Norway shutting down its national analog FM radio station in 2017 may start at an eventual domino effect around the world, as the rest of the world is moving to digital radio, which offers better sound quality than analog.

“Eventually radio will go away, just as what we know as newspapers and books will go away,’’ Gordon Borrell, CEO of media researcher Borrell Associates, told Bloomberg Business.  “It will take a long time. But science fiction is a great predictor of the future, and I don’t see anyone in ‘Star Trek’ listening to the radio or reading a newspaper.’’

And it looks like the United States is heading in the same direction as Norway with Spotify Ltd., Pandora Media Inc. and Sirius XM Holdings Inc. expanding their audiences.

In 10 years, half of America’s about 11,300 AM/FM radio stations may disappear due to not attracting enough listeners and advertisers, Borrell told Bloomberg Business.

Moreover, the Federal Communication Commission is approving far fewer new commercial radio licenses than in prior years.  The agency, between 2000 and 2004, approved 483 new commercial AM/FM licenses – but that number dropped to 262 between 2005 and 2009, and only 90 between 2010 and 2014.

Borrell told Bloomberg Business that he believes advertising dollars will increasingly go online and to mobile.

Still, Dennis Wharton, an executive vice president at the National Association of Broadcasters believes there are no plans to abandon analog radio in America.

“There are much fewer radio stations in Norway,’’ Wharton told Bloomberg Business. “They have more government-run radio stations.”