A method for reducing out-of-band emission in an AM transmitter for digital transmission includes generating, from a digital modulation signal, an amplitude signal and a phase-modulated radio frequency signal configured to control the AM transmitter. A digital modulation process is used in which a hole is formed around a 0/0 point so that a zero crossing is avoided by a substantial margin in a vector diagram representation. Thereby a respective bandwidth of the amplitude signal and the phase-modulated radio frequency signal is limited so that the out-of-band emission decreases as a function of a shoulder distance achievable by the AM transmitter at a rate where a spectrum mask is not exceeded.