Talk:Radio broadcasting

Dictionary

This sounds an awful lot like a dictionary entry. It would be nice to have a history of radio stations and some information about how they have affected modern culture (and been affected). Chadloder 04:46 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Agreement

I absolutely agree. I only wrote this as a beginning to get it off the most wanted list, and hoped that people would add to it. --user:jaknouse — Preceding undated comment added 05:00, 24 January 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, but, we still want it, and now those who use that list to decide what to add won't see it there any more.

Don't forget pirate radio stations, they have their own colorful history, and are a very important cultural force in Europe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.177.75.31 (talk) 05:14, 24 January 2003 (UTC)

"W" and "K"

For weird reasons, Illnois, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts are in the "W", or "Dubya", side, and Texas, Utah, and Iowa are in the "K", or "Kerry", side.

However, few states are accurately placed. California, Oregon, and Washington are in the "K" side, and Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina are in the "W" side. - Anonymous — Preceding unsigned comment added by 03:03, 2 January 2005 (talk)

For those confused by this entry, it is a political joke. Actually most stations east of the Mississippi river have call letters beginning with W and stations west of the Mississippi have call letters beginning with K. There are exceptions, mostly because the rule was introduced after a number of stations (KDKA - Pittsburgh, WHO - Des Moines, IA, for example) were licensed. --Blainster 03:09, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

This also has to do with a station's city of license, in cases where the station is close to the Mississippi (such as several stations in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN area)DC 14:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

KDKA

Did KDKA not broadcat a baseball game first or was it WBZ? Scott 02:13, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Moved FM commentary from article to here

Note: The following three paragraphs are not technically accurate and require extensive editing. For example, spacing between stations was set to permit wideband FM (+/- 75 kHz deviation), with the remaining 50 kHz to provide some protection from adjacent channel interference. Also, low-pass filter in stereo FM generators limits highest audio frequency to 15 kHz.

--Blainster 01:34, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

AM Stereo

I have just removed a recent edit and some existing material about the reasons for AM Stereo's lack of acceptance. If we want to lay the blame on the FCC we must find a source for that information (because we don't do original research at WP. Also, we would need to locate and fairly treat all opposing points of view. Also, this doesn't address the fact that AM stereo did not catch on outside the US either. -- cmh 23:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

First Radio Station

KDKA is listed here as being the first radio station on the air in North America in 1920. However, CFCF radio in Montreal began broadcasting in 1919, the previous year. I know for sure that CFCF was the first radio station to regularly broadcast in North America. Just thought I'd bring this up to your attention. Daniel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.131.124.111 (talk) 22:17, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

CINW (AM), formerly CFCF-AM, claims program broadcasts began on May 20, 1920, still nearly six months ahead of KDKA. --Blainster 22:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

American stations

Can someone explain why American (US) radio stations have names which seem to be random concatenations of letters? Are they call signs? What's the history behind that? Wooster (talk) 12:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Station call sign prefixes were apportioned around the world early in the 20th century. US commercial radio stations have four call letters beginning with "K" (west of the Mississippi river) or "W" (east of the Missisippi). There are historical exceptions, with some stations dating to the 1920s having just three letters, and some "K" and "W" stations ignoring the dividing line (see North American call sign). The succeeding three letters can be requested from the FCC at the time of licensing if the combination is otherwise unassigned, and are sometimes incorporated into an acronym or initialism for marketing purposes. --Blainster 18:35, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I would also add that callsigns are absolutely unique in the world, which is really the whole point. Monikers, on the other hand, are not -- they are usually used at several stations in different media markets, sometimes even with the same frequency number (often truncated or rounded to a whole number on FM, and on AM formerly dropping the final 0 sometimes [like 780 becomes 78], which was used to save space on analog-tuning dial radios). Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, and the Bahamas also use this, as do a few shortwave stations like HCJB. Australia used to, but broadcast stations went from VL5UV to 5UV to just Radio Adelaide now, for example.

Radio Infobox

I'm hoping someone can help me clean up some articles. There are several Mexican radio stations serving U.S. markets, primarily San Diego. The infobox used for many of them has the station's class included (Class A, B, C). I'm still new to Wikipedia and know noting about infoboxes. However, I'm pretty sure the FCC isn't assigning station classes to Mexican stations. Thus, as in Canada, the station class should be deleted, right? Maybe someone can check these out and fix them. Goeverywhere 00:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Globalize tag

the globalize tag is the first thing visible on this page. Reading though the discussion here on the talk page though, I see no mention of why the tag was added. Would anyone care to elaborate, please? -Ohms law 12:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason for this tag to be here. If there are concerns they need to be spelled out. This question has been here on the talk page for nearly a year and noone seems to care enough to answer it. I'm removing the tag.--Rtphokie 01:34, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Station location?

