Total posts : 45366
I run on FM mono, and my “cheap indoor radio” range is 30-40 ft (if the receiver is on a windowsill that faces my house) and to a stereo with an external antenna *maybe* 150 ft give or take 10 ft or so depending on what direction you’re facing. Depends also on how good the receiver is. Never tested it to a car radio, since by the time anyone could tune in, they’d already be past the house.
Still, I live in the residential part of town and houses are close enough together that I have a few people who listen on a daily basis and others that tune in if I’m running something that interests them or they get bored with the local commercial station.
Local weather, time, some news, indie/underground music (a good bit of it my own or friends’), but the big one is stories. Live or canned reads of chapters from assorted books/works in the public domain or creative commons, run as serials. Also some radioplays out under creative commons or where I’ve asked permission to run them. I use Zararadio to run the automation and so I can sit down and dj when the mood strikes me, but much of the time I just listen. I also can go completely to battery power in case of a power failure using a small passive console I slapped together and battery powered sources and a different mic than usual and either running it manually or putting in a pre-recorded show on CDs. I am not at all sure if *any* of my listeners could pick it up with battery powered recievers they probably don’t have, but I like the idea of being able to stay on the air in case of local emergencies.
Musical genres are very diverse, rock, folk, country, electronic, classical, blues, jazz, and ethnic.
I don’t run 24/7. I could/can, and do run nonstop on some holidays or special occassions, but mostly it’s a couple hours in the morning when people are getting up for work and school (no stories then, it’s weather, news and music), and a few in the evening with some stories picked for “family time” (since my daughter and sometimes neighbor kids listen) and later the creepy and dramatic stories and finishing off the night with some mellow music of assorted genres and no news or weather unless there’s an emergency people should know about. The last few hours I call “dreamtime” as opposed to a commercial station’s “drivetime” programming.
Very “near neighborhood” range, very small listening audience (though we did get up to about 8 people back just before xmas when we were running a lot of holiday material). Non-commercial and no “top ten” or “hits” programming.
What I try to do with it, like if there was actually a formal mission statement? That’d pretty much be to provide news and weather of interest to my listeners and alternative programming that they might never get the chance to hear if I wasn’t running it. Also, it’s what I enjoy listening to. LOL
Daniel
