Can a message get though the static? These days, static is information overload. In the past, it was distance and natural static.

In the old days of broadcast radio and TV, much of the audience size was determined by the power of the station's transmitter. How far could the signal reach before it was drowned out by distance and static?

On today's social media, even small signals, like my website, have a global reach. The limit is not natural distance and static, but another kind of "static" - information overload. Can a small website and Facebook presence get much audience, given all the other information sources competing for attention time?

These days, the static is information, not just the random radio hiss, or television snow of past eras. Continued below.

In the past, some TV static was said to come from the Big Bang's cosmic background radiation while most of it was from local sources, such as thermal noise, or appliances and thunderstorms. Photo I found on Wikimedia Commons.

When I was in grade school, I was impressed with the new transistor radios that people had. I remember thinking, "The more transistors radios had, the more amplification for picking up distant, faint signals. Most transistor radios had 6 transistors. I thought, "If one had 100 transistors, maybe it could pick up stations all around the world?"

Later I realized that no matter how much amplification a radio had, the faint signals would still be lost in the static. Amplification would also amplify the static so the faint distant station could still not be heard above the static.

On shortwave international band, stations could still be heard around the world, but that was different from the AM band used by those pocket transistor radios.

The power of the radio station was important back then. At night, some AM signals could travel farther due to nighttime ionospheric skip. 50,000 watt KGO, in San Francisco, was a powerhouse that could send a clear signal up and down the entire west coast. It was top rated for audience size for many years.

Then along came the internet so transmitter power became less relevant. KGO basically imploded into a low rated business, in terms of audience share. Continued below.

Above: Old nighttime coverage map from another big San Francisco station; KNBR 1970s.
Below: Part of a bicycle trip I took in 2009. Past KGO transmitter visible from bike path on Dumbarton Bridge.

Today, there is the concept of "going viral;" a term not even known during my childhood. For audience size, some information reaches huge audiences just because it went viral. An idea, meme, song, artwork or even a politician can reach an audience in the millions, or even billions. It's hard to tell why somethings go viral while others don't. This seems to follow various patterns of mass psychology. Why did Kim Kardashian get so famous, or even Donald Trump, for that matter?

The power the transmitter, itself is no longer the issue, but media power is still a factor. I recently read an article by Robert Reich warning about growing consolidation of corporate media power; especially in cable TV networks. The consolidation of ownership and control of media, by a handful of billionaires, is becoming more alarming.

Folks on the left have been talking about this for years, while I have tended to place more blame on people's attention priorities, themselves, versus control from the top. That was past decades, but control from the top seems to be getting more serious today.

It may have also been serious in the days of only 3 big TV networks and the control of big corporations, such as RCA; owner of NBC. I remember hearing, from my parents, that NBC also owned ABC. In old radio days NBC was called the Red Network while ABC was called the Blue Network until such a time that anti trust laws broke it up. I guess CBS was always, somewhat, independent.

Back in the 1990s, I thought that ease of access to the internet for artists and writers, such as myself, would bring on a golden age of diversity, global interaction and enlightenment. Today, it looks like that thought was a bit naive.

I still fault people for most of this problem. Folks are gullible and can easily be manipulated by the rich and famous. Billionaires from Taylor Swift to Donald Trump are able to manipulate us like pawns.

I still hope there will always, somehow, be conversations beyond the command and control of big money.