for your inspiring response! With such low power it's not about numbers anyway. If I knew just one person was enjoying what I was providing, then it would all be worthwhile. I need to tell my immediate neighbhors about my signal the next time I'm out in the yard.
I'm on a hill, which offers a slight advantage in at least half of my coverage area. I know the signal can be picked up in a car to about two blocks. Then, it gets choppy and eventually fades. Perhaps, a good stationary receiver could pick the signal up and lock in on it a lot better.
While I was in college a few years back, I built one of those Panaxis kits. It wasn't PLL. Completely analog. The signal reached most of the campus. We had the campus police bringing us Public Service Announcements. One night, there were over 200 calls coming into the dorm room. It temporarily shut down phone service for the building! Now, that's listenership! After the phone incident, were were asked politely, by the Dean of Communications for the College (A fine arts college) to shut down the transmitter. Word of mouth has a tremendous effect.
Thanks again for your inspiring response and continued success with your LPFM!
Mike
Hi Mike,
I'll tell you what we did, in case you can use any of it.
((Ok, warning.. this ended up a lot longer-winded than I originally intended, and I ramble on a bit about my programming and how we found a few listeners and etc. So if that isn't your cup of tea, you might want to skip this one. LOL))
First listener was gotten accidentally from going to the nearest neighbors in each direction, explaining we were putting a very small legal station on the air, and that if they got any interference on TV or FM stations they were trying to listen to that if they let us know, I'd fix it. FCC enforcement tends to be "complaint driven" because that's how things work, so being polite as well as not wanting FCC trouble for messing up someone else's listening/watching seemed just common sense.
I wasn't thinking of it so much as a station at the time, just a way I could hear the stream when I was streamcasting without having to sit right at the computer. But he found it an interesting idea and tuned it in. Found out all he had to listen on was his clock radio, since when his girlfriend left, because "the good stereo" had been hers. I had an old stereo in the basement collecting dust which I gave to him and he became pretty loyal at that point.
I have this congenital defect of personality that makes me hate to throw out gear that still works, so I had.. well, a few things like old stereos around (since friends also dump them on me when they get new gear).
Next was from my teenage daughter listening to my usual Saturday night streamcast via the transmitter. Originally because her mp3 player takes batteries but the stereo in her room doesn't. But she got into some of the old "spooky" radioplays I was running at the time, and got a friend of hers across the street to start tuning in as well. Shortly after that my daughter decided she wanted to do a show, so she took saturday night up till my show started at midnight.
Her friend's dad started listening because his kid was staying up to listen to the radio and sometimes coming over to spend the night and "co-host" with my daughter. He also got hooked on radioplays and story readings of old classics like Poe and etc. he was keen on the idea that it was fun for the kids and with holidays coming up we could do some fun things like radio stations used to years ago. Good ideas.
Around that time, the friend's shoutcast station I'd been streamcasting on fell apart because it wasn't getting as many listeners as he wanted and he couldn't find advertisers to pay server fees and RIAA/ASCAP/BMI, etc fees. Nobody has a lot of interest in buying ad slots on an internet station with maybe a listener peak of 15 or so?
We had our couple radio listeners by then so we kept going. I thought about starting my own streamcast station and heading in that direction went to an all indie/public_domain format. And upped the stories, since that seemed to be what my nearby listeners liked a lot. Haven't ever gotten around to the streamcast station yet, since we've been busy enough already and I haven't gotten around to missing it. Not like a small shoutcast stream is expensive to find hosting for, though.
There are also quite a lot of shows, news features, weather and talks and etc out on the net that are free for the asking if you're non-commercial. So we broadened the scope and started being on more nights of the week instead of just weekends.
Stories and folktales were still being the reliable hook, so I started bugging friends in other parts of the country to record local folk stories and the sorts of things they told around campfires and slumber parties to scare each other witless back when they were kids for me. Also kept contacting indie bands and asking permission to play their music on our shows.
Halloween passed, and some new neighbors moved in upstairs from the first listener. Single working mom with two small children. He came over and asked if I had another radio or stereo because they didn't have radio or a tv. No problem, I had another "clunker" stereo. And we added some stories and things early in the evening oriented for small children. So we went to very much 'family friendly' programming with a rather old fashioned style like our local radio was like back in the 60s when I was a kid.
The most recent addition was our "fringe area" listener, who is an elderly lady who'd heard about the station from neighbor kids and wished she could tune in. So I went and tried things on the listener end until she could.
Somewhere in there we picked up a couple more households with kids via word of mouth.
Being a very small station, we can do things like the great cookie giveaway, or "upgrade" what our listeners are tuning us in on with something used (and collecting dust) but nicer than what they have. If Tammy, a second grader from across the street, comes over and tells us it's her mom's birthday, we can invite her in for a minute, record her saying "Happy birthday mom!" and run it just after suppertime. If somebody's kids are sick, there can be more stories read so they have something to listen to.
Started the morning show after thanksgiving one day when the snow was falling and I was listening to the local commercial station for school closings. I remembered when I was a kid listening to the radio while getting ready for school (always in hopes of snow days). That was liked, so it got kept. I have 2 schoolage children, so I'm up and listening most winter mornings anyway.
