NoWayNoCC said:
LocalGuy said:
The very principles that make one a Republican are freedom and liberty and are directly opposed to any kind of dictatorship; dictatorships are the exclusive property of the left
I guess you haven't been paying attention to what the Republicans and the Right have been doing to America the past 25 years then.
Sure I have. That's me. We've been working to free the American people from a government that's gotten too big and oppressive such that they can be as good as they can be.
If Florida did it, it's because it wanted a way to deal with the huge pirate problem there in its own courts ASAP.
What "huge pirate problem"?
Florida has many, many pirates.
Mainly from central Florida south, Florida has many, many pirates. The Miami/Fort Lauderdale area sees the most, typically with as many as a dozen on the air. There are a few doing what you and I would consider "normal" formats (with such a high number of variations of Latin and urban stations, "normal" formats aren't going to get on the air there). There are a number in different languages (if my particular Spanish, Cuban, or Carribean dialect isn't represented, by golly I'm going on the air). Mainly, though, there's a whole bunch of hardcore rap (as if the market's number of similar stations somehow isn't providing enough). And there's a funny thing about those hardcore rap stations: they're often connected to or the products of various gangs, and those gangs are walking into local businesses and "strongly encouraging" owners to "buy advertising" on the "stations." Extortion.
In addition, there's a significant risk to air traffic in the area. South Florida has, in air traffic terms, something like eight or ten airports really close together with complex arrival and departure routes to and from each of their runways invisibly making their way through the sky (I've seen a 6' x 6' 3-D model of it. It was utterly fascinating and took me over a half-hour to follow all the routes to see where they came from and went.). To absolutely successfully make its way through this airspace (and others; I imagine the northeast and other areas are equally busy), an aircraft simply must depend on its instruments, instruments which operate in the frequency space just above the FM band. The crap transmitters pirates use often have trouble staying on a frequency and can shoot spurs and harmonics out into frequencies planes are depending on for navigation and communication.
And another thing about air traffic in south Fla: Miami International Airport sees a huge amount of international arrivals and departures, both passenger and cargo. For the most part, the planes are fine and are operating with the same level of avionics that you find in our planes, but that's not always the case. Many of the cargo airlines and some of the passenger carriers from the islands and some places in South America are flying really old stuff. I'm talking as far back as DC-3s and the like (although I think I remember reading no DC-3 is in commercial service anymore). Watching planes go in and out of that airport can be both a geography and history lesson in one. So do you want these ancient planes flying around over your head and having their navigation screwed with?
KevinFodor said:
Well, it's not only pirates (though there are many in the state of Florida).
There are many stations from Cuba and elsewhere that operate well above the type of power allotted to U.S. radio stations (especially AM stations). I have been told that there are many 5 KW AM nighttime stations in Florida whose "effective" coverage is limited to a few miles at best. Sad, because there's really nothing that can be done about this.
That's true, Kevin. Many years ago, I was talking with the then-engineer of WINZ/Miami. He was very happy with how they got out in the day with 50,000 watts, but he thought they might as well shut down at night - their 10,000 watts couldn't be heard in the vast majority of the market. I believe their night pattern has changed since then to help with the problem they had (I believe it was a tight east-west back then) and this might not make sense looking at a map today, but I remember him saying something like "We've got about a dozen condo high-rises in North Miami Beach that hear us, and I imagine we give a bunch of alligators in the Everglades headaches every night, but almost no one else can hear us over the Cuban interference." WINZ was all-news back then, and, even though supposedly protected by the east-west pattern, Cuba didn't want one bit of it getting in. WINZ was a big target of on-channel, Spanish-language, propaganda-for-the-expatriates blocking.
Okay, subject pretty well covered. Can you stick to 96.5 now, Bandit?
