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Old 07-03-2012, 07:04 PM
 
Location: Duluth, Minnesota, USA
7,641 posts, read 18,085,270 times
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How does (terrestrial) radio operate in your country?

Terrestrial radio in the U.S. is transmitted on two bands, AM (MW) and FM (UKW/VHF), which are named after their form of modulation. AM is in 10 kHz increments between 530 and 1700 kHz; FM is in 0.2 MHz increments between 88.1 and 107.9 MHz. The bands are more or less the same throughout the world, although some ex-CIS countries still have broadcasts on the old OIRT FM band, and many countries still have one or two longwave transmitters. The OIRT FM band is used for TV in the United States, and longwave is used for non-directional beacons among other things.

Radio in the United States is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In Canada, it is regulated by an organization known as CRTC.

All American radio transmitters have callsigns, which normally must be announced hourly. With a few exceptions, call signs consist of four letters and begin with a "K" west of the Mississippi River and a "W" to the east of it. Around the Mississippi River, it is common for stations to begin with both.

The AM band is still alive and kicking in the United States, although reports are that few young people listen to it. Most mainstream music formats having gone to FM long ago, AM is generally used for talk radio, sports radio, some religious radio, and ethnic programming. AM signals have the advantage of traveling long distances at night; on any given night, I can easily pick up stations from Winnipeg to the north, Denver and Alberta to the west, New Orleans to the south, and Boston to the east. Their quality has been diminished, however, by the preponderance of noise.

(In Spain and Morocco, however, I was able to tune in several countries at night, including Saudi Arabia).

The FM band is where the desirable frequencies are. In the U.S., frequencies between 88.1 and 91.9 MHz are reserved for non-commercial stations, while those between 92.1 and 107.9 MHz are open to all classes of stations. In the Midwest, there are a great number of class "C" and "C1" stations, which are allowed to transmit up to 100,000 watts from very high (e.g. 300m) towers, for a reliable coverage range of about 60 to 80 miles (more over water or favorable topography). Smaller FM stations, which transmit with less power and from lower towers, have a typical coverage range of about 20 to 30 miles. "Translators", which are transmitters that relay other stations, are used to fill in gaps in station coverage, or to form immense regional and national networks of religious stations, and have a typical coverage range of 5 to 15 miles.

Digital radio exists in the U.S., though it is not well known. Unlike in Europe, it is broadcast within the normal AM and FM bands with the normal analog signal, something known as "hybrid digital" broadcasting. For example, 93.7 KXXR-FM broadcasts in analog as well as digitally, with the space on both sides of the analog signal being used for digital (so if you are near KXXR, 93.5 and 93.9 will sound like hash on a normal analog radio). This is the same on AM: 850 KOA Denver, for example, one of the strongest signals on AM at night, obscures 840 kHz (usually WHAS Louisville) and 860 kHz (usually CJBC Toronto) here when the receiver is pointed west here with digital hash. Digital broadcasting in the United States is based on the propietary HD Radio system, which allows FM broadcasters to add "sub-channels" (for example, 93.7-1 is KXXR's digital simulcast and 93.7-2 is a pop-centric digital-only station called "The Machine"), and AM broadcasters to have FM-quality sound on their digital broadcasts.

