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April 05, 2005
Useless Factoid of the Day #4: Daylight Saving Time causes some radio stations to lose money
It's that time of the year again -- one hour of sleep has been taken away from me forever and when it does come back in October, I'm sure I'll be frittering it away on something inconsequential. Ah, c'est la vie! Daylight SavingTime, for me, is Sleep Losing Time.
This post is about how daylight saving time adversely affects small commercial radio stations. I read about it in an interview with David Prerau in the Boston Phoenix. Prerau recently published a book full of random facts, controversies and anecdotes associated with Daylight Saving Time.
I hate to be a pedantic prick about it, but it's Daylight Saving Time (like dog walking time, or vaccuming my apartment time) and not Daylight Savings Time, even though it rolls off the tongue better. See why at Wikipedia's entry about DST.
Sunlight affects the the electromagnetic and conductive properties of the ionosphere. In general, radio waves travel further during night because the ionosphere conducts them better without the powerful electromagnetic interference from sunlight. Because radio waves travel further at night, fewer stations can be broadcast without interfering with each other after the sun goes down. Certain small radio stations operate on daytime-only licenses because of these physical constraints imposed by the ionosphere.
These small radio stations typically broadcast local news, weather and traffic to their biggest audience segment, morning commuters. Generally, people don't listen to these stations in the evenings because during the evening they prefer stations with wider news and entertainment coverage. Daylight saving time comes in and shifts the hours of operation of these stations one hour later. This leaves them a smaller window in which to broadcast during the day. The end result is that they lose money when Daylight Saving Time is in effect.
This rather fascinating Useless Factoid of the Day was brought to you by the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge, me.
Posted by Vishy at April 5, 2005 12:47 AM