Why Channel 37 Doesn't Exist (And What It Has to Do With Aliens)

[mwooldri]

11. The "Clear Channel" stations (Class A, 50kW) are still there.

Most broadcast right wing shit but still interests me to see how far the signal goes. Thanks to the ionosphere one can generally hear WBT 1110 better in Upstate New York (at night of course) than 100 miles away from their transmitter site at any time of day.

The nighttime skip is what led Radio Luxembourg to be successful from the 1950s to the 1980s. People in the UK tended to have a choice of BBC Home Service, Light Programme or Third Programme (now BBC Radio 4, 2 and 3 respectively) and that was it. Pop music was not frequently played. People turned to the pirate stations broadcasting at sea (barely legal) or Luxembourg (legal, just international). BBC then launched Radio 1, and it still had to share frequencies with Radio 2. Commerical local radio didn't come til the late 70s/early 80s. The late 80s saw the end of AM/FM dual broadcasting, the clearing out of the police from the FM band, more local FM stations, Radio 1 on its own FM frequency, and national commerical radio. Luxembourg "died" in 1991, when it switched to Oldies and aimed at Germany, not the UK where Luxembourg could cover 24 hours a day and not just at night due to skywave.