Technical Topics > Part 15 AM and FM Station Operation

Does 'Cable FM' still exist anywhere today?

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ThaDood:
Another Part 15 option that has existed, at least since the early 1970's in the USA, is Cable FM Radio.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_radio  (I'm sure there are other explanations out there, but that was from a very quick search.) Anyway, in the 70's, 80's, and the 90's, college campuses and small towns, with CATV companies, could allow a station to exist via only being available on their cabled system. Where I grew up, we had Cable FM, but not anything local access like, just re-FREQ-assigned of rebroadcasted stations from Buffalo, Rochester, Hornell, Olean, Niagara Falls, in WNY, and even Toronto, ON, Canada. Local FM reception was dismal, at best, in that area, so FM was nice for the cable company to offer at the time. The only thing that was Cable-Only was the leaky-cable coo-coo at the very start of the FM dial. That, was the tool where cable company employees could drive around, using just a car stereo's FM RX, to find out where the RF leaky cable faults were, and, or, see whom was stealing CATV illegally. Bottom-line, does anyone know of any Cable FM only stations that exist only on the local CATV system, that they are carried on? Or, do you have stories of such station in the past?

TRI International:
My family had a cable fm station back in the 70's it was FM 88 cable radio. What's crazy I still have one of the cable radio transmitters as there was 2 styles. One you send your signal up to the cable company head end and they would send it back down on a different frequency. The Other was you were able to do both yourself.  Also while in the military I  assisted in running on on our base which was WKFO.
Not sure if any are still around but they were nice to operate.  8)

tybee:
Would you believe that actually goes back to the 1930s? That when it began mid 30s. Mostly hotels, in each room you had a selection of 4 genres of music styles to pick from.

Edit: Actually I'm not certain it was FM, but it seems most likely, as FM was becoming a kind of fad around then but so few people had FM receivers and they were more complicated to build.

tybee:

--- Quote from: TRI International on November 07, 2024, 2144 UTC --- Also while in the military I  assisted in running on on our base which was WKFO.
Not sure if any are still around but they were nice to operate.  8)

--- End quote ---

Like to hear more about WKFO. What base? What years? Carrier Current maybe?

tybee:
@ The Dood - Not what I was looking for, and again, not positive it was FM, I just suspect it was:
St__Louis_Globe_Democrat_Sun__Jun_30__1935_~2.jpg:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jd19YoKar6aH__4urqScYsbEGSRE6N_Q/view?usp=drivesdk

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