This kitchen radio is common too in the UK but the radio would be FM at the least, more likely DAB these days. BBC Radio 4 or '5 Live' nationally and the BBC have dozens of local radio stations all over the country. All talk, no music.
If you tool around the HF ham bands at night, sometimes you will catch a couple of hams conversing in AM near the top of 40 meters. The ones that have spent some time tweaking their audio and transmitter sound like they're sitting right next to you. Very crisp and clear, especially next to single side-band!
[1] http://websdr.org/ is a good place to start
It is also a genre, in the sense that it is almost exclusively used for news and talk radio. This is because the bandwidth available on AM bands is not really suitable for rich content like music.
When all they had was AM, that was the social network for teenagers.