Carl Blare

Naming

June 16, 2012 by Carl Blare

Every once in awhile I play the game of wondering what to call these various radio stations.

The stations I’m talking about are really just different transmitters, running on several frequencies, plus one streaming web station. Should they all be called by one single name? Or should each one of them have its own name.

I do have a stash of secret names, and just thought of a new one.

But, I don’t give on-air IDs because the part 15 rules don’t require it. So, how would it work?

Let’s see, I could paste big alphabets on each transmitter, identifying those by names known only here on the this website, maybe with photos…..

Oh, breakfast is ready? Great!

Enforcements Keep Coming

June 15, 2012 by Carl Blare

Down on the lower right side of the screen the Enforcement Actions show a second case regarding Birach Broadcasting in just a few weeks, two different stations.

There is also a Birach station here in the St. Louis area, and I have wondered about its operation, although I am not a whistle blower nor complainer, so I emphasize that I have no actual knowledge of the inside circumstances.

The station is 1kW daytime, has a CP (construction permit) for 10kW day 200 Watt night.

The station has been heard on the air at night, but that may be part of the construction process. Other nights it’s not on.

In general, it’s the poorest AM signal in the market, sounds like it’s a hundred miles away.

Thirty Five

June 13, 2012 by Carl Blare

It was 4:35 when the number “35” came into my head. It will be the number of the next Low Power Hour, and all of a sudden I know what will fill the hour.

Coming here and talking about it is a whole lot easier than actually doing the program, and will definitely help, because I’ll have a stronger idea of how to paste all the pieces together.

There was a really good part on a recent “Big Picture Science” from SETI all about the invention of FM, so we’ll share that and notify other low powers how to get “Big Picture” for their schedules.

The engineers on “This Week in Radio Tech” talked about something interesting, oh I remember, it was the whole history of WWV and the other time radio stations from the Bureau of Standards. That’s another show available to part 15 stations.

Our conversation with Doggradio Studio 2 will continue as we reach “the good part.” I forgot what we said, so I’ll be interested in listening.

Another episode of Flash Frisbone, and that whole series is available to all stations, stay tuned.

I’ll probably make up some “Low Power In the News.” If you know any low power stuff add it to this blog and I might get it in time to use.

His Story

June 12, 2012 by Carl Blare

Where was it that someone declared that history was “his story,” and that if we heard “her story”, we would get a different point of view.

Typically with his story you get distortion, as with the “history of a nation”, wherein the story is told in glowing terms for the nation in question, everyone else was wrong.

Only a few altruists, especially Howard Zinn, wrote true and somewhat shamed histories of what got left out of the grade school version.

But I’m only talking about the history of radio. I was taken back by this morning’s exploration of a blog site where come latelys were trying to puzzle together local area frequencies, call letters, formats and personalities dating as far back as the 1980s. I realized that I could have taken them back earlier than 1959, but in this hemisphere liquid spins clockwise in a drain, or so they say, and I planned to stand still.

There’s every reason why corporations don’t publish their own history, all focus is on the bottom line this quarter and business records get purged after a few years. It would be expensive to have a historian, and such trivia is better left to, say, disgruntled ex-employees and avid listeners.

I’ve been down both roads and began collecting local history as a teenager, which culminated in the late 1970s as a fund raising event when I gathered interviews with owners, engineers and air talent from stations large and small. We won a state broadcaster’s award and the station tried to keep the plaque but somehow I have it. I never put it on display because one award only matters if it’s followed by many more.

It’s easy to get yacking about all the power levels, call letters and egos that swirled down radio trail, but being forgotten can’t be suspended by a dredge operation.

Remember this. Not being remembered isn’t so bad, we’ve got to make way for the newly forgotten.