[BC] Running mono on FM...

[Richard Fry]

Burt Weiner:
>> One L.A. station was leaving the  L-R on and only feeding mono
>>  to the left channel.  The L-R channel was  gobbling up modulation.
Andy Green:
> the major downside to broadcating in Stereo is the increased
> signal to noise ratio that comes with demodulating the L-r
> info - since the noise level increases with frequency in FM the
> penalty is quite high.
___________________

Presumably in Burt's example, the station also turned off its stereo pilot. 
Otherwise stereo receivers would have output on the left channel only in 
that mode.

A stereo FM receiver should kill its L-R demod if no pilot is present.  In 
that case it would not suffer the stereo FM "S/N hit" -- just whatever 
results from reducing L+R modulation at the tx to permit legal, total 
modulation while L+R and L-R (but no pilot) are transmitted.

RF