively on the head unit. Mostly I listen to my music library through PlexAmp. Occasionally, I'll pull up YouTube.

  • Streaming and BT Audio Only. (Score:3)

    by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @09:53AM (#63945393)
    My car (2019 Tesla Model 3) has FM (no AM) and built-in access to a variety of streaming services, including Slacker. Primarily, I pretty much just tell the car what song I want it to play or use one of the themed channels. Secondary, I'll use Bluetooth to play music off my phone. A distant last would be the FM tuner, but it's extremely rare.

  • Wrong.. I think Most of us use Spotify (Score:3)

    by jerryjnormandin ( 1942378 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @10:21AM (#63945477)
    With Spotify you can create your own radio station. My youngest son bought the friends and family Spotify plan. It's been great. I created a stations for Grunge, 2000-2010 Post Grunge (Social Distortion, OffSpring, etc. ) , Blues, and Hard Rock (VolBeat, GodSmack, etc). The playlists are huge! I enabled cache that way when driving in an area where there is no mobile data service I can still listen to my tunes. It sounds decent through my Wrangler's Alpine sound system. I canceled my Sirius XM account. They repeat and talk too much. I haven't listened to AM/FM and Sirius XM since 2020.

  • The only time I EVER turn on the radio in the car is to listen to those highway info AM stations, and only when the light-up signs let me know I might want to.

    FM is worthless dreck. AM other than highway info is even worse. And I just had a free trial of satellite radio a few months ago, they gave it to me because I had a recall on my car and so took it to the dealer. It was useless, I wasn't gonna pay for that crap.

    I've got music and podcasts on my phone. Before that I had an iPod, before that CDs, and

    • So you like to live off in your own little music world, that's fine. Just don't think that your anecdote is what everyone else does. I have always just listened to radio, don't like what's playing? Newer cars have a button right on the steering wheel to change the channel.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by g01d4 ( 888748 )
        I always listen to the radio, but in part that's because I live in a large metropolitan area with commutes that are typically short. The classical and jazz stations aren't bad and there's more than one college based NPR style station to choose from. Not to mention the other genres, if you catch them between the too many commercials. Plenty of selection with a very simple interface. Also an opportunity to listen to something new.

  • HD Radio for me (Score:3)

    by erp_consultant ( 2614861 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @11:59AM (#63945789)

    My car came equipped with HD radio. For those that haven't used it, HD radio is basically a digital form of the traditional analog FM radio broadcasts. A lot of the FM stations where I live have an HD equivalent that they broadcast.

    Not only is the sound quality noticeably better than analog FM, it's free.

    I will stream music through my phone on occasion but I find that I will drive through dead zones where the signal drops. I don't find that with HD radio.

    You can stream music stored locally on your phone, to get around the dead zones, but you miss out on new music that you might not hear otherwise.

  • If I'm going for a short drive like doing chores or whatnot, I just leave the radio on. Connecting my phone is such a hassle that I save it for longer trips.

  • silence is golden (Score:3)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @12:21PM (#63945869)

    I gave up on any radio looooong ago. On long road trips, maybe a little radio, and a lot of music from my phone collection. Short trips: silence. So much more pleasant.

  • Really? (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday October 23, 2023 @02:07PM (#63946419)
    1) FM radio doesn't take voice input like YouTube Music does in Android Auto. Doesn't have the "New Releases" feature either. 2) My weekly commute involves driving out highway 38 between I-5 and the coast, where I lose FM radio signal, Sirius sattelite reception, and cellular data. (The highway follows the Umpua river valley, so it has huge mountains on both sides -- enough to block the southern exposure to sattelites in equatorial orbit.)

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