The idenitity, networking, and branding of these stations varies greatly from the models in use in other countries. The identity and branding of U.S. radio stations is generally tied to the city the transmitter is located near or in, even though most of the programming may be syndicated and the DJs "voicetracked". This is true even if the stations are owned by a major media conglomerate. For example, the pop stations in Duluth, Minnesota go by the on-air names of "Mix 107.7" and "102.5 KDWZ"; in La Crosse, Wisconsin, it's "Z93"; in Northwestern Iowa, it's "Y102"; in Minneapolis, it's "101.3 KDWB". For almost every commercial music station, there are separate playlists (at least during peak hours), local ads, local weather, and with many stations, truly local personalities. The phenomenon of "voicetracking" is common, in which a single centrally-located DJ programs multiple stations across the country while pretending to be local. This is unlike the model used in most of Europe, where for the most-listened to stations, transmitters merely act as relays of a central national station. "SLAM FM" is the same in Amsterdam and Utrecht; "NRJ" is the same in Lille and Marseille; "Onda Cero" is the same in Madrid as it is in San Sebastian, but there are multiple "Kiss FMs" across the United States with different programming for every transmitter. The "format" of commercial radio stations usually determines what music they will play. "Formats" which almost every "market" (city) includes stations from are Country, Contemporary Hits Radio (CHR; pop), Adult Contemporary (pop appealing to more mature audiences), and Active Rock (heavier rock appealing to young white males), as well as others. Formats which are common in certain or larger cities include Regional Mexican, Tropical (salsa, bachata, merengue, etc.), and Urban Contemporary (rap and R & B). Few are the commercial stations which actually play a wide variety of music. For example, you'd almost never hear a rap song by Lil' Wayne followed by a country song from Toby Keith on any station, despite these being the two most popular types of music with local youth.

Non-commercial radio consists of public broadcasters, which are supported by government funds and listener contributions (and by sponsorships, but not by advertisements in the traditional sense of the term); religious broadcasters, which often have dozens or hundreds of low-power translators scattered throughout the country; university stations, the first of which might associate part-time with a network; tribal stations; and other listener-supported radio stations. The largest public broadcasters are often on a statewide basis, and consist of one to three networks. Minnesota Public Radio, for example, operates one network for news and talk radio, airing programs such as A Prairie Home Companion, All Things Considered, As it Happens, Fresh Air, and This American Life; one for classical music, and one for modern and local music. These public radio networks buy programming from distributors such as National Public Radio, Public Radio Xchange, CBC, as well as produce their own programming (which can likewise be distributed to other networks). Public television works in a similar way in the United States. Both the News network of MPR and the Ideas Network of Wisconsin Public Radio airs the BBC World Service overnight.

Numerous other public radio operations are run by universities, which may affiliate their stations with "alternative" public radio networks (e.g. AMPERS in Minnesota), which seem mainly to consist of folk music and counter-cultural programming, as well as air student-produced programming, Indian tribes, which often include local events such as powwows in their broadcasting schedules, high schools, and other community organizations.

The other major category of non-commercial radio stations are religious broadcasters, of which there are many in the United States. In recent years, national chains of religious broadcasters have come on the air, usually airing Christian rock and pop. These include K-Love, Air 1, and numerous regional networks, for example The Refuge, based in Duluth, MN and relayed on translators throughout Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
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Old 07-04-2012, 06:56 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,579 posts, read 86,764,762 times
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One day about a decade ago, Minot, North Dakota made Americans aware of what radio was like in the USA.

Civil authorities wanted to alert the citizenry of some hazard (I can't remember what), so phoned around to have the announcement put on Minot's six radio stations. None answered the phone. So a deputy drove around to the stations and knocked on the doors, and there was nobody inside and the lights were off. All six were computers that were picking up satellite program feeds (including the news and weather) and inserting local, pre-recorded announcements.

If this had happened on a weekday morning between 6 and 9, they might have found a couple of clowns inside yukking it up, and from 9 to 5, a woman sitting behind a desk doing paperwork, and a technician programming the computer with commercials produced by an ad agency somewhere, along with packaged station jingles produced in a Nashville studio.

One January I was driving from Grand Junction, Colorado, to Salt Lake city. There were blue signs along the highway alerting me that I could get weather information by tuning two radio frequencies on my car radio. So I set it on those two frequencies and endured 6 hours of god awful programming. Never once did I hear any mention of the weather, nor a single word uttered by a live human being into a microphone.

Radio in the USA is in orbit, thousands of miles from Earth, and the only human control is maintenance at periodic intervals.

Last edited by jtur88; 07-04-2012 at 07:11 AM..
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Old 07-04-2012, 10:59 AM
 
Location: State of Transition
102,125 posts, read 107,381,087 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Radio in the USA is in orbit, thousands of miles from Earth, and the only human control is maintenance at periodic intervals.
Does this have something to do with the controversy over "Clear Channel" taking over so many radio stations? The best radio stations, imo, are the university or community-college based ones, that have a tremendously wide variety of music programming as well as news, topical discussions, etc., and National Public Radio. This is "real" programming, done the old-fashioned way, and it's very interesting.

