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Comment Re:So much for long distance Listening (Score 1) 293

By the way, "lack of distance" has been considered a feature, not a bug, for decades. The current US FM band (87.5-107.9 mHz) was chosen* to minimize "skip" transmission on the earlier, lower, band. This prevents stations from interfering as easily, and thus increases the number of stations permissible in a particular local listening area. There are still "clear channel" 50,000 watt AM stations that occupy exclusive frequencies for the entire country - they were trying to avoid that.

*partly - the other part was marginally a conspiracy to put Howard Armstrong's nascent FM network out of business by making the frequencies it operated on illegal. However, in fact, the lower frequency 42-49 mHz band *did* have the tendency to skip sometimes, and with the superior signal to noise ratio of wideband FM, could sometimes be clearly be heard at remarkable distances - or interfere with local stations at remarkable distances.

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