Well, apparently last week due to some funkiness in the atmosphere, one could tune into the radio in western New York and hear sounds from thousands of miles away. As reported by Ben Beagle in the Batavia News,

“Atmospheric anomalies played havoc with local FM radio reception on Wednesday, pulling in signals from more than 1,000 miles away.

While driving home — a quick 12-mile commute from Batavia to Le Roy — I thought something was wrong with my radio. I could not get a Rochester or Buffalo radio station to come in. On WBEE-FM (92.5) I could hear some music, but it sounded like it was coming out of a white noise machine. Other stations seemed to have just disappeared. Nothing. Even WGCC-FM in Batavia was overtaken by static (though sometimes with college-radio music it’s hard to tell).

But the radio was functioning. Nothing had been amiss during the morning drive. There was reception in the afternoon, too, it just wasn’t coming from the usual places. The scan button was stopping and music was playing clearly from stations that the scan button had never stopped on before.

I felt like I was in an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Or maybe the fabric of the universe was ripping apart. Something strange was happening. My wife looked at me like I was having a breakdown.”

Apparently what was happening was due to something called sporadic E-skip. In the article he explains that:

“Basically, a radio station’s signal bounces around the atmosphere and can be picked up a great distance away. Even the most powerful FM signals don’t normally reach more than 80 or 90 miles But E-skip, [radio consultant Scott] Fybush explained in an e-mail, usually brings in stations at a range of about 700 to 1,200 miles. ‘When an (E-skip) opening is especially strong, as today’s was, it can bring in so many distant signals that they wipe nearby stations off the dial, as you experienced,’ he wrote.”

That must have been both wild and exciting to hear far-away stations on the radio. Chalk this up to another benefit of terrestrial radio in my book! Did you experience these displaced stations on your dial last week?

But the thing that was really fun to find is from the October 15, 1935 issue of Broadcasting. In an editorial called “Murder of Music,” publisher Martin Codel writes about an “ASCAP…propaganda campaign against broadcasting.” Wow. Sounds like 2009! Here’s more text from the editorial:

“In a publicity release issued this month, ASCAP asserts that ‘murder of music’ by radio was accomplished last year when the 85 leading tunes of the year were played 1,255,669 times by the two principal networks. About two years ago ASCAP issued a propaganda blast titled Murder of Music in which it set out to prove that radio had killed sheet music, phonograph record and other musical instrument sales.”

The editorial goes on to point out that ASCAP is arguing that radio should pay up in order to make up for the loss of sheet music sales. And, it also brings up the age-old practice of pay for play:

“ASCAP does not recite in its handout the well known fact that radio tends to popularize the works of composers. Moreover, it does not bring out that composers and publishing houses are constantly plaguing the networks, stations and performers to ‘plug’ their numbers. Innumerable cases of bribery of orchestra leaders and performers have been exposed.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.