Speaking of AM radio reception on your motorcycle-

[cajunrider]

I would imagine that there is a wide range of necessary information being broadcast to the heartland (farm info) that is primarily on AM radio.

I don't know how wide-spread it is, but I do still occasionally see road signs stating a particular AM channel to tune to for local and/or emergency information.
If these type stations are removed, you'd need another reliable method of putting out that info.

Cell phones aren't reliable enough... ask anyone who's been through a hurricane how fast cell signals turn to crap during emergency situations. During our last hurricane, ALL I could do was text... And some texts took hours to send/receive for both parties involved. Somewhat recently, Baton Rouge AT&T cell towers were down for a few hours... during GOOD weather.