When I spent a summer in Sweden, people would ask me why Americans don't want talking to interrupt the music programming; they didn't understand the idea behind playing a run of 10 top pop songs, then a break. So I explained it was about all the advertising that interrupts programming. But after listening to Swedish radio, I got a better idea of what was behind their question. All the programming was like a cross between NPR and the university stations I was familiar with. There were fascinating presentations of musical traditions around the world, with an explanation of the instruments used and their history, the role the particular type of music played in the traditional life of whichever nationality it was, etc. The programs were very educational. I believe radio and TV in Sweden are run by the government, so there was no advertising. It made radio programming in the US sound very dumbed-down, pure entertainment. Heaven help the programmers if they should interrupt the entertainment with some intellectual content!

And now that live DJ's, according to our OP, are pretty much a thing of the past, there's no danger of the constant feed of music and advertising being interrupted with anything extraneous at all, not even a local weather warning that might save lives.
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Old 07-04-2012, 12:42 PM
 
1,446 posts, read 4,589,652 times
Reputation: 991
Quote:
One day about a decade ago, Minot, North Dakota made Americans aware of what radio was like in the USA.

Civil authorities wanted to alert the citizenry of some hazard (I can't remember what), so phoned around to have the announcement put on Minot's six radio stations. None answered the phone. So a deputy drove around to the stations and knocked on the doors, and there was nobody inside and the lights were off. All six were computers that were picking up satellite program feeds (including the news and weather) and inserting local, pre-recorded announcements.

If this had happened on a weekday morning between 6 and 9, they might have found a couple of clowns inside yukking it up, and from 9 to 5, a woman sitting behind a desk doing paperwork, and a technician programming the computer with commercials produced by an ad agency somewhere, along with packaged station jingles produced in a Nashville studio.
[/quote]
You are correct. Wikipedia states that was a January 18th, 2002 train derailment that caused the leakage of toxic gases in the area. Many got sick and one person even died. The failure of the media (local radio stations) to get the message out in time was discussed in Eric Klinenberg's book, "Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media." Here is a link to that incident on wikipedia...

Minot train derailment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Old 07-04-2012, 07:37 PM
 
Location: Vancouver, B.C., Canada
11,155 posts, read 29,238,414 times
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I get both Local Vancouver Radio feeds and Western Washington Radio Feeds on my FM Dial
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Old 07-04-2012, 09:36 PM
 
Location: State of Transition
102,125 posts, read 107,381,087 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GTOlover View Post
I get both Local Vancouver Radio feeds and Western Washington Radio Feeds on my FM Dial
Do you get KUOW from the U of WA in Seattle? I always enjoyed that station.
So, how is Canadian radio?
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Old 07-05-2012, 09:23 AM
 
Location: Vancouver, B.C., Canada
11,155 posts, read 29,238,414 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth View Post
Do you get KUOW from the U of WA in Seattle? I always enjoyed that station.
So, how is Canadian radio?
Well, Bro Jake with Rock 101.1 and 99.3 the Fox are my fav and The Fox Rocks! or so they say..Not a big fan of Modren Music..I like late 60's-80's Rock with a bit of the 90's thrown in for good measure.
here they I listed them below.. So you can get an Idea of thr Classic and modren Rock stations in Vancouver, B.C, Canada... if you are interested..
http://www.rock101.com/
http://www.cfox.com/

Last edited by GTOlover; 07-05-2012 at 09:35 AM..
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Old 07-05-2012, 10:03 AM
 
Location: In a Galaxy far, far away called Germany
4,300 posts, read 4,399,432 times
Reputation: 2394
I do only Sirius radio.
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Old 07-05-2012, 03:36 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,579 posts, read 86,764,762 times
Reputation: 36643
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth View Post
So, how is Canadian radio?
Canadian radio is very much like American radio, with a few restrictions that you probably wouldn't even notice. For example, no commercials allowed within the body of a newscast, and food commercials are not allowed to use subjective adjectives to describe the food, like 'rich' or 'tasty'. And no political ads within 48 hours of an election.

