Radio never warned me (regarding Spfld tornado)

[Scott Fybush]

Garrett Wollman wrote:
> <<On Thu, 09 Jun 2011 20:02:47 -0400, Scott Fybush <scott@fybush.com> said:
> 
>> followed by one of Clear Channel's "towers on wheels," those nifty 
>> mobile setups that include a generator, a frequency-agile transmitter, a 
>> tower and antenna. How many mom-and-pop stations or small groups could 
>> ever have assembled one of those...much less several of them, stationed 
>> so that there's always one within a day's drive of any station that 
>> might need it?
> 
> Probably none... but Harris certainly could, and any property/casualty
> insurer could, too.  Is there some regulatory barrier that prevented a
> market for this service from developing?

None that I know of. I suspect the barriers were purely economical: how 
many mom-and-pops would have been willing to budget for the big bucks 
that a Harris or a Nautel might have wanted to provide such a service on 
short notice? And how many mom-and-pops would have been willing to shell 
out for the expensive business-interruption insurance that would have 
been needed to make it worthwhile for an insurance company to build out 
the emergency gear?

Seems to me that it only makes sense if you've got multiple hundreds of 
stations scattered all over the country, making it likely that the gear 
will be saving your bacon somewhere in America at any given time.

s