5 ms·

How a tiny radio station came to play a continuous loop since the late-1990s

41 points by geox 2y ago

sgbeal 2y ago
How could i have gone 50+ years without having heard of such transmitter use by stores? i could ask Google when that practice was (thankfully) eliminated but i prefer the mystery of it.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  It seems niche. The service got rented by local biz trying to stand out or for some event where attendees needed additional info. Signage would be needed to tell the public where to tune in. For someone to stumble across it, they'd have to already be tuned into it's broadcast frequency. I'll guess that the device's frequency gets set to an open slot on the local airwaves.
andirk 2y ago
Is this similar to Bart Simpson's Superstar Celebrity Microphone [0] ? Because it has the same mic-to-radio feature and looks like it [1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WH-r0Tb7tI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WH-r0Tb7tI [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/334088758981 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334088758981
- nosmokewhereiam 2y ago
  That seller is about to be confused as to why soo many people are checking out their listing* *It's at 8 viewers as of this post
  - meowster 2y ago
    And it just sold within the past hour. (374 viewed in the last 24 hours)
SoftTalker 2y ago
Is this actually an FCC licensed station? I can't figure out the FCC search page and can't really find any other information for station WVRM. Or is it such a low power transmitter that it doesn't need licensing? As a kid I had a microphone from Radio Shack that would transmit on FM. It had a range of maybe 100ft or so. I would put it next to a record player speaker and operate a "radio station" in my house.
- pkulak 2y ago
  > Or is it such a low power transmitter that it doesn't need licensing? This is my guess. Seems like it's intended to sync up speakers before Sonos and the like, so probably in the same class as those little FM broadcasters we all used to use to get music from our phone to our car. It's profoundly uninteresting to me that someone has one of these and is looping 60 seconds of audio somewhere in the world... but what do I know?
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Yeah the only thing interesting to me was that such a tiny station actually had call letters. Maybe they are just making them up.
- RF_Enthusiast 2y ago
  Oh I remember this station. This was a part 15 station known as “Village Radio Montclair” that used to use multiple low power transmitters to cover a downtown area, around the turn of the century. I think they were synchronized to create a seamless transition as you left one coverage area and entered another. Or at least that was the goal. It’s the same rule part that allowed for the low power microphone you mentioned. It only allows for 250 microvolts per meter (measured at 3 meters away on the FM band) which is a tiny coverage area. Edit to add: Back in the 1990’s and early 00’s, these signals went much further than they would in 2024, because the FM band had lots of blank spots. With HDRadio sidebands and since-licensed low power repeaters, those blank spots are now filled up.
ada1981 2y ago
“ As of late” is the human equivalent of an LLM saying “delve”. Also, FTC is cool with this?
- passwordoops 2y ago
  Off-topic but I really hate that LLM's chose "delve" because it was one of written verbal ticks. Now I have to purposely ctrl-h it in my long writing :/
  - noman-land 2y ago
    Just italicize it every time you use it.
Mobil1 2y ago
[dead]
Mobil1 2y ago
[dead]
internet101010 2y ago
I live above an extremely busy intersection in a major city. Looks like I have plans for next weekend. These archaic low power FM transmitters are cheap and take line-in. 100ft would actually be decent coverage but maybe I am being too optimistic. I will assign the headphone jack on the MS-01 to a VM that has playlists running 24/7 within Proxmox and see what happens :D
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  Two of my neighbors know that I broadcast local FM music (mostly Pandora feeds, but also CDs)... it has been a fun way to share words about our music choices. For me, it also allows me to simultaneously play music across my property without disturbing the neighborhood with a centralized [louder] single point setup (similar to the friend from article).
sublinear 2y ago
> Soon, he moved WVRN to the internet. But a live feed proved prohibitively expensive.“It was like $3,000 per month to have a stream that could handle 10 listeners. I saw it as the future and I wanted to be a part of it. But I was too far ahead of that wave and it crashed on me,” Louvis said. “I couldn’t sell enough ads to recoup the cost.” Can anyone explain why this was so expensive back then?
- schlauerfox 2y ago
  maybe it was a 1.5mbps t1 line cost at 128kbps/stream would be about 10 streams? Maybe he was paying a hosting company for bandwidth? Not sure from the article.

