There's another old Radio World article called "The End Of Carrier Current?" https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/the-end-of-carrier-current by Dave Braverman that is pretty interesting and related to a interview he later had in one of the Radio Survivor podcast linked below
Dave Braverman was 9 years old when he discovered part 15 broadcasting at a summer camp in the late1960s which he returned to every summer for years to come.
When he turned 20 in the late 1970s he bought an old postal truck, loaded it with radio gear and made a business of driving around and set out with the goal of setting up carrier current stations at summer camps around the country. This is how his company Radio Systems was born.
By the 1980s he had joined forces with the LPB company which expanded his business by installing hundred of new stations at high schools and colleges.
In the 1990s, part 15 was amended to allow fewer restrictions for educational campuses - a classification which summer camps also fell under. No longer were the stations confined in range by power and wiring, now it was permissible to free-radiate through the air to the campus boundaries, which also provided a means to cover "acres and acres" of campground lands legally. That's when he began utilizing the popular Talking House transmitters at many installations.
Part 15 AM however by this time was beginning to fade in popularity at most colleges who began upgrading their operations and becoming licenced FM stations, which prompted Braveman to begin focusing on other markets like religious institutions, car lots, a few drive-in theaters, parks, even a chicken slaughtering plant, etc. The part 15 AM market was still viable, but its decline in popularity was becoming undeniable (ironically however, it was also around this same time that personal home hobby stations had began to rise again after about a 20 year lull).
In 2017, Braverman decided the time had come to sell his Radio Systems Company and it's assets to ISS (Information Station Specialist), who was and still is the primary supplier of TIS (Travelers Information Stations) in the US.
But his passion for part 15 AM hadn't ended with the selling of his company. To this day he's still involved with Camp Radio stations that are still in existence today.
He talked about all this in a great interview on Radio Survivors June 2018 Podcast #148 – Solving the Mystery of Summer Camp Radio
https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2018/06/podcast-148-solving-the-mystery-of-summer-camp-radio/
I should clarify something, I said Dave Braverman began using the Talking Houses in the late 1990s.. but he actually did more than that, in 2009 he bought the company Realty Electronics Inc from Scott Matthew who since 1986 had been manufacturing what would come to be known as the Talking House transmitters. Braverman later sold his company line to ISS in 2017, who still sells TH today.
The reason I cleared that up is to present this old NPR episode - which you're probably all heard before, chances are I've probably posted it before but it's really worth a re-listen if you haven't heard it in a while, cause I think it's just so cool. In it they interview both Scott Matthew and his father in 2007, about two years before Braverman bought their company
https://www.npr.org/2007/06/24/11342072/talking-houses-practically-sell-themselves
You might note the realtor only paid $250 per transmitter, but you could only get them at that price by buying lots of ten.
Oh.. the NPR story says they put there first transmitters on the market in 1984, but those were the .. damnit forget the name .. don't feel like looking it up, Ive posted pictures before..I'll come back to it, but those transmitters had been a quite different design than the ones that would become known as the Talking Houses.
Oh.. the NPR story says they put there first transmitters on the market in 1984, but those were the .. damnit forget the name .. don't feel like looking it up, ..
The "Show and Tell"
