U.S.A. REGULATIONS

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 6, 26 August 1927, Page 3

U.S.A. REGULATIONS

eee REDUCED POWER ORDERED

The reallocation of the broadcast sta. tions of the United States, just completed by the Radio Commissicn (says the New York ‘‘Radio News"’), leaves few of them on their old frequencics, and the official announcement is that the arrangement is only tentative. ‘There ure too mayy stations in the wavebaud, in the present state of the radio art. ‘The power of most of the. larger stations has beeu notably re« duced; the average for the whole seven hyndred stations is now abont 645 watts; but twenty-seven stations have half the power and the three largest have about as much as the three hundred smallest, combined. The majority range between 500 and 100 watts, Stations Share Hours. There are now. but two high-powér stations on each of four frequencies; but as high as seventeen on one of the longer wave-lengths, 223,7 metres, NAA, the Government station, is alone on a wave otherwise reserved for Canadian use, ‘To make even this arrangement. tolerable, over two hundred stations have been required to share hours with others nearby; in New York five are "sleeping in one bed." The trouble is, of course, as one distinguished radio au thority puts it, that a station’s interfer elce range is enormously larger that its service area.. While there has been general acceptance of the commise sion’s decisions, because of the realisation that its measures are intended for the general good, there has been much protesting by smaller stations assigned to the lower wavelengths in the crowd: ed New York area; and WMSG has | commenced legal proceedings, with a view to testing the constitutionality of the radio act.