Having a home recording studio and being an underground musician for years, I have old demo tapes and etc of local bands of years gone by. None of them have minded songs they did at open mics or demos they recorded here being aired, along with a bit about the people and where they are now. Also I can put a song together fairly fast if I want something like my own version of an old favorite holiday song where the song itself is in the public domain now. Or a quick recording of my daughter and her friends doing a parody (while laughing themselves silly) like "Joy to the world, our teacher is dead". Digging out old tapes also gave me a good excuse to buy a little Behringer UB802 mixer and dust off my old 1970's Akai reel to reel and haul it up here from the basement and put it back to work. And also patch in a couple inexpensive CD players for "carts" and stories recorded on previous shows and archived to CD. (I've been working to cut down the need to "have" to depend on the computer for basic functionality.)
Fun things, interesting things, stuff like weather and news shorts that people want.
We play no "hits". People who want to hear top 40 or classic rock, well there are already local commercial stations that do nothing but that. No need to compete with them for that. I don't like that the local stations are no longer locally owned and they play the current commercial "push" songs so much, but I know some of them and they're good folks even if I don't care for the changes they years have made on their style and programming. Somebody wants to hear the Eagles doing Hotel California, they can tune in the local commercial classic rock station and request it, it's a local call. Or I can suggest an indie alternate I think they may like.
I even have gotten a couple CDs sent to me by bands/musicians in other parts of the country that have heard about my little station from other friends of mine. Most recent one was a self-produced album by a very talented Native American gentleman who does a very well composed and engineered sort of fusion of Native American and more contemporary/standard styles and instruments. Very cool.
Or with the holiday music, we found we have at least one wiccan, so I hunted up some pagan Yule songs and got permission to air them and also some Kwanzaa and Chanukah songs just in case and went to a theme of "It's the holidays for many people not strictly Christmas. Let's forget differences for a while and celebrate how we're the same." It's gone over quite well.
I don't streamcast on internet stations much anymore, but I'll fire up Nullsoft's Shoutcast server and serve a few streams off my machine so the musicans and storytellers can hear at least their debut on my station or when old friends from when I was streamcasting mention they'd like to tune in for a while.
Since it's kind of a family hobby, and we don't want to *have* to man the machine all the time, I use Zara to automate and make sure the scheduled stories and features happen when people may be listening to them and we can just step in for shows we enjoy doing or when the mood strikes, but if we're all watching a movie, the show goes on when people will likely be tuning in for the parts they like.
Anyway, this has ended up a long ramble and it's time to get down off the soapbox.
But it *is* possible to have a good deal of fun with even the very limited range for FM (at least if you have neighbors near enough and you can get them interested). I didn't expect it to be something anybody outside of maybe my own house would have an interest in, but when they did, I worked to keep their interest up and deliver things they like. Figure out the way you want to do it so *YOU* will have a good time with it. Figure out how to automate as much as it takes so it doesn't become a "chore". As you find listeners, find out what they want as best you can and see what you can do to work it in to what you put out on the air and it's possible to keep them.
Daniel
PS.. I don't call it an LPFM because to be honest I doubt I'd be able to get an actual LPFM ticket even if a filing window opened. There aren't any frequencies showing as being open for that here (even though much of the FM band sounds empty). I don't own the property, I rent.. We don't have a community non-profit organization going, and the fees and gear for actual LPFM run well into the thousands from what I understand. This is more "what can you manage with maybe 30$ worth of kit and bits from the hardware store, some junk parts, some rather primitive sound gear, some creativity and a lot of time/work". LOL There's pics of my rig in my blog here on part15.us You'll be able to see, it really isn't much.
your little station sounds awesome. This is the kind of programming that is missing from communities. That local and personal factor that made radio what it used to be.
I agree with you about the commercial stations. They are all owned by coroporations now, and you can hardly tell you're in a different city by listening to the radio like you could thirty years ago.
Unfortnately, I don't have the time or the resources (financial and otherwise) to spend more than four hours at a time several times a week, during the evenings. I'm trying to get to the point where I can stay on the air until midnight on weekends without getting just plain tired!
I've always been interested in the technical aspects of FM radio signals. Especially, the processing of the audio signal. That's why I bought the compressor, to make the signal louder without overmodulating the signal to death.
My programming consists of just music right now. I differ from the commercial stations because I can specialise the format. I'll play just about anything from Barry White to Barry Manilow. I try to incorporate my real programming experience to make the flow smooth. Because my neighborhood is very diverse, I'll play old school disco/funk on Friday nights. (Party Night) I've heard a lot of folks express a desire for that type of fun music. Then, on Saturday nights, a more 80's tech/rock type of format. Very little talk at this point. Just the weather, time and small stuff.
Mike
this is one of the more awesome stories I've heard. bravo!
Very nice post, Rattan, thanks very much for taking the time to share!
Experimental broadcasting for a better tomorrow!
Rattan's story is a good read and an excellent example of connecting with the neighbors before problems develop. I took a similar approach regarding my amateur radio activities. One neighbor next to me experienced TVI (TV interference) due to my operation but I had told him what I was doing so he called me instead of the FCC. I found the problem was due to a cheap mast mounted booster amplifier. I advised him to remove the amplifier and helped him with this. Not only was the TVI solved, his reception was better than with the amp. He was a happy neighbor.
On of my hobbies is reconditioning old farm tractors. Since I live in a suburban area, my neighbors sometimes are exposed to noises, smells, and seeing parts scattered all over the driveway (my wife doesn't like tractor parts in the dishwasher and I am still working on that). To ease concerns, I offer "tractor rides" to their kids and sometimes have plowed snow from driveways. They now brag about their neigbor who messes with tractors and I have had no complaints.
Good relations with the neighbors is a real asset and as Rattan related can build an audience.
Neil