Blown To Bits

Low Power Radio

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 by Harry Lewis

There is a lovely story in the New York Times today about a low-power radio station in northwest Montana: ¬†Creston Journal – From a Porch in Montana, Low-Power Radio’s Voice …. There are only 800 of these licenses, though Congress may increase the number. This particular station has a very short broadcast range but is piped through the Internet to listeners as far away as Florida. It’s an excellent example of the kind of radio diffusion we discuss in Chapter 8 of Blown to Bits. Why shouldn’t the broadcaster in Montana be able to cut a deal with the listener in Florida to rebroadcast to a local Florida audience?

Full disclosure: I know exactly where this transmitter is; I drive through Creston, MT several times each summer, as it is on the road between my summer home the airport we fly into. It’s beautiful, but as the pictures in the story indicate, it is beautifully isolated.

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