[BC] SCA programming

[Xen Scott]

At 07:41 AM 11/14/2013 -0800, "Burt I. Weiner" <biwa at att.net> } wrote:

>... The origin of using subcarriers to "enhance" the
>main channel (FM broadcast audio) goes back to the "Simplex" days
>when super-sonic "Beeper tones"* were used to mute receivers.  This
>was common in the early days of FM Broadcasting when stations used
>their main channel audio for "Store-Casting" or to provide background
>music to restaurants and other businesses**....
>
>**Would you believe that at one time it was less expensive to put a
>"High-Power"FM station on the air rather than lease phone lines to
>"Pipe" background music into restaurants and the like!

Back in 1964, when the company I worked for at the time (Nassau Broadcasting)
bought what was then WTOA (FM) 97.5mhz in Trenton, NJ, I discovered a
whole closet full of green metal boxes.  They turned out to be fixed
tuned 97.5mhz FM radios designed to be installed on buses operated by the
local Trenton bus company.  The radios used tube technology with dynamotor
power supplies.  The radios could be controlled with two supersonic tones
which would either mute the audio or raise the audio to a higher preset
level.  I was told that the radios were in use sometime in the mid-1950s
before SCA and before supersonic control tones were prohibited.  By the
time Nassau Broadcasting bought WTOA from the Trenton Times newspaper,
the station had switched to providing a music service on a 67khz SCA.
One of my assignments was to record additional music tapes to be played
on the automated music service.

My sense of it was that prior to being bought by Nassau Broadcasting, the
primary revenue source for the station was the music service on the SCA.

Xen Scott