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Why is FM News 101.9 in stereo?

For most people who listen on "regular" radios the WEMP signal is in mono and has been that way since around October 21st/22nd, 2011;
see this thread: http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=200055.0

However, when listening to 101.9 on an HD receiver as thread-starter Nick was doing, the background sounders/bumpers/commercials are in stereo, although "weaker" in comparison to full stereo broadcasts. But even in HD, the main newsreader voices and audio clips do appear to be in mono - clarification welcomed.
 
I've heard promos for Flyers hockey games on WIP where the VO invites listeners to "hear all the action in bone-jarring FM stereo."
 
There are still a lot of receivers that will mute in the absence of a stereo pilot. The ones sold by Radio Shack about 20 years ago were notorious for that. Those receivers had to be forced into mono mode in order to defeat the muting. That's why many spoken word FM stations will keep the pilot on, even if the program material itself is in mono.

At one time, that practice was illegal. There was a paragraph in Part 73 of the FCC rules calling for FM stations to turn off the stereo pilot whenever they broadcast anything in mono exceeding 5 minutes in length. The reason for the "5 minute exception" was news programming. Stations would do a newscast at the top of the hour, turn off the pilot, and get calls from listeners who thought the station went off the air when their receivers muted. This regulation was removed with deregulation.

The old WWDB (96.5) in Philadelphia used to run a talk format in mono, without the stereo pilot, on weekdays. On Sundays, when WWDB carried a Sinatra program, the stereo was turned on. After the FCC amended the rules, WWDB kept the pilot on at all times, presumably due to the problem of receivers muting in the absence of the pilot.
 
I've used a lot of FM receivers, from the early 1970s to brand new, and never had the problem of muting on a mono signal, or the seek/scan skipping past a mono signal. I think only a very small minority of vintage '60s/'70s receivers did such things, probably in a deliberate attempt to help listeners find the then-few number of stereo stations on the dial (similar to the "HD seek only" setting of HD Radio receivers).
 
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