However, Canada also has government-owned and operated stations, which on radio are non-commercial. Most larger markets have two CBC stations, one on AM for talk and information, and one on FM for music and arts. Programming on the CBC is geared, presumably, to the tastes and intellect of the upper end of the audience, rather than gibberesh and guffaws for the lowest common denominator. The CBC operates with a high degree of autonomy from government policy or intervention, and are frequently offensive to the government and/or the general public, often inspiring questions in the House. Canada suffers fools more glady, and something trivially offensive is more likely to meet with bemusement, rather than hate groups going off into a swivet.

I'm basing this on a couple of decades ago, and I have no idea what has changed, but those were the main differences then.
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Old 07-05-2012, 07:25 PM
 
Location: Duluth, Minnesota, USA
7,641 posts, read 18,085,270 times
Reputation: 6913
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Canadian radio is very much like American radio, with a few restrictions that you probably wouldn't even notice. For example, no commercials allowed within the body of a newscast, and food commercials are not allowed to use subjective adjectives to describe the food, like 'rich' or 'tasty'. And no political ads within 48 hours of an election.

However, Canada also has government-owned and operated stations, which on radio are non-commercial. Most larger markets have two CBC stations, one on AM for talk and information, and one on FM for music and arts. Programming on the CBC is geared, presumably, to the tastes and intellect of the upper end of the audience, rather than gibberesh and guffaws for the lowest common denominator. The CBC operates with a high degree of autonomy from government policy or intervention, and are frequently offensive to the government and/or the general public, often inspiring questions in the House. Canada suffers fools more glady, and something trivially offensive is more likely to meet with bemusement, rather than hate groups going off into a swivet.

I'm basing this on a couple of decades ago, and I have no idea what has changed, but those were the main differences then.
I'm familiar with the modern situation of Canadian radio.

Canadian radio is technically identical with that of the U.S. (Television is based on the same standard as well, with their final analog shut-down at the end of this month).

The CBC / SRC AM stations have mostly went to FM, although some remain. Some of the transmitters freed up by the move are used for commercial radio. Canada has two national English radio networks (CBC Radio One and CBC Radio Two) and two French radio networks (Premiere Chaine and Espace Musique). Some of the content from the English-language networks is sometimes heard on public radio networks in the U.S: As it Happens, for example, is carried on Minnesota Public Radio. As far as I know, public radio is commercial-free in Canada.

Canadian radio markets generally have less stations than American markets of the same size. For example, while a person with any AM/FM radio in the middle of Duluth can receive at least six AM stations and about fifteen on FM (and many more if they have a car tuner or better on the outskirts), the same person standing in the middle of Thunder Bay will not receive any local radio on AM and only about eleven on FM. Excluding relays, Canadian stations are often licensed to transmit with lower power than American stations - while every commercial station in the Duluth market has a licensed power in the kilowatts, the local country station in Thunder Bay transmits with a puny 50 watts. This translates into less range - you probably couldn't hear that station very far outside city limits.

The FCC's equivalent in Canada, the CRTC, is a far stricter regulator than its American counterpart. Content is only regulated in the United States if it crosses acceptable boundaries (obscenity, indecency, airing phone calls without the callers' consent, fraudulent games, etc.), or perhaps if a non-commercial station operates as a commercial station - otherwise, the FCC doesn't care what you air on your radio station. In Canada, on the other hand, applicants for licenses in Canada must specify what content they will air on their station, and it must be approved by the CRTC. For example, if a would-be competitor wanted to broadcast country music in a market with a pre-existing station that aired the same content, the CRTC, to the best of my knowledge, would probably deny the application. Content, not only technical details, are part of each station's license, and they have to adhere to what they say they will provide. Format changes, to the best of my knowledge, need to be approved. Also, there are Canadian content requirements - music stations, for example, need to ensure that a certain percentage of their songs are from Canadian artists.
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