Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0898 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I often wonder about with RDS: How do they stop the traffic alert (“TA”) feature being abused by stations to grab listeners?

View on HN

I think nobody has to prevent abuse because listeners will either turn off traffic alerts or switch to a different channel.

Besides that, FM broadcasting isn't a lawless place and is regulated by the government. Abuse will most likely lead to some kind of penalty, but I can't be bothered to read through the laws to confirm it :P

The same way the prevent stations from broadcasting 90 seconds or more of pure silence: you loose your license if you do.

> broadcasting 90 seconds or more of pure silence

Have a link or info on this? Sounds interesting but can't find anything.

It is a rule in Germany, I know about it because we did some distributed cooperation stuff with community radio stations and some hacking events during the pandemic, and making sure that no matter what happens with the network between the speakers, the coordinating host, and server of the radio station, we never send out silence, was quite an important concern. I can't quote you the exact line of the law,though.

Not sure about TA, but definitely saw radio station in Indianapolis using RDS to broadcast advertisements. In between the artist/song info, ads for an injury lawyer appeared. Thought it was super lame use of RDS.

They don't.

Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon for pirate radio stations to drum up listeners by using TA to advertise short snippets.

The almighty FCC fine is the deterrent

Reply on news.ycombinator.com