In this letter to the editor, the author responds to the article “Establish a Baseline, Then Jump In,” which explores the topic of sustainability in radio. Radio World welcomes letters to the editor on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.
Elle,
I want to share a couple of stories with you.
A long time ago during the gas crisis everybody was looking at reducing their energy consumption.
Sutro Tower got a call from the state energy people wanting to know more about the tower’s high electrical power consumption.
The Sutro Tower manager explained that the TV and FM stations must operate at full power to comply with FCC regulations.
The next question was what Sutro Tower could do with their energy consumption.
The Sutro Tower manager replied that most of the tower’s energy consumption went into tower lighting to comply with FAA regulations.
Long pause.
They said “Thank you” and never called back.
The second story was about a meeting I had with the new general manager to go over the station’s engineering budget. The biggest cost was the tower rent.
The GM realized that there wasn’t much he could do about that. The next biggest cost was the transmitter power bill.
The GM asked if we could operate at half power to save money. He then thought some more and realized that our competition could use that to their advantage so he gave up on that idea.
I didn’t have to remind him that the FCC required the station to operate at full power.
— Bill Ruck, San Francisco
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