Ron Hardin schrieb:

It takes only half the energy for the carrier, so has half the
waste of regular AM, since the carrier carries no information.

There is NO carrier on sideband transmission. So there are some options.
They hold on the center frequency and use one or both sidebands.
In first case there is only a quarter of power needed for to reach at
least the same distance. In the second case there is half the power
needed and there is an theoretical option for stereo transmission on ISB
(independent side band). But receivers capable of ISB are very rare and
mostly found in the league of professional grade Siemens or Harris
receivers.....
Or they can shift the transmitter center frequency up or down by 2.5khz
and then tranmit with true 5khz bandwidth on a single side band which
can be a big advantage in sound compared to other sw stations.