R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
Granted, these results are for one market, and one particular traffic route, BUT:
I listen to a weak college station from 50 miles away. It is on 88.7 MHz. I take a busy freeway, and am very surprised at the number of FM modulators tuned to 88.7 that I encounter. Sometimes dozens on a 17 mile commute. Considering the number of cars on that freeway is in the thousands, it doesn't sound like a large percentage. But consider that this is the number of people using 88.7 for their modulators (88.3 and 87.9 are free, and few people have the new ones that tune all frequencies), so I'm getting just those on 88.7. Also, this is only the people who actually have their modulators on when I happen to be near. So, taking that into account, maybe 1 in 10 cars is using one of the things. These are people going to the trouble to have portable electronics in the car, using it at some time, and being technically competant enough to know how to use it and make the car radio work with it. Since the signal level is weak on those things, all of those people are fussing with them a bit to get them working.
All of those people are people so disenchanted with broadcast radio they are listening to something else - be it satellite, iPod, or a DVD player - something that can be interfaced to an FM modulator. I did it myself a few years back - to get C-Quam AM stereo into my car radio (which is a rather esoteric way of using a modulator). But I still use a modulator on vacations to get movie sound into the car stereo system.
This is a massive defection of people from broadcast radio. If I am right and a sizable percentage of people use portable electronics to bypass local stations, that cuts directly into ratings in a way that HD radio cannot solve. A couple of things could be done to counteract this to a degree:
(1) Make those modulators HD transmitters while keeping them cheap - hype up the improvement in sound it offers when used with an HD radio.
(2) Make portable HD head units with FM modulators built in. This would appeal to the HD-2 listeners.
I listen to a weak college station from 50 miles away. It is on 88.7 MHz. I take a busy freeway, and am very surprised at the number of FM modulators tuned to 88.7 that I encounter. Sometimes dozens on a 17 mile commute. Considering the number of cars on that freeway is in the thousands, it doesn't sound like a large percentage. But consider that this is the number of people using 88.7 for their modulators (88.3 and 87.9 are free, and few people have the new ones that tune all frequencies), so I'm getting just those on 88.7. Also, this is only the people who actually have their modulators on when I happen to be near. So, taking that into account, maybe 1 in 10 cars is using one of the things. These are people going to the trouble to have portable electronics in the car, using it at some time, and being technically competant enough to know how to use it and make the car radio work with it. Since the signal level is weak on those things, all of those people are fussing with them a bit to get them working.
All of those people are people so disenchanted with broadcast radio they are listening to something else - be it satellite, iPod, or a DVD player - something that can be interfaced to an FM modulator. I did it myself a few years back - to get C-Quam AM stereo into my car radio (which is a rather esoteric way of using a modulator). But I still use a modulator on vacations to get movie sound into the car stereo system.
This is a massive defection of people from broadcast radio. If I am right and a sizable percentage of people use portable electronics to bypass local stations, that cuts directly into ratings in a way that HD radio cannot solve. A couple of things could be done to counteract this to a degree:
(1) Make those modulators HD transmitters while keeping them cheap - hype up the improvement in sound it offers when used with an HD radio.
(2) Make portable HD head units with FM modulators built in. This would appeal to the HD-2 listeners.