[BC] Listeners Loading down the Transmitter: WAS Listening in the car

[Bob Barnswatts]

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On 8/5/2006 at 8:10 PM Rich Wood wrote:
>
>On a per listener basis, not true. Broadcasting is tremendously 
>efficient. Adding a listener has no effect on the transmitter's load. 
>The power company doesn't charge the station by the listener.
>


Interesting that you mention this.  Many moons ago there was a peanut powered FM station that had as one might expect signal delivery problems due to lack of power and HAAT.

The owner turned this around by convincing nearly everyone in town, particularly advertisers, that HIS station had so many listeners (it was the most popular in the market)  and that each receiver used so much of a watt of power and that is why the station was weak in signal around town.  I was surprised that many people simply bought and believed this version of the truth.   I also thought it was a clever way to think of it.  His thinking was that if you only had 1000 watts and each receiver took 1/10 th of a watt to operate you can do the math and see that there would be very little signal floating around there for people to tune into.   

Likewise the analogy went that the other stations didn't have "any" listeners therefore the signal was strong everywhere for them.