| An Oregon Sea Grant (OSG) educational video Making Waves with
Low Power AM Radio "...shows how organizations around the
United States are already successfully using...innovative,
affordable technology, even without previous broadcast
experience" — quite a comment from folks with nothing to
gain by touting Travelers Information Station (TIS) radio. The Making
Waves project was funded by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association's Office of Sea Grant and Extramural
Programs, the United States Department of Commerce and by
appropriations from the Oregon State legislature.
On the video, a range of users,
including "parks, chambers of commerce, museums, ports and
highway authorities" talk about how they use TIS to reach
"travelers, location visitors, and others."
"Imagine how you can do the
same!," says OSG in literature describing the show.
The CD version, reproduced
collaboratively with the National Parks Wireless Program Center,
runs 18 minutes and plays on any Windows PC or Macintosh computer.
QuickTime software is included. (See below to request your copy.)
Frank
Weed, who served as chief of the National
Park Service's (NPS) Wireless Program Center, in a recent letter
to park managers and staff that accompanied complementary CDs
provided them, summarized the history of NPS use of TIS radio
stations:
"Perhaps you are aware of
the benefits of Travelers Information Stations in disseminating
information to the motoring public.... Those stations are the low
power informational radio broadcasts designed to reach the
motoring public in the common AM radio band [530 to 1700 kHz]....
Initially conceived and developed as an experimental broadcast
medium at Yellowstone National Park in the early 1970s, the radio
stations and the technology utilized have matured from frail
tube-type transmitter equipment and audio tapes to totally
reliable and fully solid state transmitter equipment with digital
audio that can be recorded/re-recorded from a distant location via
dial-up connection. Today, the National Park Service has over 175
of these broadcast units in operation nationally." ISS has,
for years, proudly served as the Wireless Center's radio station
supplier.
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