photo #8369210

Breathing dead air :. I worked for a radio station in the late 90s and every night we would go off the air but would leave the transmitter on.. Broadcasting at 265 watts with nothing playing, there should have been NOTHING on our frequency... But one night, I was in the studio and I checked our output.. Quiet, except for a little bit of static.. But then I tried something... I recorded 10 minutes of the faint static and brought it into an audio editing program, and then kept boosting the volume.. Inside a station at the base of a tower sending out 265 watts of nothing, there shouldn't have been anything there. Technically not even the minor bit of static... But increasing the volume level far beyond any amplifier we owned.. 400%, 600%.... There were voices in the static... It sounded like a small crowd.. Like the murmuring you'd hear in an auditorium before the movie starts... I couldn't pick out a single voice, or hear what was being said clearly, but oh yes.... There were people talking. --- Now, if it was just random noise from an unused frequency, I could say it was overlap or cross talk from other stations.. But that wasn't possible when you're next to the broadcast tower and there's NOTHING being transmitted from the station except 265 watts of dead air.