Why is it that a radio station will be listed as one city when it's actually based in another city far away (i.e. KFNK-Eatonville is actually based 25 miles away in Tacoma, not Eatonville)? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JustN5:12 (talk • contribs) 01:27, 27 February 2007 (UTC).

I assume you are talking about FM. There is a table of separation requirements which the FCC maintains at http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/spacing/index.html. The idea nowadays is to find any "hole" you can which meets separation requirements per all available frequencies. If you do, you can plop down an FM radio station. These "holes" can be in strange places. My in-laws are in a triangle of land 3 miles on a side where I could put a 50,000 watt (class C-2) FM station, if I had the money. I have a friend whose brother wheeled in a temporary building alongside an interstate in the boonies just because he found such a hole. But, the FCC also says that a license must be tied to a town or city through an "allotment". The location of the antenna must be within 25 miles of the allotment. For commercial reasons, stations which have a choice of allotments will usually pick the biggest town, so it looks like they are a bigger station. For example, 93.9 in central Illinois is allotted to Lincoln, but the antenna is also within 25 miles of Springfield, so they will say Springfield even though the license emanates from Lincoln. Listen carefully: if the bigger town is farther than 25 miles, they must use the real town of license, but can add on anything else they wish afterward, e.g., "93.9 WWWW Lincoln Springfield". Otherwise, if the station really is farther away, the one you are listening to is either a "translator" (low-power remote transmitter) or under an LMA (local marketing agreement) contract for the other station to provide the programming. Absentee owners often do this latter thing.

Definition of Radio

Back in April, the following was removed when vandalism was removed: A radio station is an audio (sound) broadcasting service, traditionally broadcast through the air as radio waves (a form of electromagnetic radiation) from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving device. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast common programming, either in syndication or simulcast or both.

What is left is only the "other" ways that "radio" programming can be distributed. What credible evidence is there for the expansion of the term "radio broadcasting" to be expanded to include distribution that does not involve the transmission of an electromagnetic signal through the air? I believe pretty strongly that "internet streaming" is *not* "radio". Nothing in this article supports the idea that transmission over the internet is "radio", other than the first sentence.StreamingRadioGuide 19:37, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I inserted the obviously missing description. (SEWilco 04:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC))

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I think that

1. there is no article about radio broadcasting,
2. there should be one,
3. this article is exactly describing radio broadcasting.

That's why I propose moving this article. Maybe one can create an article Radio staion as well, but a redirect might work as well. --Abe Lincoln 18:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Support: I tend to agree with Abe here—an article on a radio station should surely cover the structure and organisation of a radio station, as well as the different formats. There are existing articles on AM broadcast radio and FM broadcast radio, and the current article acts as a good summary of these, as well as of radio broadcasting in general. Construction of a new Radio station article could perhaps then involve the content of the current Radio format article, info about the people in a radio station, and some information about studios, music libraries, and syndication. Sjb90 09:31, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Support: Article seems to be about broadcasting; it should be named as such. Oren0 04:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Support: Great idea; this seems to be a better name for the content here if nothing else. --Cheers, Komdori 18:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

This article has been renamed from radio station to radio broadcasting as the result of a move request. --Stemonitis 06:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

DIY radio station

Please include information about DIY stations in the article. The DIY station described only cost 1€ See DIY station

81.246.154.99 (talk) 13:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Amateur and CB radio

Doesnt really belong here as these are primarily intended for communications between two (or more) people rather than broadcasting (which is actually prohibited on CB and Amateur frequencies in moany countries)

Although in some countries religious services can be legally transmitted on CB frequencies while In the very early days of amateur radio licence holders were allowed to broadcast music (In the early 1920's this was "temporairly" outlawed and was never relegalised) back in those very early days the distinction between amateur and broadcast radio was quite fuzzy. 213.40.112.230 (talk) 11:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Naming Callsigns

Where do the station names come from?Fruckert (talk) 04:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

SW is actually AM

In the section Types three types of radio wave broadcasting have been listed: SW, AM and FM. I think this categorisation is erronous . Because SW broadcasting is also AM. The difference between LW, MW and SW is in the carrier frequency, LW broadcasting has the lowest and SW broadcasting has the highest frequency of the three. But the modulation technique is the same; namely AM. So I think SW must be included within AM. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 13:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

