Microbroadcasting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Microbroadcasting is the process of broadcasting a message to a relatively small audience.

Microbroadcasting, in radio terms, is the use of low-power transmitters (often Part 15 or equivalent) to broadcast a radio signal over the space of a neighborhood or small town. Similar to pirate radio, microbroadcasters generally operate without a license from the local regulation body, but sacrifice range in favor of using legal power limits (for example, 100 mW for medium wave broadcasts in the United States). Higher power levels can be achieved using carrier current techniques, which are widely used in colleges and universities. Both AM and FM bands are used, although AM tends to have better propagation characteristics at low power.

Microbroadcasting is also used by schools and businesses to serve just the immediate campus of the operation; well-known uses include automated tour guide systems and drive-in theaters, which often provide movie audio over the driver's car audio system. It has also been adopted as an advertising technique, particularly by car dealers and real estate agents.

Microbroadcasting is a term coined by Seth Godin for an emerging use of technology. Also spotted as a meme to watch by Phil Morle, Director of Technology for Sharman Networks, the folks behind Kazaa. The term is a reaction to a Google Video created by Matt Olson and Mike Brady. The video invitation they created for their design firm rosenlof/lucas and their collaboraters, Hive Modular, a modernist, prefab home builder, is seen as powerful because it was free to create and is, as Godin says, “much more vivid than a brochure”. In this sense, it is similar to what is often referred to as narrowcasting. Yet is very different since the nature of niche marketing or narrowcasting is to limit the amount of people that are exposed to it. What makes microbroadcasting so powerful is its vast possibility.

Defined by using existing free internet portals like Google Video and You Tube to distribute content to as small or large an audience as is possible. According to Phil Morle, "Because it makes a powerful tool available to individuals and small businesses that was once the domain of mega corporations."