Goot post PE. Anyway I wonder if someday commercial stations will have to start using some of the technics us Hobby Broadcasters use which is small low powered transmitters chained together to reach an audience. Think of stations using traffic poles and mounting transmitters up their or utility lines as well and having to be so far away from any Cell phone tower. Wouldn't that be something if the FCC started to look at this idea as a solution.
Don't know how common it is today, but back when cell phones were first growing like crazy cell companies were pestering the heck out of FM broadcasters to lease tower space for their cell antennas and equipment. We had cell reps calling us all the time trying to get tower space.
We did give in (sort of) and lease an FM subcarrier to a pager company (before cell phones took over). It was really quite a system. The installed a big 10' satellite dish that received call pages via satellite that were then fed via phone line from our studios out to our FM transmitter 5 miles away, which were then broadcast on our 100,000 watt FM subcarrier to the pager subscribers, who would then receive the "beep" and the readout of the number that called!
They went out of business of course, stopped paying the rent, and left their dish, a rack of gear, etc all in our building. After trying to get past due rent out of them for about 18 months I finally got to part out their gear, and we hauled the rest to the dump. I actually repurposed their dish for SETI reception for a couple years. Never did hear from any aliens.
TIB