41 points by geox 2y ago

How could i have gone 50+ years without having heard of such transmitter use by stores? i could ask Google when that practice was (thankfully) eliminated but i prefer the mystery of it.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
It seems niche. The service got rented by local biz trying to stand out or for some event where attendees needed additional info. Signage would be needed to tell the public where to tune in. For someone to stumble across it, they'd have to already be tuned into it's broadcast frequency. I'll guess that the device's frequency gets set to an open slot on the local airwaves.

andirk 2y ago

Is this similar to Bart Simpson's Superstar Celebrity Microphone [0] ? Because it has the same mic-to-radio feature and looks like it [1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WH-r0Tb7tI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WH-r0Tb7tI [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/334088758981 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334088758981

nosmokewhereiam 2y ago
That seller is about to be confused as to why soo many people are checking out their listing* *It's at 8 viewers as of this post
- meowster 2y ago
  And it just sold within the past hour. (374 viewed in the last 24 hours)

SoftTalker 2y ago

Is this actually an FCC licensed station? I can't figure out the FCC search page and can't really find any other information for station WVRM. Or is it such a low power transmitter that it doesn't need licensing? As a kid I had a microphone from Radio Shack that would transmit on FM. It had a range of maybe 100ft or so. I would put it next to a record player speaker and operate a "radio station" in my house.

pkulak 2y ago
> Or is it such a low power transmitter that it doesn't need licensing? This is my guess. Seems like it's intended to sync up speakers before Sonos and the like, so probably in the same class as those little FM broadcasters we all used to use to get music from our phone to our car. It's profoundly uninteresting to me that someone has one of these and is looping 60 seconds of audio somewhere in the world... but what do I know?
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  Yeah the only thing interesting to me was that such a tiny station actually had call letters. Maybe they are just making them up.
RF_Enthusiast 2y ago
Oh I remember this station. This was a part 15 station known as “Village Radio Montclair” that used to use multiple low power transmitters to cover a downtown area, around the turn of the century. I think they were synchronized to create a seamless transition as you left one coverage area and entered another. Or at least that was the goal. It’s the same rule part that allowed for the low power microphone you mentioned. It only allows for 250 microvolts per meter (measured at 3 meters away on the FM band) which is a tiny coverage area. Edit to add: Back in the 1990’s and early 00’s, these signals went much further than they would in 2024, because the FM band had lots of blank spots. With HDRadio sidebands and since-licensed low power repeaters, those blank spots are now filled up.

ada1981 2y ago

“ As of late” is the human equivalent of an LLM saying “delve”. Also, FTC is cool with this?

passwordoops 2y ago
Off-topic but I really hate that LLM's chose "delve" because it was one of written verbal ticks. Now I have to purposely ctrl-h it in my long writing :/
- noman-land 2y ago
  Just italicize it every time you use it.

Mobil1 2y ago

[dead]

Mobil1 2y ago

[dead]

internet101010 2y ago

I live above an extremely busy intersection in a major city. Looks like I have plans for next weekend. These archaic low power FM transmitters are cheap and take line-in. 100ft would actually be decent coverage but maybe I am being too optimistic. I will assign the headphone jack on the MS-01 to a VM that has playlists running 24/7 within Proxmox and see what happens :D

ProllyInfamous 2y ago
Two of my neighbors know that I broadcast local FM music (mostly Pandora feeds, but also CDs)... it has been a fun way to share words about our music choices. For me, it also allows me to simultaneously play music across my property without disturbing the neighborhood with a centralized [louder] single point setup (similar to the friend from article).

sublinear 2y ago

> Soon, he moved WVRN to the internet. But a live feed proved prohibitively expensive.“It was like $3,000 per month to have a stream that could handle 10 listeners. I saw it as the future and I wanted to be a part of it. But I was too far ahead of that wave and it crashed on me,” Louvis said. “I couldn’t sell enough ads to recoup the cost.” Can anyone explain why this was so expensive back then?

schlauerfox 2y ago
maybe it was a 1.5mbps t1 line cost at 128kbps/stream would be about 10 streams? Maybe he was paying a hosting company for bandwidth? Not sure from the article.