[sdiy] decidedly OT: FM radio

[Goddard, Duncan]

> > I grew up in New York, and in the early 70's the New York FM stations,
> > the few that existed, would play the most wonderfully interesting
> > music.  That was when FM was new and somewhat experimental, at least
> > from a market standpoint, and the stations were the exact opposite of
> > today's heavily commercialized operations with focus group selected
> > playlists.  (At least this is the case in the US.)
> 
> FM radio was introduced in the US in the seventies? Wasn't that earlier?
> Here in Germany it was introduced in the early fifties. Or do you mean
> FM stereo radio?<<<
> 
I think don means the use of fm/vhf for reaching a mass-audience; fm was
regarded on both sides of the atlantic as rather an extravagance for the
highly-compressed and cheap sounding "pop" music, and the youth market
perceived to be most likely to listen to pop, well, they just weren't worth
the bandwidth. pearls before swine, kind of thing. popular music got airplay
on fm radio when the kids who listened to it started earning decent money
and, as those kids grew up, radio has grown up with them.

there's also a much more simple reason; national fm radio requires a network
of localised transmitter stations, am does not. this meant that in the u.s.,
the uptake of fm radio transmission was slower than in europe, where the
topological problems weren't such an obstacle (smaller countries). 
it was some time before the tactical advantages of targetting a regional
demographic became apparent to radio advertisers, allowing the funds
(through ad-revenue) for the smaller audiences to get their own radio
stations. this was the start of the commercialization don mentioned. stuff
got cheaper and easier to maintain too.

(I'm off to write a book about broadcasting now folks.........)

d.


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