AM is correct, regarding entertainment or public broadcasters. Other comms must now use SSB, or FM as appropriate. Only aircraft comms still use AM on VHF, as it came into use circa a 1940. Marine AM was phased out in 1973. The very first comms systems used spark-gap coils for xmit, and huge iron coils driving galvenometers as recievers. Spark gaps were outlawed circa WW1.203.219.80.29 (talk) 06:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Funny quotations

I am wondering whether this page could be enhanced by some of the now amusing quotations said about radio. These include:

"Radio has no future" Lord Kelvin "The radio craze will die out in time" Thomas Edison

And was there not an early comment on radio broadcasting that it would never work, because "who would want to spend time listening to messages sent to no one in particular"? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:26, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

No. --Wtshymanski (talk) 03:29, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Power

There are numerous mentions of "power", a link to "Low power stations" in the See also section and the radio station template also includes a Power attribute, but nowhere is it explained what this "power" means in real terms. Is 1000 watts a little or a lot? How far away could that be received? Etc. danno_uk 01:22, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

"In 2009, there were 3,494 radio broadcasting stations in the United States."

The fact in the introduction "In 2009, there were 3,494 radio broadcasting stations in the United States." is a bit country-specific, it's not like only the Americans have radio broadcasting technology??? is it really necessary to put this here, in the introduction? Is there some sort of place where we could find how many radio broadcasting stations there are in the world (or at least an estimate) to replace this?~J349 (talk) 13:29, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Usage of "unidirectional"

Simply referring to broadcasting as "unidirectional" without any definition, while not technically wrong, is extremely misleading. Simply linking to the article "Simplex" does not address this. The word does not even appear in that article, nor is simplex strictly synonymous even if we limit consideration to this one, frankly rather obscure, sense of the word. In the context of radio communications unidirectional is used in 2 senses - as the opposite of bidirectional, basically a communications-topology thing; and as the opposite of omnidirectional, which is a physical thing pertaining primarily, but not exclusively, to antennas. It would be a very rare anglophone indeed who would read this article and not already know that radio broadcasting stations are NOT bidirectional, so the word contributed essentially NO useful information to the sentence. Certainly, the number of people who would be enlightened to discover that they can't talk into their radio and expect the DJ to respond will be far less than the number who would find this word misleading or confusing. I go on at length about this because I thought simply omitting the word made for a clearer and shorter sentence without ambiguity, but the edit was reversed.

I think the lead sentence as I left it -

"Radio broadcasting is wireless transmission by radio waves of a signal intended to reach a wide audience, without provision for any return signal."

-while needlessly prolix, and inferior to simply omitting the word "unidirectional", at least has the merit of being unambiguous and preserving the the point that radio broadcasting is a one-way communication, not a conversation. I don't really think that point NEEDS to be made as I doubt anyone will read this article who doesn't already consider it obvious. I'd be happy to have the second sentence I inserted afterwards deleted, as I don't think defining one rather obscure sense of the word "unidirectional" contributes anything of value to this article, but, if you are partial to the word, at least this is better than including it in a way that is misleading.

- - - -

"Ooookay." Some "clever" person keeps reverting changes to maintain the presence of this word in the lead sentence while removing any attempt to define it. And then they ignore this talk section and simply put smart remarks in the field where they are supposed to justify their edits. I don't think I can improve on what I already wrote here about why the inclusion of this word adds absolutely nothing to this article that any likely reader doesn't already know, and why it is potentially confusing. But if you are going to insist on using it, it needs to be defined. I've done so, with as short a sentence as possible. Unless it has been added, the word "unidirectional" doesn't even appear in the article the word "unidirectional" is linked to here. Hopefully, this short definition will not offend the editor's apparent desire for obscurity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.96.210.230 (talk) 20:13, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Way too wordy, and really, a redundant definition in true Wikipedia style...it's unlikely someone looking up "broadcasting" isn't already aware of at least that much of how it works, but is probably more interested in "why" and "who" and "when" of milestones. Any Wikipedia article that gets bogged down in the definitions of "simplex", "duplex" and "half-duplex" is usually improved by removing any such references and just describing what is meant in that context. --Wtshymanski (talk) 21:20, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

"2023 in radio" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect 2023 in radio and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 February 6 § 2023 in radio until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 20:54, 6 February 2023 (UTC)