Re: News Story

["Aaron 'Bishop' Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 08:09 AM 2/16/2002 -0800, you wrote:

>How much would it cost in electricity to keep a
>station lioke that on the air per month?  The towqn I
>am from has no truely local station that caters to the
>needs of the town.  The one station licensed to the
>town has been termed "The ownwers personal Jukebox".
>Several associates of mine and I ran a daytime only AM
>station for several months doing a rock format but it
>wasn't making much money and the cost of running a
>several kilowatt Tx for 16 hours a day was enormous...
>
>Another question...  Can LPFM's be directional?

No, they can't.  It was detrimined that it would be too encouraging to put 
LPFM's where they really didn't fit, and also engineering a directional FM 
is a lot tougher than an omni, and LPFM is supposed to be more non-techie 
friendly.

I don't agree with anything I just said, but that was the reasoning I was 
given at last year's IBS (www.ibsradio.org) conference in NYC.

To answer your original question, they're supposed to be 100 watts, so it's 
a lightbulb :-)  Realistically I would imagine it costs little more than a 
regular business with a lot of electrical equipment does.  Or a small- to 
mid-sized dot-com (with lots of computers, each with a 300W power 
supply).   You CAN get really nailed on heating costs if your heat is 
electric, though.   Definitely go for oil or gas if at all possible.


______________________________________________
Aaron "Bishop" Read       aread@speakeasy.net
Fried Bagels Consulting   www.friedbagels.com
12 Walnut St. / Waltham, MA / 02453