Re: [PLUG] AM bye bye

[Walt Mankowski via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Fri, Jul 08, 2022 at 03:48:25PM -0400, Rich Freeman via plug wrote:
> That said, I am not sure I agree with one statement in that article:
> that AM is "cheaper" to transmit.  I guess that would depend on how
> you're measuring it, but I'd think an FM transmitter itself would be
> cheaper to operate, if only because it doesn't need a gigantic antenna
> to cover the MF bands.  Obviously AM was invented first, but I'd think
> that the amplifiers/modulation/etc wouldn't be the bottleneck these
> days.  That said if you want to cover the same area in both bands one
> tower gets you a lot more with AM, so if you're comparing one AM tower
> to a whole bunch of FM ones that might be another matter.
> 
> Then again, maybe the AM transmitters really are cheaper.  I couldn't
> find any substantiating info in the text version of that article or
> the one it linked.

Two things I thought of while reading this discussion:

* Maybe the licenses are cheaper than FM since AM is considered such a
  backwater these days.

* Even if the transmitters are more expensive, that's at least partly
  countered by the fact that you can broadcast to a much wider
  audience than FM.

Walt
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