There are a lot of cities such as Los Angeles and New York that have congested airwaves with no room on the FM band. Since all broadcast television is digital now, and there are very few if any TV stations who use the VHF low band from 54-88mhz for broadcasting anymore I am thinking that the FM band should be expanded down to 76mhz like it is in Japan, that way there will be room for many more stations on the dial and will alleviate the congestion.
Post by Ozone Express Radio on Feb 12, 2012 20:26:23 GMT -6
With the shift of all the talkers and news to FM from AM, I suspect that a migration of the music to online venues will be next. In a few more years your radio dial will not sound like it currently does. When that happens, I doubt that places like NY, LA, or the like will have much problem as commercial Darwinism will thin the band out enough to keep the overcrowding from being much of an issue.
Expanding the band won't happen anyway as the FCC probably can't sell it to anyone for as much money as they can the higher bands. Plus, there aren't any receivers out there that tune that low (not in the US, at least) and convincing the public these days to buy a radio would be a hard sell when they can just download an app to their smartphone and listen to pretty much anything.
The band in Vancouver/Seattle is pretty much plugged. They are all selling out to either Pop, Rap or Country interests, or going 24/7 news (CBC has like 7 allocations in the area all rebroadcasting the same thing) or sports mad south of the border. The famous "Playing what we want.." Jack-FM is becoming more Pop everyday.
Tuning through the Seattle Clear Channel guys and Canucks (Chorus and Rogers battling it out), it all sounds the bloody same Even the last US holdout, Cascade Communications (KISM, Bellingham) now just rebroadcasts VH-1 programming.
Problem is in a BIG corridor like here, is a conglomerate will keep a station, regardless of how much money it bleeds into a black hole because no one listens, simply to maintain a slot in such a big district for future expansion.
Expand FM? Not needed.... just clean all the existing crap out of the toilet and it'll work again ;D
Expand FM? Not needed.... just clean all the existing crap out of the toilet and it'll work again ;D
Cheers!
ROFLMAO!!!
I don't think it could be said any better...or CLEARER!
A tidy bowl makes for a clean $#!t!
Opening up the FM band down below will only create more auctioned off spectrum to the $pecial interest groups and obviously create another cash cow for the FCC. It wont be to unclog the overtaken plumbing, it will merely add more clogs and more blogs and more nonsense that already exists.
It wont be convincing the public to buy a new radio with the expansion, it will be convincing the receiver manufacturers to make them and be able to sell them at or below the same price that exists now. That is a major overhaul to undertake...as it was with the AM stereo fiasco...part of it's failure to be recognized by the public is because the receiver manufacturers did not want to make radios with 4 different decoding schemes and the public was not educated on how much better wide band mono sounds much less how much better wide band AM stereo sounds.
Again, its not about public interest. It's about the bottom line and maximizing it for the "profit before people" policy.
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
Post by sgtpeppers on Feb 20, 2012 16:19:20 GMT -6
The problem with expanding would be that most fm radios wouldn't be able to tune into the new frequencies so to listen to a certain station a person would need to buy a new radio capable of tuning in.
As I pointed out...the big problem is getting radio receiver manufacturers to make the radios with the expanded band...something they will not do unless it is of benefit to them.
Lessons can be learned from the AM Stereo fiasco of the 80's. It's no different here with expanded FM.
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
I remember there was a website some time back where people were petitioning to use the lower VHF TV channels that are now unused for an expanded AM band. Using AM there would allow for a lot more channels than with the wider FM mode.
Wish I could still find the site. I think they came to the conclusion that it would never happen, or even if it did that people would not spend the money on a new radio to cover those channels besides hardcore radio listeners like SWLers and the like.
There could be a niche market for community radio using those bands if the station operator did a really good job marketing their channel and helping people buy affordable radios to pick up their channel, or even give out promotional radios much like they did many years ago when high powered AM stations would give out specialty radios that were modified to only pick up their station.
Besides broadcast purposes there is no reason they couldn't open up a channel for hobbyist to use. Allowing people like us to use a small piece of spectrum for experimental broadcasting with higher power levels than Part 15 allows for. We all know the FCC would never do this though Wishful thinking comes to mind.
Even the last US holdout, Cascade Communications (KISM, Bellingham) now just rebroadcasts VH-1 programming.
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