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FCC gives green light for geo-targeted ad-insertion on FM boosters

seattlesarchiebunker said:
There are only a few specific situations I could foresee zonecasting being useful:

1) Urban cores that are covered by a transmitter 10+ miles out (thinking of downtown Seattle or Everett, WA) where the main signal gets hit hard with multipath.

2) Places such as the Wasatch Front and their relatively recent move-ins that are physically terrain shielded from their target market (these stations already have non-zonecast boosters in place…and frequently have issues keeping the main transmitter on)
Click to expand...
Your second scenario is about the only circumstance I can see this being useful. The large, sparsely populated western states with a lot of towns too small to ever be able to support a station of their own and rely on translators from a larger market. This would give businesses in those smaller towns the ability to advertise without paying big-city rates.

The logistics of this could be daunting though. While most automation systems allow for "slave" systems, you'd still need a workstation for each signal that you tend to utilize this with. I don't know how these translators' programming is fed, but if it's retransmitting an off-air feed you'd a playback workstation at every remote site, and a way to trigger local breaks (25 Hz tones?). Likely more expense with little ROI. More work for the traffic person too, with more logs to reconcile not to mention having remote sales staff.
 
We're not talking translators... that's a totally different animal. Until now, boosters were used in cases where the predicted contour of the station suffers in a certain area and a "booster" transmitter carries the programming to the affected area. Often, synchronization has been used to minimize the "interference zone", where the main and the booster cancel each other.

With "zone-casting" the booster contains different advertising from the main channel. There will always be an interference zone, but instead of the main program material competing with itself, it will be two different audio messages competing with each other. The claim is that this will work. Your radio will hear two different programs/spots/whatever, as you drive through the interference zone, you'll get a mish-mash of competing audio sources at some point. Maybe I don't believe in this sort of magic, but we'll soon find out.

My prediction remains that it will have a short life...
 
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