HD radio hijacking happens when a distant station's digital signal takes over a local frequency the moment that local station's own HD signal goes dark. Tyler breaks down how this happened to him on his commute, why small and low power FM stations have zero regulatory protection against it, and how…
HD radio was pitched as the FM upgrade that would save terrestrial radio from satellite and streaming, but two decades later most listeners have never heard of it. Broadcast engineer Tyler Woodward traces the FCC's 2002 approval, iBiquity's royalty driven business model, and how media consolidation…
Spotify decides what counts as a stream and there is no outside auditor checking the number that decides how artists get paid, unlike broadcast radio which uses Nielsen ratings and portable people meters. This episode breaks down how a 30 second play counts as a full stream, how one guy ran a years…
For over 40 years, a radio signal in the UK has been quietly switching household heating systems on and off. It's called the Radio Teleswitch Service, and it's one of the best examples of hidden data riding on broadcast signals that most people have never heard of. I explain how RTS works, how the…
There's a tiny data protocol still riding inside FM signals after all these years, and it's the reason your car's dashboard knows what song is playing. RDS and its US cousin RBDS are quietly holding up more than most people realize. I cover where the standard came from, how it actually works at the…
Cable news channels have the staff, the brand recognition, and news gathering operations most radio stations can only dream of. Instead of building real audio products, they route the 24/7 TV feed to a streaming platform and call it done. CNN on TuneIn, Fox on SiriusXM, MSNBC's linear feed. You can…
The fight over AM radio isn't really about whether you listen to it. It's about what happens when the land under a tower is worth more than the station on it. Licenses keep declining, copper theft keeps getting worse, and the push to pull AM from new cars is only part of the story. I get into the…
Most of America's radio stations no longer have a chief engineer, and nobody notices until a tower goes dark or the FCC fines start piling up. One station sat silent for six months because no one knew the transmitter had failed. That's not an accident. That's what happens when the people who keep…
The FCC's public file used to be a dusty binder in your lobby. Since 2018 it's a searchable, timestamped online record anyone can dig through, and the political file alone has produced some of radio's biggest enforcement fines, running into six figures. I go through where most violations actually…
You walk into a big box store with full bars and walk out to a flood of missed notifications. It's not your phone and it's not your carrier. It's physics and congestion colliding. Buildings act like leaky shields, and crowds create digital traffic jams. I break down both forces. The structure…
