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Ellisrsp t1_itrqiau wrote

You just opened up a humourous memory for me.

In the early 90s I lived across the street from the University of California, Irvine campus. Their (somewhat legendary) radio station KUCI only had a 25 watt transmitter. Once you strayed, like, a mile beyond the campus you got nothing but static. One year they upgraded to a transmitter that pumped out a raging 200 watts. Suddenly, one could listen to Tazy's ska show all the way out into the orange groves past Westpark.

The promo they ran at the time went something like, KUCI. Now more powerful than most lightbulbs

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Barflyerdammit t1_itrymvo wrote

I worked for a 10 watt station at a small school in the Midwest. There were places on campus where you could see the transmitter and still not get a signal.

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ehlee95 OP t1_its7tjv wrote

Super cool, did a lot of people listen to it on campus? Spotify was already pretty ubiquitous when I went to college, so the campus station wasn't as popular.

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Barflyerdammit t1_its9aav wrote

It wasn't particularly popular. There were only 1100 students, so the potential audience was tiny. A fellow DJ put on Debbie Gibson and announced that if anyone asked him to stop he would. And he did a four-hour shift of "I Think We're Alone Now."

The saddest part of that was that the station was also broadcast via speakers in the student union.

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tacknosaddle t1_itsn0xe wrote

I listen to WMBR which is MIT's radio station. They used to be WTBS for its parent organization The Technology Broadcasting System, but in the early days of cable TV Ted Turner wanted those letters so he offered them a big chunk of money to let him have them and they put it all into transmission power so they went from a station you could only get near the campus to covering all of Boston/Cambridge and pretty well out to the suburbs.

The new letters are for Walker Memorial Basement Radio since that's where the station is housed in the Walker Memorial building on the campus.

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sodiyum t1_itv18mh wrote

KUCI reached my neighborhood in Santa Ana in the early 2000s and that’s how I discovered The Magnetic Fields. If I drove around too much I would lose the station, and I also couldn’t listen to it inside my house. Aww memories. 🥲

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