This episode of brain Stuff is brought to you by Linda dot Com. Linda dot com offers thousands of engaging, easy to follow video tutorials taught by industry experts to help you learn software, creative and business skills. Membership starts at twenty five a month and provides unlimited seven access. Try Linda dot com free for seven days by visiting Linda dot com slash brain Stuff. Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com where smart Happens. Hi,
I'm Marshall Brain with today's question. What is low power FM or LPFM? A normal FM station transmits at thousands of wats. This level of power means that the station needs lots of expensive transmitting equipment as well as a fairly substantial antenna. It might cost in the range of a million dollars to get a basic FM station on the air at this level of power, and it can cover an entire urban area. That level of investment has
several side effects. First, only a business entity or an extremely wealthy individual can afford to create an FM station, and the station must of necessity be driven by business logic in order to cover the high operating costs. This limits creativity and makes it hard for small organizations or individuals to get airtime. The LPFM station is designed to let individuals and small organizations own and operate radio stations
for a wide variety of not for profit reasons. In this sense, the FCC is trying to bring station creation closer to normal people, in the same way that anyone can create a web page. It's not quite that simple, but at least they're headed in the right direction. An LPFM station is a ten watt or a hundred watt transmitter. This level of power gives the station a range of approximately three and a half miles or five point six kilometers. A transmitter this size and its antenna might cost two
thousand to five thousand bucks. In a city, the range of an LPFM transmitter can encompass lots of people, and it can completely cover an entire neighborhood or community area.
The owner operators of low power FM stations could include, among others, religious groups, local neighborhoods, amusement parks, PTA sponsored school stations, ethnic organizations, racetrack pit areas, universities too new or previously unable to get a full power license, movie theater schedule information, interstate highway rest stops, high schools, and so on. Information about low power FM radio stations is available on the FCC website. Do you have any ideas
or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com home page. Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one hundred thousand titles to choose from to be downloaded to your iPod or MP three player.
Go to audible podcast dot com slash brain stuff to get a free audio book download of your choice when you sign up today.